FAIRLEE — When the sun cast its light across the fields, Bev Hodge would often climb on her Gator and drive out on the farm. She’d head through the meadow and come to a stop where her family’s Fairlee land met the Connecticut River, stopping to gaze across to Orford, taking in the scene around her.
“She just loved her meadow,” said her daughter, Jody Hodge. “The land would just bring her pure joy.”
Hodge, a stalwart of Fairlee who was well-known for the farm stand she ran for 70 years and later a Christmas-themed store, both of which were collectively known as Farmer Hodge’s Country Christmas Shop and Roadside Stand, died on Jan. 5, 2021, at age 93 after a period of declining health.
Hodge was born in Piermont on on May 18, 1927. As a youth she became an expert canner and used those skills during a 4-H competition to win a $200 scholarship, which she used to attend Concord Commercial College two years. She was working when she met Herbie Hodge at a square dance in Piermont after he returned from a stint in the U.S. Navy.
“She had blue eyes, a twinkle in her eye,” Herbie Hodge recalled. They became engaged, but Bev Hodge had one condition before they married: He needed to build her a home, which he set out to do on the family’s land on Route 5. They were married on Aug. 4, 1951.
“She had a lot of spice,” Herbie Hodge said. “She used to tell it the way it was.”
Bev Hodge, who was known for the personal interest she took in her customers, ran the farm stand, which was supplied by the vegetables and gardens she tended to herself on the farm, while Herbie tended to their cow herd. She kept a special eye on the crops, grabbing a husk of corn off the stalk and biting into it to see if it was ready to pick.
“It was such joy for her to show me her crops and what she had raised,” Jody Hodge said.
When the cows needed to cross Route 5 to get from one pasture to the next or Herbie Hodge needed to move hay, Hodge would stand in the middle of the road waving a flag to slow the traffic, her daughter Cindy Frazee said. If the cows got out, Hodge would get on her Gator to help round them up.
She kept up some of the traditions she learned as a young girl, such as making doughnuts (which visitors were offered alongside a cup of coffee), bread, baked beans, and pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting that she regularly brought to potlucks.
At the farm stand, Hodge was interested in learning about her customers, from the visitors who would come through on bus tours to the people she saw year after year. The family joke went that she’d know her customer’s shoe size before they left.
“They loved the personal aspect and that’s what brought them back to get their cheese, get their maple syrup,” Cindy Frazee said. “They just loved that personal touch that my mom would give them.”
She kept every Christmas card ever sent to her, including those from people she met on the tour buses. She remembered birthdays and anniversaries and who in which family had recently been ill.
“The loyal customers have become really good friends throughout the years,” Cindy Frazee said. “They’ve become family.”
Abby Metcalf, of Piermont, sold Hodge hanging baskets in the spring and mums in the fall. They saw each other a couple times a year, exchanging news about their families and how their businesses were doing.
“She probably would do most anything for you,” Metcalf said.
Priscilla Jorgensen worked alongside Hodge at the farm stand — and later the Christmas Shop — for 50 years, beginning when she was in high school.
“From the moment I started working there, she was a worker,” Jorgensen said. “From early morning to late at night she was up working.”
Hodge knew how to bargain and negotiate, whether it be with Shaw’s on wholesale orders for sweet corn or area farmers who supplied the farm stand with products she didn’t grow herself.
“All the salesmen knew how far they could go and she would draw them down. If they told her it was a certain price she’d say ‘I’m only going to pay you this,’ ” Jorgensen said. The result was 50/50. “Sometimes we didn’t get the things we wanted because she wouldn’t pay what they wanted.”
Donnie Moore sold maple syrup to Hodge. After catching up on family news — if the family was sitting down for a meal, Hodge insisted that Moore joined them — they’d talk business. Hodge always knew what other folks in the area were selling syrup for.
“She just had this sparkle in her eye and she would like to joke around quite a bit,” Moore said. “She wasn’t afraid to ask you for something she wanted.”
Her bluntness could sometimes come across as a little off putting, but once people got to know her that opinion quickly faded.
“She was the type of person if you met her you’d be a little intimidated of her, a little scared of her. Once she sized you up a little bit and she said a few things to you then you were in and she would be your best friend,” her grandson Mark Frazee said, describing her “as just this tiny little sprite of a thing and full of piss and vinegar and moxie.”
She loved her family deeply. When Cindy Frazee was participating a horse show, her horse was distracted by a Ferris wheel. Suddenly, the ride stopped spinning: Bev Hodge had paid the operator $10 to keep it still while Cindy Frazee competed, and won.
That dedication extended to the next generation when Mark Frazee was practicing piano. After he finished a piece, sometimes Hodge would remark “I don’t know I would try it again,” and he would until she said he got it right.
Her sense of hard work and devotion to her family continued even as she dealt with trigeminal neuralgia – a condition that caused sharp pain in her face.
“She never let that stop her from going to work,” Mark Frazee said. “I always wanted to make her proud. There just wasn’t anything I wouldn’t have done for her.”
Animals, especially birds, were drawn to her. In 2013, the husband of her granddaughter, Maegan Flowers, built her a chicken coop. Six laying hens would follow her or accompany her for Gator rides. There were also the geese — Bonnie and Clyde — who would guard her while she was gardening and honk at anyone who came near, which helped because Hodge had hearing aids she wasn’t too keen on wearing.
When Clyde heard the Gator coming across the farm, “he would run across the yard and come meet her,” Jody Hodge said. “She’d stop the Gator and Clyde would jump abroad and he would ride around on the Gator with her.”
Hodge loved all holidays, but Christmas best of all, with each room decorated and each staircase adorned. That love of Christmas culminated in a new business venture: the Country Christmas Shop. It was in the house that Herbie Hodge had originally built and it was turned into the shop after the Hodges moved across Route 5 to a larger family home. There were snowbabies, Christmas villages and other Department 56 collectibles on the bottom floor. The two upstairs rooms were for area crafters to sell their items on consignment.
The fun would culminate each year during a Christmas Family Day celebration. Children and families from all over were invited for sleigh rides, hot chocolate and visits with Santa and reindeer. She delighted in watching the children visit Santa and would sit back and take in the scene in front of her, a constant smile on her face.
“She never ventured far from the farm or the stand,” Maegan Flowers said. “So rather than go out to the town and see all the people, she brought the town to her.”
Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.
