About John Klar
Lawyer
John Klar earned a Juris Doctorate (with honors) from the University of Connecticut School of Law, where he focused on international, environmental, and tax law. He worked for several years as a tax attorney with Coopers & Lybrand in individual tax planning and compliance, stock valuations, and international corporate taxation. John then operated his own litigation practice in Storrs, Connecticut from 1992-1998, where he practiced family, personal injury, and criminal law. John served under contract with the State of Connecticut as a Special Public Defender and Juvenile Court counsel.
In 1999, John began to suffer intense muscle pain, eventually diagnosed as fibromyalgia syndrome caused by untreated Lyme Disease. He was forced to retire from law practice, and moved to Vermont and bought a farm. His health required regular physical activity, which farming certainly provided. Several years later he was diagnosed with Chronic Lyme Disease, and undertook more than a decade of intensive antibiotic treatment.
John has not practiced law since his illness, but maintains his bar membership in Connecticut, and writes about many legal issues.
Farmer
For 25 years, John and his wife Jacqueline have raised many different farm animals, including sheep for wool and meat, goats and cows for milking, chickens, and pigs. They’ve baled a lot of hay together, and constructed and operated an organic artisanal raw-milk cheese facility in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. They also bred and trained Percheron draft horses.
(John with a lamb and some of his Hereford cows, in Brookfield.)
The Klars owned a 160-acre former dairy farm in Barton, Vermont for six years before downsizing to a rented farm in Irasburg for the next 12 years. They now rent a small former dairy farm in Brookfield, where John’s family has farmed for more than two centuries. Currently the family maintains a flock of 30 Dorset sheep and 14 Hereford and Beefalo cows.
Outdoorsman
John fished, hiked and backpacked from a young age. In his teens he began venturing on extended hikes on the Appalachian Trail, and discovered the White Mountains of New Hampshire. He has hiked there extensively, including numerous summits of Mount Washington in winter. His passion for wilderness has never faded.
In 1982, John worked for the summer as a line cook at the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park, and then as a pizza cook in West Yellowstone, Montana for a few months before hitchhiking across the country to Connecticut.
(The Green Mountains, from East Hill, Brookfield, Vermont.)
John has also hiked in the Colorado Rockies, the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and the Peak District and Lake District in England.
In 2007, John and Jackie began building an off-grid house on part of the farm originally purchased in Brookfield, Vermont by John’s great-great-great-great-grandfather Solomon Stoddard. They logged and sawed the trees for the house on the property, built the foundation with granite block and fieldstone, and constructed a masonry heater. The house also uses a ram pump for water from a natural spring, and includes a large root cellar.
Writer
John began writing commentaries in law school, for the Connecticut Law Tribune. He penned occasional letters to the editor in local Vermont newspapers, leading to a weekly column for several years in the Newport Daily Express. John writes regularly for Mother Earth News, American Thinker, and Vermont’s True North Reports, where he publishes eight pieces monthly. A recurrent theme of John’s writing, inspired by Wendell Berry, Joel Salatin, Wes Jackson, Aldo Leopold, and others, is to critically examine modern food dependency, farming methods, and the economic and cultural importance of local farms. He also addresses constitutional issues, and topics varying from inflation to international relations.
The materials for this newsletter are all original content, exclusively available here!
Additionally, John is publishing a book in June with Chelsea Green Publishing, titled Small Farm Republic: Why Conservatives Must Embrace Local Agriculture, Reject Climate Alarmism, and Lead an Environmental Revival.
(Border Collie Bea is “helping” keep the bred ewes in the fence. These girls are due to freshen in May, 2023.)
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John’s author website is Small Farm Republic.
(The Klars have not used a gas-powered lawnmower in almost two decades. Sheep do the job nicely!)
“Instead of trying to understand agriculture in its own terms, acknowledge that agriculture ultimately comes out of nature. Right now agriculture is the No. 1 threat to biodiversity on the planet.” Wes Jackson
