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Holy Strolling Cow!

With a moo, moo here, Orly Munzing (SED’75) celebrates Vermont’s small farms

By Katie Koch

Let Pamplona have its Running of the Bulls. In friendly, laid-back Brattleboro, Vermont, locals and out-of-towners alike line the streets for the Strolling of the Heifers.

 

The brainchild of education- consultant-turned-agriculture- advocate Orly Munzing (SED’75), the Strolling of the Heifers Festival — and its trademark parade of decidedly nonviolent bovines — is in its seventh year. The three-day celebration, which runs the first weekend in June, has been named one of state’s top ten summer events by the Vermont Chamber of Commerce. The festivities include live music and performances, a farmer’s market, and a wine and cheese tasting, among other events.

 

While the parade draws much of the attention, the cows aren’t the only ones getting a PR boost. The Strolling of the Heifers is merely a public celebration of a cause that Munzing champions year-round: the protection of Vermont’s unique agricultural community.

 

“Farming is the real anchor of Vermont,” Munzing says, noting that the state’s average farm, at 217 acres, is relatively small. “It creates the culture of Vermont. If we lose that, we lose all our community, and we lose agritourism as well.”

 

Several years ago, Munzing says, Brattleboro was in bad shape. Stores on Main Street were closing; family farms were in the red. A group of Munzing’s friends and neighbors — some farmers, some business owners — sat around a dinner table discussing ways to rejuvenate the town.

 

“The light bulb moment came — that if you have a parade, if you capture people’s attention and imagination, then you can bring them to what it’s all about,” Munzing says. “It’s about celebrating the community of agriculture in Vermont.”

 

A decade later, Brattleboro is reenergized, and the Strolling of the Heifers Festival has raised over $100,000 for agriculture education programs. Munzing’s organization has led workshops for farmers and teachers to share ideas and has provided grant money for local schools looking to build greenhouses, grow vegetables for a science class, or serve locally grown food in their cafeterias. The parade itself has increased students’ interest in farming, Munzing says; 4-H clubs have sprouted up in hopes of being able to walk their own cows in the big event.

 

Surprisingly, Munzing isn’t much of a farmer herself. She began working in education after graduating from BU, and her only experience living off the land, she says, was a summer she spent at a kibbutz in Israel. She was first exposed to Vermont’s beautiful rural landscape when she and her future husband, the late Richard Munzing (LAW’76), were BU students.

 

“We used to come up and ski in Vermont, and we fell in love with it,” she says. “I have to say that, because of where my career was going, I was a little worried about [moving there]. But now I love it, and I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”

 

The Strolling of the Heifers Festival runs from Friday, June 6, to Sunday, June 8, in Brattleboro, Vermont. The parade is scheduled to begin on Saturday, June 7, at 10 a.m. For more information, click here.