I can’t believe it is almost the end of my journey at The Lightning Jar. As usual, we had an exhilarating week that I'm excited to share with you - "Joe w/Jo" at Powers Market, networking with a local entrepreneur/farmer, and had an opportunity to meet the Bennington County Regional Commission (BCRC) staff and attend their monthly meeting. 

Our event "Joe w/Jo" was a huge success. We are always so happy to see new faces who stop in at our events! Thank you to all who shared our events with others and brought their friends. It was awesome to hear all about the things happening in the community as well as your personal business ventures. I hope you all enjoyed our event as much as we did :).
  
Back in January when we presented at the Bennington Rotary Club, we met Renee Richardson who invited us to see her entrepreneurial adventure - raising Icelandic sheep! We of course said yes!! So this week we visited her farm in North Bennington, where she and her family were very kind to show us around their farm. We learned a lot about farming (creating meadows, canning, an apple orchard, raising pigs) and all of these amazing sheep with great names! It was a first for me as I had never seen Icelandic sheep.

Renee and her family (Art and Sam) have so much knowledge about farming and yet they were so humble with all the hard work they do to keep it going. We left the farm knowing that we got a big gift in establishing this amazing connection to build and pass along through The Lightning Jar's connections. In fact, we connected Renee that day to two other people we knew who also raise sheep and one even knew a lot about raising Icelandic sheep! I am pretty sure that I will beg Renee to let me hang out with her sheep when school starts as feeding them was a special experience. They were so beautiful. Besides the picture below, we have posted more pictures on our Facebook page, check it out. I am sure you will fall in love with them too!

Even though we had some crazy weather this past week, I also got to learn about what the Bennington County Regional Commission (BCRC) does and attended their monthly meeting. I learned about all the different projects they are working on and the challenges that they face. Their are so many project areas including transportation, energy, emergency management and community and economic development. It was cool to learn all that had gone into the Putnam Block and what the future will look like in downtown Bennington. What an amazing job they are doing in the community!

Next week will be my last week, but I'm looking forward to this  amazing "Podcast & Pizza" event happening at The Lightning Jar in collaboration with United Counseling Service. It's all about wellbeing and sharing experiences of how to unplug and have balance. You can listen to the podcast here, but I think you should come and share some great pizza and conversation! Hopefully, I will see you then. ​