Although I put my stories through multiple drafts, often forty or fifty, most of them are inspired by actual events in this area and certainly most of the characters are known well around here. She was our first landlady when my wife and I came to Vermont. Though I changed the names and some details, that story is almost literally true. A Stranger in the Kingdom is based on a very ugly racist event that took place in my hometown of Irasburg. That means you can't grow alfalfa here, you can't grow wheat here.
Farmers have to buy their grain.
It's a tough place to make a living and always has been. What sets the area apart most is its people. Sometimes North Country people are perceived, even by those in their own states, as quaint and eccentric, even wrong-headed. The North Country certainly has its own share of outlaws and survivalists, but most of the people I met on my trip were very hardworking, serious, intelligent people who were trying somehow to make a living from the land, even though that's getting more difficult every day. Many of them were still doing traditional kinds of work that their ancestors had done, like farming, lumbering, ranching, and mining.