Closing Shop After 40 Years: Why Russ’s Vermont Tea Frogs Have to Go to Make Way for Luxury Vacation Rentals

Russell “Russ” Holcomb never planned to become a garden sculptor. For fifty years he shaped copper roofs and tin gutters for old Vermont farmhouses — work built to survive a century of weather without complaint. Then he retired, got restless, and made a frog out of scrap metal for his wife Helen. She put it on the porch railing. Their neighbor saw it the next morning and offered forty dollars for it on the spot. That was seven years ago. Russ has been making frogs ever since — hand-cut, hand-welded, hand-painted, each one different. But the barn workshop where he builds them has been sold out from under him. A Massachusetts developer is turning the property into luxury vacation rentals. What’s left on Russ’s shelves is the final batch he’ll ever make.

Half-finished frogs in the foreground, enamel jars lined up on the shelf — every piece passes through Russ’s hands at least three times.

How a Swimming Hole in 1973 Led to a Frog on Every Porch

Russ started his apprenticeship in 1968 at a tin shop outside St. Johnsbury. By 1985 he’d taken over the shop in Craftsbury from his old master. Copper roofs, hand-formed gutters, weathervanes, chimney flashing — fifty years of shaping metal to withstand everything the Northeast Kingdom could throw at it.

He retired in 2017. Lasted about three weeks before the silence drove him back to the barn.

“Helen told me I was moping around the house like a dog that lost its bone. She said, ‘Go build me something pretty instead of standing in my kitchen looking useless.’ So I went out to the shop and stood there staring at a pile of scrap metal and thought: what would make her smile?”

The answer had been waiting fifty-three years.

That first frog was rough. Russ cut her from a piece of scrap roofing tin, hammered the body over a wooden form, and painted her with leftover enamel from a gutter job. She was lopsided. The legs were too short. But Helen put her on the porch railing anyway, and the next morning their neighbor Margaret walked by, stopped dead, and said: “Russ, I want one. Name your price.”

He made Margaret one that weekend. Then Margaret’s sister in Burlington wanted two. Then a woman from the farmers’ market in Montpelier ordered four for Christmas gifts. Word spread the way it does in small Vermont towns — slowly, honestly, one conversation at a time.

Over seven years, Russ refined the design into what he now calls the Vermont Tea Frog: a recycled-metal frog sitting with her legs crossed, cradling a tiny teacup in one hand, wearing a painted flower necklace and hand-curled eyelashes that his wife Helen still makes herself, one at a time, bent around a finish nail at the kitchen table. There’s a male version too — the Coffee Frog, in yellow and red, holding a mug — plus a baby with a bottle and a baby with a teddy bear. Together they make a family. Customers keep buying them that way.

What Fifty Years of Metalwork Taught Russ That the Factories Never Learned

There are dozens of metal garden frogs for sale on the internet. Most of them cost somewhere between fifteen and thirty dollars. Most of them are in a landfill within a year.

Russ has seen them up close. Customers bring them to the farmers’ market and hold them next to his frogs the way you’d hold a counterfeit bill next to a real one. The difference is obvious once you know where to look — but most people don’t know where to look until it’s too late.

“Pick up a cheap one and flip it over,” Russ says. “Look at the inside. It’s bare metal. Raw steel. No primer. No sealer. Nothing between the rain and the rust except a thin coat of spray paint on the outside. The first morning dew that settles into a seam starts the clock. Within six weeks you’ve got corrosion working from the inside out — and by the time you see the bubbles on the surface, it’s already too far gone.”

He picks up one of his own frogs and turns her over. The inside is smooth, sealed, coated in a dull grey-green zinc layer. “See that? Two coats of zinc-chromate primer on every surface — inside and out — before I even think about color. That’s fifty years of roofing talking. You don’t put a copper roof on a barn without sealing the underside. Why would you do less for a frog that’s going to sit in the weather year-round?”

Russ with a finished Tea Frog and Coffee Frog on his bench. “Fifty years I made roofs that had to last a century. You think I’m going to let a frog leave this bench that can’t handle a rainstorm?”

That’s the difference nobody sees and everybody feels. The cheap frog looks identical on the shelf. Three months later, one is rusting and the other isn’t. The reason is underneath — in the primer you never see, in the weld you can’t reach, in the extra day of drying time that a factory will never spend because it slows down the line.

What Goes Into Each Frog (And Why It Takes Three Days)

Russ’s frog family — the Tea Frog is by far the bestseller, but the Coffee Frog, baby with bottle, and baby with teddy bear all share the same triple-sealed construction.

Total time per frog: about eight hours of hands-on work over three days, plus drying time. Two people. One bench. Fifty years of accumulated skill in every curve and every weld.

The Developer, the Eviction, and Why Spring 2026 Is the End

Spring 2026 is the deadline — Russ has already started packing up his 40-year-old workshop.

The barn where Russ works sits on a property he’s rented for over forty years. Last spring, the old farmer who owned the land passed away. His children — scattered to Boston, Hartford, and California — had no interest in keeping a Vermont farm running at a loss. They sold the entire property to a development company out of Massachusetts. The plan: six “premium vacation rentals with authentic Vermont charm,” starting at $400 a night.

The eviction notice was polite. It was also final.

Russ spent months looking for a new workshop space. Everything within an hour’s drive is either already converted to vacation rentals or priced at $1,200 a month and up — more than the frogs bring in. The house he and Helen share is a thousand square feet. There’s no room for a welding setup, no ventilation for solder fumes, and the neighbors wouldn’t tolerate hammer noise through the walls.

“Without a shop, I’m done. Simple as that.”

His daughter Sarah, 45, is a graphic designer in Burlington. She has no plans to take over the metalwork. What Russ knows — fifty years of feeling how metal bends, where a weld wants to go, how much heat is too much — lives in his hands. When his hands stop, the knowledge stops with them.

Why Strangers Keep Sending Russ Photographs

Russ showing us photos that customers from all over the US have sent him over the years.

Taped to the barn’s support beam, there are eleven photographs. Russ didn’t ask for any of them. They arrived in the mail over the years from people he’s never met.

A Tea Frog on a stone wall in Bar Harbor, Maine — salt-spray coast, four years in. Colors still holding. A Coffee Frog on a windowsill in Albany — the woman wrote on the back: “My husband picked her up, looked at the welds, and said ‘whoever made this knows what he’s doing.’” A pair in Cookeville, Tennessee — the grandchildren named them Henrietta and Gerald. The four-year-old brings them pretend cookies.

“That’s the part I didn’t expect,” Russ says. “With roofing, nobody sends you a photo of your gutter. But the frogs — people treat them like they’re alive. They name them. They worry about them in winter. They buy a second one so the first one isn’t lonely. That’s not how people treat a garden statue. That’s how people treat a member of the family.”

She Doesn’t Need Another Candle. She Needs Something That Makes Her Smile at 6:45 in the Morning.

Mother’s Day is six weeks away. Here is what your mother does not want: another scented candle. A gift card. A bouquet that will be dead by Thursday. A spa day she’ll feel guilty about booking.

Here is what she does want, whether she knows it yet or not: something small and beautiful on her porch that she didn’t expect, that makes her smile when she walks outside with her coffee, that her grandchildren will run to every single visit, and that she will — within ten minutes of opening the box — give a name.

The Vermont Tea Frog is $45. She weighs about three and a half pounds and stands roughly the size of a large house cat. She has a tiny teacup in her hand, a painted flower at her neck, and a pair of hand-curled eyelashes that make her look like she’s about to tell you something funny.

She ships directly to your mother’s door in a double-boxed package with foam on every side and fragile labels everywhere. No crushed boxes. No rattling parts. No calling customer service to argue about a return label. If she arrives anything less than perfect, Russ and Sarah replace her at no cost, no questions, no hassle. You keep the original to gift to someone else or recycle.

There are four versions: the Tea Frog (pink and purple, her), the Coffee Frog (yellow and red, him), a baby with a bottle, and a baby with a teddy bear. If your mother is a grandmother — and statistically, she probably is — she will want the entire family on her porch within six months. Fair warning.

Mother’s Day shipping cutoff: order by May 3rd for guaranteed May 10th delivery. Gift wrapping and a personal card are included at no extra cost.

Where to Find the Original

The genuine Vermont Tea Frog by Russell Holcomb is available exclusively through CraftFolk — a small online marketplace for authentic American handcraft. Sarah runs Russ’s shop page there so he can spend every remaining hour at the bench instead of arguing with a website.

Daughter Sarah (45) helps her father with the online side — making sure his life’s work finds homes before the workshop closes.

A word of caution. There are visually similar garden frogs on Amazon for a third of the price. They are not the same thing. They are thin stamped sheet metal with no interior primer, spot-welded at two or three points, dipped in a ninety-second paint bath, and shipped in a single cardboard box with no cushioning. They will rust. The paint will flake. And the company that sold them to you will not answer your email when you try to return one. Russ’s frogs are built by a man who spent fifty years making things that survive Vermont winters. There is a difference, and you will feel it the moment you pick one up.

Risk-Free: 100% Satisfaction Guarantee

Every Vermont Tea Frog ships double-boxed with foam padding on all six sides, fragile-labeled, sealed tight. She cannot move inside the package. If she arrives anything less than perfect — a scratched eyelash, a paint nick, anything — write Sarah. She responds within one business day. A replacement ships immediately. You keep the original. No return labels. No restocking fees. No phone tree.

Set her on your porch, your garden wall, your kitchen windowsill. Live with her for a week. If you’re not completely satisfied, send her back. Full refund. No questions. Russ and Sarah are confident you won’t — because the people who bring home a Vermont Tea Frog don’t return her. They come back for her husband.

What Owners Are Saying

The Bench Is Still Warm. For Now.

Every frog that finds a home keeps the soldering iron lit a little longer. Russ comes into the barn at seven, fires up the iron, and works until the light fades. Helen does the eyelashes at her kitchen table in the afternoon. Sarah checks orders in the evening. It is a small operation, an honest one, and it is ending.

If your mother deserves better than another candle. If your grandmother’s garden wall is missing the one thing that would make her grandchildren run straight to it every visit. If you believe a 73-year-old tinsmith and his wife should be able to keep making beautiful things with their hands —

Bring one home. She’s $45. She ships free. And your mother is going to name her before the box is fully open.