PLYMOUNT NOTCH AND PRESIDENT CALVIN COOLIDGE

I have to admit that I didn't know President Calvin Coolidge was born and grew up in Vermont. We were having breakfast at Bailey's Mills Bed & Breakfast where we stayed while in Vermont. Our hostess, Barbara, had joined us and was suggesting some places we might want to visit while we were there. When she mentioned President Calvin Coolidge's birthplace, we both were surprised to know it was fairly close by. We asked my uncle Sam and aunt Eleanor when they came to pick us up a little while later, if it was on their list of things they planned to show us. I'm not sure if it was, but they said we would be going there.

We love to visit residences of presidents and were excited to be adding President Coolidge's to our list. We were even more amazed to discover it was just not his house but the entire town which is called Plymount Notch Historic District. You can read all about it (why spend time retelling it to you when someone else can do a better job than I could do) HERE. I hope you will check it out because it is really well done and very thorough. I'll just share my pictures of it especially since they don't include pictures of everything on the website.

His birthplace...He was born in a first floor bedroom on July 4, 1872...

The birthplace is on the backside of the Florence Cilley General Store built in 1850...

The homestead...They moved here (across the street) in 1876...

The Union Christian Church (built in 1840)

The family pew is the one with the flag.

The Wilder House - read about it on the website...(also Calvin's mother's childhood home)

The road runs through the village...watch out for cars...

The cheese factory where they still make cheese...

Inside the Wilder Horse Barn... read about this mail carrier's sleigh in the picture below. This was really fascinating to see...

The Concord Coach was used on the mail route between Woodstock and Reading, Vermont...later The Eagle Flyer transported passengers from the Woodstock railroad station to the Woodstock Inn.

The Wilder Barn (a "bank barn" - so exciting to be in one - I love Barnwood Builders...)

I didn't take a picture of the Visitors' Center but they do have one on the linked website. (but I got a picture of the sign outside...ha)

In the Visitors' Center the furniture was made from maple trees that had been tapped to get the sap to make maple syrup. All of thee black "dots" are actually holes where the tree had been tapped. It was really beautiful furniture. I just took a picture of a coffee table. The end tables and couches were also made from similar wood slabs...

President Coolidge is buried in the cemetery with other family members. You can see a picture on the linked website. 

In case you missed my post last Friday of Beautiful Vermont, you can get there quickly from HERE. 

OR if you want to read about Bailey's Mills Bed & Breakfast and her fantastic Blueberry Muffins, check HERE.

BEAUTIFUL VERMONT

I am starting with the end of our trip, but Vermont was just so beautiful and is the most on my mind right now. After spending the night in Montreal, we took a Greyhound bus down to White River Junction where my uncle Sam and my aunt Eleanor met us. 

Taking the bus seems to be just about the cheapest way to travel from Canada to Vermont (if you aren't driving your own car). The ride was very comfortable but I would strongly recommend that you not travel on a Sunday. I think everyone in Vermont had gone to Canada for the weekend and were returning back home on Sunday. We were traveling along making good speed until we got a mile or two (I really don't think it was much farther than that) from the border when we hit two lanes of traffic that was not generally moving at all (ever once in a while we would move an inch or two). We eventually came to an added lane on the left for buses. It felt so good to speed down that lane and drive by maybe 6 lanes now of backed up vehicles. Then we had to stop at the border because there was another motorcoach/bus stopped. I checked my watch and it had been one hour (yes, you read that right) one hour since we had come up on the backed up traffic. Well, we sat in our bus (at least the driver had left the engine running so it was cool in the bus) 45 minutes waiting for the bus load of Asians to be approved to enter the US. We couldn't believe it took so long and my husband said he thought maybe it was because they were Asians and maybe many didn't speak English and had trouble answering the questions we were asked. Well, imagine my surprise when everyone had finally gotten back on the bus and was ready to leave and I looked at my watch and it had taken us 1 hr and 15 minutes to clear. For whatever reason, they called 12 people on our bus back in a room to talk to them further and we had to wait on them. We never found out why they were held longer. Anyway, it took us 3 hours and 15 minutes to enter Vermont from Canada from the time we stopped for the traffic and then drove into Canada.

We were on interstate most of the time and it seemed to be lined with tall trees, but when we did come to a clearing, we usually saw a beautiful valley and a farm or two. I didn't manage to get any pictures because the clearing would come up on me too quickly to get my phone camera ready to take a picture.

Woodstock, VT

Sam and Eleanor do not live too far from Woodstock, VT so I took some picture there as we walked around the town. (Notice all of the beautiful flowers...we saw them everywhere we went while on our trip.)

Woodstock on the Green

And the first of many covered bridges we would see... Woodstock Middle Bridge, 1969 is the first authentic highway covered bridge built in VT or NH in the twentieth century utilizing the truss patented by Ithiel Town in 1820. It burned on May 11, 1974 and was rebuilt in 1976.

Woodstock Middle Bridge, 1969

 The view of the Ottaquechee River from the bridge...

The church they attend in Springfield, VT...(Founded in 1843)

This is the Jenne Farm, in Reading, VT which is supposed to be the most photographed farms in the world (especially in the fall)...

Some more of the countryside. (my phone camera didn't do them justice)

I was disappointed to learn that when the maple trees are tapped to make maple syrup that they don't use the buckets anymore. They "tap" the tree with a plastic tube and the sap is "transported" through the tube.

They have a lot of dirt roads in Vermont...

Another covered bridge...

There are a lot of "small" dairy farms and ones that make cheese that is shipped all over the world. Tastes really great also...

I took these pictures in their milking barn...They weren't being milked at the time, just eating...

One afternoon we visited with a first cousin of Eleanor's who has 60 dairy cows, a saw mill, and his own sugaring place where he makes his own maple syrup. 

His barn...(The younger cows utilize the second floor and he stores hay on the third and fourth floors. He also has hay in the building on the right. We only went in the first door on the first floor. The milking is done in the extension out the back.)

The first floor of his barn where they milk the cows twice a day...(The milk is used to make cheese.)

Some of the milking equipment...
























His sawmill....

He burns the "scraps" seen in the middle left of the picture when making the maple syrup...(We bought two pints of his maple syrup.)

His sugaring "house"...(where he makes the maple syrup - we didn't walk out to it.)

His house...

His wood furnace in the basement...(everyone burns a lot of wood in the wintertime.)

The Taftsville Covered Bridge...

and country store, established in 1840...

At the King Arthur Bakery, Cafe, Store, School in Norwich, VT...

This post is getting rather long so I will share one more place and then just write another post on Plymouth, VT, the birthplace of Calvin Coolidge.

The last place Sam and Eleanor took us before going to the bus station to catch a bus that would take us to the airport in Boston to fly back home to Kansas City was Quechee Gorge,Vermont's Little Grand Canyon. It is a beautiful site that unfortunately three or four men chose to end their lives (not at the same time) by jumping over the railing on the bridge since January. I couldn't help but be touched by the encouraging notes that have been left on the bridge. (I didn't photograph all of them.)

The view from one side...(looking down 165 feet to the Ottoquechee River)

 The view from the other side...

Until the next time....(Plymount Notch and President Calvin Coolidge)

Check out the beautiful B & B (Bailey's Mills Bed & Breakfast, Reading, VT) that we stayed in and the recipe for her fabulous Blueberry Muffins HERE

COCONUT CREAM PIE

After being away from home for 15 days and away from my laptop, I almost forgot how to turn it on. My husband and I spent three days in Boston before boarding Holland America's cruise ship The Veendam for a cruise around Canada and down the Saint Lawrence River to Montreal. Then we rode a Greyhound bus down to White River Junction, VT to spend a few days visiting my uncle and his wife before catching another bus to Logan Airport in Boston to fly back home. So over the last 2 weeks + a day, we have ridden in an airplane, rode on a ferry, subway, trolley, city bus, motor coach, and car. I took lots of pictures to share with you but it is going to take me a few days to share them with you. Hope you will come back often over the next week or so and check them out.

I managed to write up a few posts before we left and scheduled them to publish while we were gone, but there were more days I didn't share something than I did. Hope you missed them and wondered what was up with me. 

This morning I am just going to get out a quick one to you but it is definitely a winner. My Uncle Sam is having a birthday in a few days (actually the same day that our darling granddaughter Madison will be having one) but he and Eleanor are going on a rode trip to visit with his family and with their two children/families and won't be in Vermont to celebrate with Eleanor's family. Not wanting to miss out, Eleanor's sister, Pauline, made him a Coconut Cream Pie for him to enjoy before they left. My husband and I were certainly glad she did as it meant we got to enjoy one of our favorite pies. I only have one picture to share with you as I wasn't present when she "made" the pie, but it's a good one.(In all honesty, I took a picture of the whole pie before I cut it, but the picture didn't look great. You see when Pauline brought it to him we were not at their house. He had a cooler in his car but the pie wouldn't sit flat in the cooler because it wasn't big enough. My uncle Sam tilted the pie in the cooler so it would fit and that meant the filling sorta slid to one side. So it wasn't a great picture. That also meant that some people got a thicker piece and some got one with less filling. My picture is of a slice that was more generous with the filling.)

Pauline used the recipe for Cream Pie Filling and utilized one of the options to make it a Coconut Cream Pie found in Fannie Merritt Farmer's Boston Cooking School Cookbook. There were options for a Butterscotch Cream Pie and a Chocolate Cream Pie and one or two more but right now I can't remember what they were. I didn't copy the additions needed to make them as we were rushed for time. (I forgot to ask her what crust recipe she used and I really meant to because it was really good and flaky.) Realizing I had some questions about the recipe, I called and talked to my uncle Sam and Eleanor this morning and Eleanor told me her sister uses the whole egg and not just the yoke. She also uses a whipped cream topping like Fannie Farmer and not a meringue topping as some people do to use up the egg whites. Maybe that is why Pauline uses the whole egg instead of just the yokes as the recipes calls for. (I just love the way people change recipes to make them their own. I do the same thing.)

COCONUT CREAM PIE

3/4    cup sugar
1/2    cup flour
1/4    teaspoon salt
3       cups milk
3       egg yolks (Pauline uses the whole egg)
2       tablespoons butter
1       teaspoon vanilla
Whipped topping
1/2    cup coconut + additional toasted to sprinkle on top
1       9 - inch baked pie crust

Prepare pie crust, bake, and let it cool completely.

Fannie Farmer's directions: *See Pauline's changes below

Mix in a double broiler, sugar, flour, and salt.

Stir in 3 cups milk. Cook 15 minutes over hot water, stirring constantly til thick.

Add 3 egg yolks, slightly beaten and cook for 3 more minutes. 

Add butter. Cool.

Add vanilla.

Add 1/2 cup coconut to mixture and pour into pie shell. 

Chill until firm about 3 hours.

Top with prepared whipped cream and sprinkle with additional coconut that has been toasted. 

Store pie in refrigerator.

* Pauline combines the sugar, flour, salt, milk, and eggs together and then cooks them until thick and then adds butter and finally the vanilla after letting the mixture cool. (I have seen recipes like this where the eggs are mixed in initially instead of waiting until the mixture thickens. I like that way because I am always afraid I am going to end up with fried eggs when I add them to the hot mixture. Sometimes recipes will tell you to add a little of the hot mixture to the beaten eggs to temper them a little first, but it still scares me.)