Vermont
High gas prices hit Vermonters at the pump, store and heating bill – VTDigger
More than a month into the Iran war, Vermonters are facing the strain of ballooning fuel costs as commuters wince at high prices at the pump.
“It’s painful to the pocketbook,” said David Armstrong, who works in the construction industry, as he filled his truck at a gas station in Burlington on Friday.
Armstrong commutes about 40 miles a day for work, he said, and it cost him over $123 to fill his tank, even with a discount program. That’s a steep increase from the approximately $90 he says he was paying prior to the Iran war.
Fuel costs have risen dramatically across the U.S., but in Vermont, where motorists in more rural communities must travel long distances to get to jobs or to buy essentials, prices for gas and diesel have hit especially hard.
Average gas prices in Vermont have risen to $3.99 per gallon as of April 2, and prices in northern counties like Orleans, Essex, Franklin and Grand Isle have all eclipsed $4, according to AAA’s gas price tracker.
Vermont is just below the national average of $4.08 per gallon, but compared to the rest of New England, only Connecticut has a higher average price.
American households have paid $8.4 billion more for gasoline over the past month compared to prices before the start of the war on Iran, according to analysis by congressional Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee. In response to U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran, the country closed a vital naval passage between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman called the Strait of Hormuz, effectively cutting off much of the Middle East’s supply of crude oil and natural gas from the global market.
The average household in Chittenden County uses 575 gallons of gasoline annually, which, if calculated for a year, would cost around $2,300 if Friday’s gas prices went unchanged, according to data from the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. Using the approximate cost of gas a year ago, a full year’s worth would cost $1,800, meaning that Chittenden County households would see an increase of $42 a month and around a $500 bump for the year.
Vermonters, who drive more and have fewer alternatives to driving compared to most states, are more exposed to price changes, according to Greg Rowangould, director of the Transportation Research Center and associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Vermont.
The Transportation Research Center studied how Vermonters reacted to the last major increase in fuel prices back in 2022 at the start of the war in Ukraine. It found that people across the spectrum, from remote rural communities to Burlington, were forced to cut down on travel. Respondents said they took fewer trips, favored closer destinations and opted to chain tasks together rather than take multiple trips for essentials.
Some drivers decided to cut back on non-essential travel, too, choosing to watch Netflix rather than going on a night out, according to Rowangould.
“There are things that people do to try to avoid the costs,” Rowangould said. “But, of course, you can’t avoid all of it.”
“We’re definitely driving less now,” Dennis DeSilvey said as he and his wife, Kathy, filled their hybrid car on Friday. After a career as a doctor, DeSilvey has to watch his budget much more closely since retiring.
Meanwhile, Sarah McNamara, who works as a substitute teacher in Burlington, said she’s considering switching to commuting by bike or bus if the high prices stick around. She said her husband, who commutes to the Champlain Islands, has started talking with coworkers about carpooling to save money.
“It’s definitely going to be a new budget item, in a different category,” McNamara said of the fuel prices.
Fuel cost increases will also hit homes using heating oil, propane and kerosene, according to Vermont Department of Public Service data.
However, Vermont’s electric utilities mainly use long-term contracts with less exposure to sudden price spikes. New England’s electric grid largely relies on natural gas, nuclear, hydro and other renewable fuel sources, avoiding an immediate impact from global crude prices, according to Philip Picotte, a utilities economic analyst at the Vermont Department of Public Service.
Disruptions in global supply — especially to liquified natural gas — will have some effect on New England’s electric prices in the medium-term, according to Picotte.
Diesel fuel in Vermont has now reached $5.80 per gallon, outpacing the national average of $5.51, according to AAA, which could hit long-haul and delivery trucks especially hard. Diesel is also a main fuel source in dairy and other farming operations throughout the state.
Fuel cost increases absorbed by local businesses would eventually be passed down to the consumer level, explained Ryan Bellavance, the president of Bellavance Trucking, which operates a fleet of nearly 100 trucks based out of Barre. Bellavance transports everything from construction materials to refrigerated food items, so increased costs could be felt across a wide range of products.
Bellavance explained that fuel is already one of their largest expenses. With the recent price increase, it now might be their largest. Compared to the start of the year, prices have increased 31 cents per mile. Multiplied across their operation, that increase quickly becomes problematic.
“It’s gonna be fine until the people stop buying, you know?” he said. “And then everything comes to a halt.”
QUECHEE, Vt. (WCAX) – Crews worked across the White River Valley on Friday to restore power and clean up debris after two EF-1 tornadoes touched down in Vermont, including one that swept through Quechee.
Joe Haynes stared over his yard in Woodstock, with chunks of his roof scattered across it, wondering about the next steps.
Reporter Connor Ullathorne: How long will this all take to clean up?
Joe Haynes: Oh, I have no idea.
He said he’s lucky he and his nearby neighbors are safe and are not blocked in.
“Some of the trees were down. They’ll be down for awhile but they can make their way out,” Haynes said.
Crews in Woodstock continued clearing trees and downed power lines along Route 4. That’s where Tiffany Miller was working inside the Mountain Creamery when the tornado passed right over the store. Nobody was injured, but their new walk-in storage ended up in the trees.
“It’s definitely a big setback for us. We were getting ready to have it wired up tomorrow. So I mean we definitely have a lot of elbow grease and hours to put in to get back up to where we were,” Miller said.
She said she was happy to see how many customers have checked in on them.
“It’s nice to see that no matter what, in some bad case– storms or indifferent– that we can still come together and be there for each other,” Miller said.
Farther east in Quechee, workers hacked away at trees and swept away debris along the golf course and roads.
“It’s crazy they want to see. Everybody cares about their community and all their assets and amenities, so it’s nice to see everybody come together,” Quechee Club General Manager Brian Kelley said.
Kelley said they were out early Friday, and many residents were shocked at the damage. He’s still hopeful the area can come together and support each other.
“We normally do about 200 rounds a day going into one of our peak weekends. We’ve got the balloon festival this weekend, so we have that population in town, so a little bit of disappointment but people have been great and supportive, and we’ll be back at it tomorrow,” Kelley said.
Kelley said it should be a few days until they are back to full force in Quechee.
Many others across the region told us they’re now focused on getting back to normal.
Click here for the latest forecast from the WCAX First Alert Weather Team.
Copyright 2026 WCAX. All rights reserved.
Vermont
New owners of Vermont Packinghouse plan for local growth – The Vermont Journal & The Shopper
NORTH SPRINGFIELD, Vt. – For years, limited meat processing capacity in Vermont has forced many farmers to sell their livestock out of state. A recent ownership transition at a meat processing plant in North Springfield aims to change that by helping ensure locally raised meats can continue to be processed, packaged, and sold in Vermont.
The Vermont Packinghouse (VPH), located at 25 Fairbanks Road in North Springfield, was recently sold in two subsequent transactions to a new ownership group led by longtime food service and distribution leader Louis Helbling.
The 50,000-square-foot United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) facility processes and packages beef and pork from small- and medium-sized farms across New England. The sale of both the business and the building marks a new phase of growth and stability for a key regional meat processing operation that has been managed by multiple entities in recent years.
Longtime Springfield businessman Mark Curran, of Curran-Birge, purchased the former Ben & Jerry’s manufacturing plant in 2013 with the goal of easing a major bottleneck for Vermont meat producers by expanding much-needed processing capacity. Curran and his former business partner Steve Birge worked with Temple Grandin, a renowned designer of humane livestock facilities, to develop a slaughter facility that minimizes stress on the animals.
The facility was operated by Minnesota-based Lorentz Meats from 2014 to 2020, and later by Walden Local Meat Co. from 2023 to 2026. Throughout that time, Curran maintained ownership of the building, carefully stewarding an asset he believed held long-term potential for the region.
On May 29, Curran sold the property to a new ownership group led by Helbling, a veteran of food service sales, operations, and senior management. Under the newly formed Vermont Packing & Trading, Helbling is focused on expanding market opportunities for locally grown meats while creating jobs and supporting local farms. With a passion for the food industry, Helbling was drawn to Vermont’s specialty food culture and deep agricultural heritage.
“With Louis’ decades of work in the New England food industry, there is real opportunity to open more markets for local beef and pork producers outside of Vermont,” Curran said. “Another initiative will be to retain more of Vermont’s dairy culls from leaving the state and keep more value-added processing here.”
Helbling and his team will continue to work closely with Curran, Black River Produce – a distributor with deep ties to the operation – and the owners of Walden Local Meat Co. to ensure a smooth transition of both building ownership and day-to-day operations.
“We have all worked very hard over the past six months to keep VPH open and in a position to rehire a very talented and dedicated workforce as quickly as possible,” Helbling said.
With a new management team in place, the facility is entering its next phase of operations focused on future growth.
Upgrades to the USDA facility are already underway, alongside efforts to expand cold storage capacity to meet growing regional demand. “Adding to the existing footprint with additional freezer and cold storage will give us the capacity we need to grow as a business and add to the local workforce over the next five years,” Helbling said.
He added that he and his team will continue working with Curran to revitalize the landmark facility and restore it as a source of pride for families, employees, and local farms.
“All of us involved in this journey are excited to be working and relocating to the great State of Vermont,” Helbling said. “We are operating and moving quickly to bring business from all over the Northeast to Springfield.”
Vermont Packing & Trading was formed after the April 2026 sale of the Vermont Packinghouse business and is seeking new partners and producers across the Northeast.
SHELBURNE — Norman Rockwell lived for a time in suburban New York City and died and was buried in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. But for 14 years in between, the artist spent perhaps the most prolific period of his career in Vermont creating his best-known works.
That’s how Shelburne Museum curator Carolyn Bauer sees it — and how the museum’s latest exhibition treats the artist.
“Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont,” which opens June 20 and runs through Oct. 25, displays 40 of the 175 covers Rockwell famously created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine during his time in Vermont between 1939 and 1953.
Also on display are prints of “The Four Freedoms,” maybe his most famed works of all, which represent American ideals spelled out by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941. Paintings in the exhibition include “The Young Lady with the Shiner” and “The Tattoo Artist,” both whimsical, recognizable pieces used as covers for The Saturday Evening Post.
“It’s very accessible work and approachable,” Bauer said.
The display features the three paintings that inspired the exhibition, given to the Shelburne Museum by Rock of Ages, the Barre granite quarry and monument maker. Those Rockwell paintings filled a significant gap in the museum’s art collection, which includes works by Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Grandma Moses and Andrew Wyeth but, until recently, none by Rockwell, perhaps the best-known artist to have lived here.
“It feels like a homecoming in many regards,” Bauer said.
Moving to southern VT, finding ‘the every American’
The exhibition frames Rockwell’s time in Vermont around the tenor of the times in America. As the Great Depression was ending, World War II was looming and the nation was growing more urban and industrialized, much of the public was yearning for greater simplicity, Bauer said.
Rockwell was among them, leaving New Rochelle north of New York City for the quietude of Arlington in southern Vermont.
He was not alone. Contemporary artists including Mead Schaeffer, John Atherton and Gene Pelham would settle in Arlington too, creating what Bauer termed “the golden illustrator days” in Vermont.
Rockwell’s art, as the 152-page hardcover catalogue accompanying the exhibition notes, shows “how Vermont itself came to embody American ideals in the national imagination.”
Rockwell and his fellow Arlington artists used each other as models in their creations. “They really would work collaboratively,” Bauer said.
Pelham’s daughter, Melinda, is shown in the exhibition in two works: “The Babysitter,” a painting of a girl holding a crying baby that’s on loan from The Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont and an admission submission Rockwell sent to Kellogg’s of a girl clutching a cereal-laden spoon to her mouth.
Doctors, mail deliverers and shopkeepers from Arlington populated his work. Bauer said Rockwell usually gave models $5 and a can of Coca-Cola.
“He was recycling and using just about everybody in town,” Bauer said. That included himself: Rockwell added his own visage to the multiple faces in “The Gossip,” which shows him lashing out at a woman who’s started the rumor-mongering.
Bauer said Rockwell wanted to cultivate a sense of place by using Vermonters known for their austere self-reliance at the forefront of his work. He also found “the every American” ideal in town, Bauer said, though his art reflected a pronounced lack of diversity.
In later work, Rockwell would confront race and segregation as the Civil Rights Movement swept the U.S.
“He was progressive,” Bauer said.
Inspired by paintings donated by Rock of Ages
“Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont” was inspired by the 2025 museum acquisition of a trio of Rockwell works that once hung in the Barre offices of Rock of Ages. The granite company contacted the museum asking if it could donate the paintings, Bauer said, prompting staffers to wonder momentarily, “Is this real?”
Rockwell created advertisements for Rock of Ages and gave the paintings upon which the ads were based to the company. “Kneeling Girl” from 1955, making its debut at the Shelburne Museum, takes place in front of a gravestone engraved with the name Newton.
Rock of Ages donated two versions of 1963 work “The Craftsman,” a muted draft and a more luminous final version that were first displayed at the museum last year. They depict Rock of Ages stonecutter George Seivwright working in the shadow of a memorial bearing the name “Norwell,” a portmanteau of Rockwell’s first and last names.
Bauer called the paintings “incredible works of art that were circulated widely” in ads, brochures and pamphlets touting Rock of Ages and its world-famous Vermont granite. Though Rockwell had left Vermont for Massachusetts by the time he created those paintings, they do what Rockwell had done when he lived in Arlington — show the nation and the world what Vermont and Vermonters are capable of.
“We are just eager for our visitors to see these paintings,” Bauer said.
If you go
WHAT: “Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont”
WHEN: June 20 through Oct. 25
WHERE: Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education, Shelburne Museum
INFORMATION: $8-$25 museum admission; free under age 5 and for active military and Shelburne Museum members. shelburnemuseum.org
Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@burlingtonfreepress.com.
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