Welcome to Cooper Hill Inn

Snow - Heavy at Times.  That is the forecast from now until the end of March.  Conditions are great at Mount Snow for downhill and boarding at Carinthia and the local cross country areas are all open for business.  Plenty of snow if you want to use your snowshoes or skinny skis right out of our door as well.  Enough snow so even the snowmobilers are happy:-).  The actual long range forecast is for a decent winter.  Its all involved with the El Nino and the Pacific Ocean and all that stuff but to us it means we will have more snow and more fun than we did last year.  Trout fishing is over until April but the thermally challenged can still try their hand at ice fishing. Snowshoeing is just another form of hiking and the Green Mountain National forrest is still just down the road a piece (actually about one mile until you are in it along with the Town Woods). Some of us locals break a trail in the forrest and it makes a nice two hour walk in the woods. Hope our Monarchs made it safely to Mexico and our Hummingbirds are enjoying the surf in Costa Rica (yes they really do fly there).

We have greatly enjoyed those of our guests who came under the Living Social Package. That package has prompted us to offer Dinner to all our guests on Saturday nights. Our food can best be described as eclectic Asian home cooking. I can pretty well guarantee that you will not find it anywhere else this side of Asia:-) Chef Lee remains the food maven and as usual we continue to source everything that we can locally. We served grass feed fillet at a wedding last summer along with locally and organically grown chicken. There is a difference in taste and texture. All our wedding salads come from Lilac Ridge farms and are picked the day of the wedding. If you saw Food Inc. you caught Amanda from Lilac Ridge Farms on the big screen, she was the lady talking about Walmart. We had a Gelato Cart at two weddings last summer, locally made and really good. All our veggies and tomatoes are locally grown, the eggs get laid next door (you can hear the rooster). The maple syrup comes from our neighbor's trees and if you come late February/early March you can see it being made (harvested?). The Brattleboro Farmers Market is closed until Spring but we still get fresh farm eggs from our neighbors.

We always enjoy seeing the tents go up in front of the Inn and watching months of planning come to fruition when Wedding Season arrives.  Moonlight in Vermont really works wonders and the views of the mountains during Summer evenings inspire guests as well as the wedding parties. It is very unusual to be able to watch the moon rise in the east then turn around and watch the sunset in the west, but it happens all the time on Cooper Hill.I

Flamingo Yoga will be  here again next fall and hopefully it will be warm enough to do yoga on the lawn (Hot Yoga maybe?).  Our year begins and ends with the beautiful foliage of Autumn and the snow starts the cycle again.

Wildlife update: The Autumn Turkey Season is over and somehow the birds know it:-). Our neighbor's eight year old son went hunting with his Dad for the first time last spring and bagged a 19 pound gobbler! (you can only take male birds, well its more complicated, you can olly take birds with a beard, but nevermind).  The neat part was he had his Dad drive by so he could show us.  We have some of the feathers in the dinning room:-).  Then he had to go home and get cleaned up for his piano recital!  A childhood like few others. They are in the woods but when spring comes they will be hanging out in our field across the road and you should keep an eye out for them when you are coming up Cooper Hill Road as they are not as quick to get out of the way as they might be and hitting a 20 pound bird is no fun:-(  The bears are asleep but there was lots of sign in the woods and in the lower part of our back yard where a youngster likes to sample the blueberries.  There are several bear families in the Green Mountain National Forrest, just up the road. We heard the coyotes singing this week. Moose are in the deep woods now.  Early spring is the best time of year to see one.  Be careful on the roads, especially at night as the shoulders are narrower than what you are used to.  Don't trust your GPS too much as it doesn't show moose or deer in the road.