This month, we are spotlighting Vermont Chamber member The Vermont Country Store.

In 1946, Vrest and Mildred Orton printed and mailed The Vermont Country Store’s first catalog of 36 items to 1,000 people on their Christmas card list. Inspired by childhood memories of his father’s general store in North Calais, Vermont, Vrest, a frugal Yankee at heart, insisted that what they sold must be useful, work and make sense.

Today the company is owned by Lyman Orton and his sons Cabot, Gardner and Eliot, 7th and 8th generation Vermonters and 4th and 5th generation storekeepers who still hold true to this principle. The Vermont Country Store is known as The Purveyors of the Practical and Hard-to-Find, serving customers online at www.vermontcountrystore.com, through its catalogs, and in their two retail stores in Weston and Rockingham, Vt., that are open daily from 10:00 to 6:00 p.m.