Beaver was on the lunch menu at the Roy house. In late February, Brad Roy stood over an electric meat grinder in the kitchen of his family's Middlesex home. Sporting a reddish-brown beard and green "Horse Drawn Maple" baseball cap, he fed in salt pork, bacon and meat from a beaver that he'd trapped, skinned and gutted himself. As he worked, Brad said he dreamed of one day owning a smokehouse, and his wife, Alexa, proudly recounted the time she convinced her vegetarian friend to eat moose. Alexa filmed with her phone as the gooey pink mixture churned through the machine and plopped wetly into a gray plastic bin on the counter. She quickly uploaded the video to the couple's Instagram account, @vtmillennialhomesteaders, captioning it "beaver burger" with a drooling emoji. Brad formed the ground meat into patties and cooked them on a skillet in bacon grease, filling the kitchen with the smoky, rich scent of sizzling meat. The couple served the burgers with ramps — a type of wild onion that Alexa pickled in maple vinegar — diet Pepsi and hamburger buns from Shaw's. "We didn't have time to make sourdough," Brad sarcastically told a visiting reporter before digging in. "Sorry." Though the Roys may reluctantly head to the grocery store from time to time, their diet mostly consists of food sourced much closer to home. A typical dinner might include steaks from a deer shot within walking distance of the house, asparagus from the garden and freshly dug potatoes. The native Vermonters — Alexa, 32, is from Manchester, and Brad, 30, is from Waterbury Center — spend much of their time tending to the vegetable garden on their two-acre homestead, raising chickens for meat and eggs in a backyard coop, tapping maple trees in nearby woods, and hunting for deer and moose. Over the past year, the couple have accumulated hundreds of pounds of meat, which they've butchered themselves and stored in a large freezer in their garage. Alexa enjoys experimenting with fermentation, filling mason jars with creations such as pickled eggs and "tomato wine," which supposedly tastes like Chardonnay. The Roys' house, a modest raised ranch with an American flag out front, might fit in any suburban cul-de-sac. But the couple's lifestyle seems like that of a bygone era, before the advent of strip malls and same-day shipping. The Roys are part of a new…
Beaver was on the lunch menu at the Roy house. In late February, Brad Roy stood over an electric meat grinder in the kitchen of his family's Middlesex home. Sporting a reddish-brown beard and green "Horse Drawn Maple" baseball cap, he fed in salt pork, bacon and meat from a beaver that he'd trapped, skinned and gutted himself. As he worked, Brad said he dreamed of one day owning a smokehouse, and his wife, Alexa, proudly recounted the time she convinced her vegetarian friend to eat moose. Alexa filmed with her phone as the gooey pink mixture churned through the machine and plopped wetly into a gray plastic bin on the counter. She quickly uploaded the video to the couple's Instagram account, @vtmillennialhomesteaders, captioning it "beaver burger" with a drooling emoji. Brad formed the ground meat into patties and cooked them on a skillet in bacon grease, filling the kitchen with the smoky, rich scent of sizzling meat. The couple served the burgers with ramps — a type of wild onion that Alexa pickled in maple vinegar — diet Pepsi and hamburger buns from Shaw's. "We didn't have time to make sourdough," Brad sarcastically told a visiting reporter before digging in. "Sorry." Though the Roys may reluctantly head to the grocery store from time to time, their diet mostly consists of food sourced much closer to home. A typical dinner might include steaks from a deer shot within walking distance of the house, asparagus from the garden and freshly dug potatoes. The native Vermonters — Alexa, 32, is from Manchester, and Brad, 30, is from Waterbury Center — spend much of their time tending to the vegetable garden on their two-acre homestead, raising chickens for meat and eggs in a backyard coop, tapping maple trees in nearby woods, and hunting for deer and moose. Over the past year, the couple have accumulated hundreds of pounds of meat, which they've butchered themselves and stored in a large freezer in their garage. Alexa enjoys experimenting with fermentation, filling mason jars with creations such as pickled eggs and "tomato wine," which supposedly tastes like Chardonnay. The Roys' house, a modest raised ranch with an American flag out front, might fit in any suburban cul-de-sac. But the couple's lifestyle seems like that of a bygone era, before the advent of strip malls and same-day shipping. The Roys are part of a new…
