The Strafford Area Lions Club holds an annual raffle. The proceeds go towards projects like maintaining the town pond, the Citizen of the Year award and the town's rope tow.
This year, Mike Curtis wanted to donate something. His first thought was maple syrup, but he's far from the only sugarmaker in town. He knew it wouldn't be too valuable of an offering.
His next idea: A free vasectomy.
Dr. Curtis is a urologist with a private practice in White River Junction. He's the kind of small-town doctor who vacuums his own waiting room, which is exactly what he was doing when I visited his clinic recently to discuss his unusual donation and its ripple effects.
"I figure if I donated a circumcision or prostate surgery, there wouldn't be many takers for that," he said.
LISTEN ON NPR: A vasectomy and a side of beef
Curtis explained that, besides maple syrup, vasectomies are his most marketable product. Sometimes he performs up to six a day, typically for a flat rate of $1,200.
The Lions Club gladly accepted his offer.
An unconventional winner
Brooke Wilkinson is a local music teacher and mother of two. She bought a Lions Club raffle ticket for $5, hoping to win a monthly supply of flowers from a local flower farm.
But alas, fate is fickle, as she learned when she saw the raffle results posted in the town’s general store, Coburns.
"I said out loud, 'I think I just won a vasectomy,' which caught the cashier by surprise," she recalled.
Wilkinson is a self-described perimenopausal divorcee. She does not need a vasectomy, free or otherwise. But she had a gut sense that her good fortune could go to good use.
Soon after the raffle, she was over at the town's nursery school to teach a music class. Her coworker, Kim Lakin, walked over and asked, "What are you doing with that?"
"That" being a free vasectomy.
An interested party
Lakin and her husband Asa Manning have three kids, and they were ready to be done. They also don't have health insurance.
Lakin works at the preschool and Manning is a dairy farmer and sugarmaker. Neither of them gets insurance through work. The marketplace premiums are too expensive for their budget, though their kids do get coverage through a state program, Dr. Dynasaur.
"It’s the same as a mortgage to get a family plan," Manning said. "Health care in Vermont is a really tricky thing," added Lakin.
They offered Wilkinson some money for the vasectomy, but she suggested a trade instead. Manning and Lakin raise beef, pork and meat birds — they always have a couple freezers full of meat at their place. Could she trade the free vasectomy for a box of meat? Manning and Lakin loved the idea.
The terms were set. Now, they, just needed to run their plan by the doctor.
In that classic Vermont way, Wilkinson had already crossed paths with Dr. Curtis before — she was his kids' preschool teacher two decades ago. She had also heard of his willingness to work with patients on a sliding scale. (He also has quite the sense of humor. The website for his practice-of-one, Twin River Urology, reads: "Size matters. Sometimes smaller is better.")
The request neither surprised nor fazed Dr. Curtis. He said women are always the ones hatching plans about vasectomies.
"If I'm marketing my services, my target audience is, by and large, women between the ages of 30 and 45," he said. "They are done. They are done with birth control. They are ready to have him step up to the plate, so to speak."
Bartering success
Manning's surgery gets scheduled for March. Wilkinson gets her box of farm-raised local beef. But as she put it into her fridge, her giggles over the situation turned into tears of gratitude.
"I just started crying because I was like, this is so meaningful," she said. "I can now feed myself and my children well for a while, with really nice meat that I know is healthy. I would never buy that for myself, like ever."
For Lakin, who grew up in nearby Tunbridge, everything about the situation was quintessential Strafford. The 1,100-person town is known for its beloved general store, its annual "battle of the villages" softball game between Strafford and South Strafford, and for being the hometown of singer-songwriter Noah Kahan. "It's just me and the curve of the valley," he wrote in his 2022 song, The View Between Villages.
Manning grew up in Strafford, and the couple moved back when they had their first child. "It's a really special place to live," Lakin said. "I'm sure it could happen anywhere else in Vermont, but it's not surprising to me that it happened here."
Wilkinson jumped in to agree. "When you’re deep in the woods, it can be pretty isolating. So it’s like, do your part to make it feel like a community and make it feel neighborly. And I think we do a good job at that."
They all have plans to grill burgers with Dr. Curtis at the farm this summer.
The surgery proceeds without a hitch, except for one slight scheduling oversight. It was right in the middle of the sugaring season, and the sap was flowing. So after just a couple hours of rest, Asa Manning went back out to the sugarhouse to boil.
Like Dr. Curtis said, everyone in Strafford makes maple syrup.
