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Billings Farm & Museum

The best-known hill farm in central Vermont is the Billings Farm & Museum, on Route 12 outside Wood­stock. During early winter, it's open only on weekends, but the chance to get up close and personal with a working herd of Jersey cows is tempting to those who don't regularly walk around in pastures wearing muck boots. Of course, not every Vermont hill farm has the late Laurance Rockefeller as its patron saint. He was married to Mary Billings French, whose family bought the property in 1871. The original owner, George Perkins Marsh, wrote a startlingly prescient ecological diatribe in 1864 titled Man and Nature and is considered to be America's first environmentalist. The Billings-Rockefeller land stewardship now extends beyond the farm to an adjoining 550-acre tract on Mount Tom with 20 miles of groomed trails