Out Here in the Middle of Somewhere
For as long as any of us can remember, people have referred to this corner of the Northeast Kingdom as the “middle of nowhere.” It’s a familiar refrain—usually said with a shrug, sometimes with affection, occasionally a hint of contempt, and often with a hint of disbelief that anyone would choose to build a brewery out here on long dirt roads, with quietly dark nights, and more maple trees than traffic lights.
The truth is simpler and far more interesting: this isn’t nowhere. This is the middle of somewhere, and it always has been.
Long before breweries or backroad leafpeepers, this land held families who carved out farms, built communities, and raised families. These hills shaped self-reliance and resilience; they turned distance into clarity. What some read as remoteness has always been an invitation—for those willing to see value where others overlook it—to build something meaningful, deliberate, and lasting.
That hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s become a point of pride. Rural living isn’t a compromise; it’s a commitment to anchoring your life to a place with character. When places have character, people eventually find their way to them.
Around the Northeast Kingdom, businesses, farms, small producers, and new generations of Vermonters are making that same modest wager: that a strong sense of place can be an economic engine, a cultural compass, and a magnet that doesn’t need neon to be seen. We’re only one thread in that larger fabric, but we take the role seriously.
Every person who makes the trip here—whether for a glass, a conversation, a moment of stillness, or a view they didn’t expect—helps strengthen the Northeast Kingdom.
If this is the “middle of nowhere,” then nowhere is doing just fine. The roads may be winding and the distances occasionally daunting, but the draw is real.
Pride of place isn’t nostalgia. It’s a foundation. And in the NEK, foundations run deep.
– Bob M. Montgomery
Local Spotlight: Willey’s Store
Willey’s isn’t just a general store; it’s the unofficial center of gravity for Greensboro. For more than a century, it has supplied locals and visitors with whatever they didn’t know they needed—hardware, groceries, fishing gear, penny candy, winter gloves, last-minute picnic essentials, and every conversation in between. It’s part mercantile, part community bulletin board, part living history. In a region where small businesses often carry more responsibility than their square footage suggests, Willey’s has remained the reliable constant: practical, welcoming, and unmistakably Northeast Kingdom. It embodies exactly what “somewhere” feels like.
