BRATTLEBORO — For the past 59 years, Wayside Fences, located on Marlboro Road in West Brattleboro, has enabled three generations of the Martin family of hardworking people to make a living and provide more and more services to their community.
George, the patriarch, was born in Brattleboro in 1934 and initially worked for American Stratford Printers in the building that now houses the Fitness Center, just past where Putney Road crosses over I-91. After he and his wife Jeane married, she drove him to work. (He never did drive because his eyesight was not just so.) She dropped him off at work at 5:30 a.m. and picked him up at 3:30 that afternoon.
Because of his eyesight problems, he also knew it was not realistic to continue working much longer for a fine printing company. In 1965, he decided that he’d gradually start a fencing company to fall back on when the time was right. To begin working toward that goal, when he got home each day from the print shop, he’d go to his workshop out behind their house to make locust rails with an ax until midnight. Once he left the printing company, he put out the word that he was making handmade fencing from Black Locust and White Cedar. Orders started coming in and have been ever since. He registered Wayside Fences in 1965 as a business and hired one man. He was launched.
Three years earlier, in 1962, George and Jeane had a son, Ed. He graduated from Brattleboro Union High School in 1980, studying mechanics and welding in the Ag shop as well as mechanics and machine repair. He later got a certificate from Greenfield Community College in welding: “That class was right up my alley! When I was around 17, I also worked for my Dad part-time after classes at the high school as well as summers. Work was all about wood.
“Dad hand-split the locust logs, then draw-shaved them down and cut the proper ends and rail-holes with a chain saw. Black Locust is one of the hardest woods; working it is not easy. And those were the days of no breaks because of constant chainsaw work during the day. Dad taught me young.
“Here’s a snapshot from one of our working days. ‘One day, several years ago, we were working on Peaked Mountain in Townshend on a mile-long horse-fence. One day we’d only got two posts set over the whole day – it turned out the ground in that area was all rock under only 2” of soil. Then we saw lightning strike the owner’s house a quarter-mile from where we were working and I remember Gramps saying, ‘Bout time to get in the truck.'”
In 1992, Ed had been working full time with his Dad since graduation from BUHS in 1980. A few years later he married Carrie Cote from Putney, and they had a son, Evan, in 1992. Evan graduated from BUHS in 2010 and he remembers “some days during my time at BUHS, I’d know my Dad was working along my bus route home. I’d give the bus driver my permission slip and ask him to let me off at the spot where I could help him out on a job.
“After high school, I attended Southern Maine Community College for Fire Science and graduated in 2013. I went into law enforcement: five years in Vernon; four years in Bellows Falls; one year in Wilmington. (During those years he married Casey Bemis from Brattleboro and their son Oakley was born in 2019.) On my days off I would help my grandmother Jeane with fence company bookkeeping. Our business was growing rapidly; everything was changing.
“My grandfather had owned the business all along but in 2017 we reorganized. We formed an LLC that included George, Jeane, Ed and me (Evan). In 2025, ownership is now limited to me and my Dad.”
Evan’s job is now primarily limited to office work. Ed, age 62, told this writer, “Evan’s the youngest of us - 32. He’s the one who knows computers best. He does all the bookkeeping, inventory, ordering, estimating jobs, setting up the delivery of supplies, billing and, on occasion, works in the field on specialty projects. I oversee the jobs and work right alongside our guys. Full-time employees are Todd Capen of Vernon who has been with us 15 years; Tory Sheehan of Bellows Falls is in his second year; and Tanner is just starting. Part-time employees: Matt Bolster from Dummerston, Tom Goddard and Tanner Harris, both from Putney."
It was also coming clearer and clearer over time they had to start investing in serious equipment if they were going to grow their business, especially given, when Ed was 30, in 1992, he suffered a hernia from all that lifting. They have been ramping up the business to include all kinds of fencing as well as snowplowing and sanding so they can keep busy in the winter when fencing is not feasible.
Evan said, “Over time we bought three new pickup trucks and outfitted them. Right there is roughly a $100,000 investment per truck. We outfitted the two newest trucks with Boss Sand Spreaders. Last year we purchased a bucket loader to help clear snow from a few of our larger parking lots. This year we bought Bobcat L95 loader. In the winter we are now running seven crews to plow 230 commercial/residential properties. We bought an Ice-Way sand-spreader. During fencing season we put a front-loader on the Bobcat I95 front loader so we don’t have to lift all that fencing and such.
“We’ve expanded the kinds of fencing we offer. We just installed anti-climb fence on the perimeter of the top of the four-story parking garage in downtown Brattleboro and enclosed all the open windows on the lower levels of that garage with chain-link panels. We’re installing a ton of temporary safety fencing for construction sites — like in Worcester and Shelburne, Mass., Littleton, New Hampshire, Londonderry, Vermont as well as locally for Memorial Park, GPI... We go up to St. Johnsbury, Woodstock, all over, setting up fence and gate systems around construction sites. Automated gates are entering the scene. We’re also installing fine garden gates and arbors for homeowners. And one of the sad things we’re doing more and more of: fencing to keep the homeless and other people out.”
“But I have to say,” Ed said, “I have a lot more fun setting Black Locust fence posts for a handsome long-lasting post-and-rail fence around a horse pasture – a fence that will still be there a century or more on. But what we all love most is that we’re working together as a family, developing this business for us and our employees so we can live and work here and look after our community.”
Photo: Kristopher Radder, Brattleboro Reformer