Natural Beauty
Bedding . Outside of the showroom , an inviting patio leads to a butterfly garden , an expansive valley , and lush , dense forests . A trip to Stonehurst is a feast for the senses on every level , and the story of how the showroom and surrounding natural sanctuary came to be is equally beautiful and remarkable .
From her earliest years , Peggy Farabaugh has always felt a deep sense of connection with her surrounding natural environment . Born and raised in Plattsburgh , New York , her life trajectory was heavily influenced by the nature shows that she watched as a young girl . Farabaugh recalls : “ As a kid , I loved watching wildlife television shows , such as Mutual of Omaha ’ s Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins . My parents also made sure that we were actively engaged with our natural surroundings . We would take walks to the woodlands near our house , hike near the river banks , and pick wild berries . Those experiences had a truly profound impact on my worldview .” After graduating from high school , Farabaugh enrolled at SUNY Plattsburgh , where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry . Following her graduation from SUNY Plattsburgh , she served as an instructor at General Electric ’ s Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Saratoga , New York for two years . She then worked as a Senior Engineer for Impell Corporation , an engineering firm that specialized in the construction and rehabilitation of nuclear and fossil fuel power generation plants . In 1990 , Farabaugh began working as a Project Manager for a private nonprofit company called Battelle Memorial Institute . At Battelle , she oversaw a large number of health , education , and environmental safety projects ; and she completed a Master of Science in Information Technology Degree in Instructional Design at Rochester Institute of Technology in 1992 . Farabaugh continued to pursue her education after leaving Battelle in 1996 and enrolled in a graduate program at Tulane University . After receiving a Master of Science in Public Health degree from
Tulane in 1998 , she became an Associate Professor there . Farabaugh then moved to Vernon , Vermont with her husband , Ken , and children in the late 1990s , and worked remotely to develop an online master ’ s degree distance-learning program for Tulane . She didn ’ t know it then , but the lessons that she learned during the course of her professorship at Tulane would later play a pivotal role in helping to catalyze the growth of Vermont Woods Studios . In 2005 , the devastating havoc that Hurricane Katrina wreaked upon the city of New Orleans resulted in Farabaugh losing her job at Tulane . “ I was living in rural Vermont after I stopped teaching online classes at Tulane ,” says Farabaugh . “ I would always complain to my husband that I had no idea what I wanted to do for work . My husband is very passionate about making furniture . It ’ s always been one of his favorite hobbies . At the time , he had built many wonderful handmade furniture pieces out of wood that our friend cut from the trees in our own yard .”
One day , Farabaugh looked around her husband ’ s shop and realized that she wanted to create an online business that sold handmade Vermont artisan furniture . “ Most of our friends who were woodworkers made gorgeous pieces , but they gave most of their furniture away , because it was hard to find a suitable market for their products . I thought that I could use some of the technical skills that I had developed as an online professor at Tulane to figure out how to market their furniture to a larger audience .” During the years that Farabaugh spent at Tulane , she learned how to use the internet to find the small , niche group of people who were interested in taking her online master ’ s degree classes in Environmental Safety and Health Management . “ I decided to apply my understanding of internet marketing towards finding environmentally-conscious customers who were interested in buying sustainable handmade furniture that was made in Vermont .”
Farabaugh adds that the rising level of global awareness regarding forest conservation also motivated her to start the business . “ In the late 1990s , forest conservation came into the mainstream public consciousness . The scientific community started to figure out that we were destroying the world ’ s forests beyond a point of regeneration .” As Farabaugh was reading the research that was published by the World Wildlife Fund and The Nature Conservancy in the late 1990s and early 2000s , she realized that she had to do something to help make a difference and raise awareness about forest conservation . “ I understood that by selling sustainably-sourced Vermont furniture and making that a central part of our brand and business strategy , I could use the products that we sold as a platform to educate people about the environmental impact of their decisions and the benefits of sustainable furniture .”
Over the next few years , Farabaugh spent extensive amounts of time researching the online market . “ We didn ’ t truly get off the ground until the internet grew and adapted to the point that we could build a website that adequately told our story and described what we were selling ,” notes Farabaugh . “ Over time , search engines got better at connecting people who were searching for what we were selling to our website . We were one of the first companies that was crazy enough to believe that you could sell handmade artisan furniture on the internet .”
Farabaugh also went above and beyond to develop relationships with artisan furniture makers throughout the state of Vermont , such as Vernon-based craftsman Chad Woodruff , Robin Chase of Maple Corner Woodworks , and Lyndon Furniture ’ s founder Dave Allard . “ Dave Allard was the first big furniture maker in Vermont to form a business partnership with us ,” says Farabaugh . “ He had to have a lot of patience with us , because it took us a long time to figure out the subtleties of the market and how to effectively sell
14 VERMONT MAGAZINE