Do you dream of a move to Vermont, or dream of owning a second home here?  Are you interested, however,  in a more authentic and untouched part of the state?  Is there really such a place left in Vermont?  This post is dedicated to you then, the ones who’d prefer to avoid the stereotypes, the tourists, and the mass marketing.

In part, this is a sales pitch, both for our home for sale in Guildhall, but more broadly, for my beloved corner of Vermont, which very few people know exists.  But this is also my reflection  on the nature of Vermont, what we think we know about it, and how to experience the real Vermont, rather than the myths and the marketing.

For many, Vermont is a romantic idea, a destination involving ski resorts, maple syrup, Vermont teddy bears, well-groomed bike paths, leaf-peeping and venues for Vermont crafts, in places like Stowe, Killington, Brattleboro, Putney, or Burlington.  But is this the real Vermont?  Is there any place left in my beloved state that’s relatively untouched and not mass-marketed?  Places where some authenticity remains?

I think such a place does exist and we live it.  We are full-time residents of  Essex County, an area tucked into the northeastern corner of the state between Quebec and New Hampshire.  Few (including many Vermonters!)  have ever heard of our county, which is home to about 6,000 people.  Still fewer have heard of Guildhall, the county’s beautiful shire town.  After all, Guildhall’s population is only 263.  Yes, you heard me correctly.  Not 2,630.  Just 263.     Although Essex County has a few bigger towns (the biggest is Lunenburg, population about 1,300), the majority of our towns are similarly tiny.

Our house, known as the Benton Cottage, is an eight room Colonial Revival built in 1915 by Everett C. Benton.  Generations of the Benton family had lived in Guildhall, but in the late 19th century, Everett moved to the Boston area.  He and his family retained their ties to the area, designing and building a summer cottage, and acting generally as a town benefactor, including the finance, design and building of the town library,  town offices, and several public monuments.   When the Benton family visited Guildhall during the summers of the early 20th century, they weren’t tourists.  They had real connections here, with real family and friends.

The Benton Cottage sits on the banks of the majestic Connecticut River, with a spectacular view  of the northern White Mountains.   Click here to see the online Benton Cottage photo album

We’ve had our house on the market numerous times, periodically over the last six years.  Exactly two people have even come to look at it. (They made no offers).  If no one comes to look, there is no way they will fall hopelessly in love with this property like we did back in 2004 when we moved here from Boston.  We were so smitten (and looking for a change) that we pulled up roots from the city we loved and moved to this hyper-rural area.  We simply could not resist.

But our town is remote.  As you might imagine with 263 people, there is no supermarket, no restaurant, no coffee shop, no bank, no pharmacy.  We don’t have a single gas station. (For these amenities, we drive about 15 minutes, to Lancaster, NH).

What was so irresistible about this little town and county where not much happens?  Where to start?  The house with its graceful, stately fence facing the most charming New England green I think I’ve ever seen, with a public library, courthouse, sheriff’s office, church, and town office where you can pick wild strawberries on the common in June and July.    The three fireplaces, in the living room, dining room, and study.  The glorious wrap-around porch where we have sat many an hour watching the Connecticut River and the flood plain full of birds and wildlife.  The spacious lawn where I’ve since installed raised beds and grow herbs, flowers and vegetables.    Where every house, including ours, is listed on the historic registry maintained by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The landscape surrounding us is wild and virtually untouched by tourism.  Bicyclists come through town occasionally in the summer and some adventurous auto leaf-peepers in the fall.  But they don’t congregate; there is no place to stop, no stores hawking goods, no hotels and only a handful of bed and breakfasts throughout the county. (Only three that I can think of).    The drive north (and south) on Route 102 is one of the most beautiful river byways in the state, and few are aware of it, even tourist officials.   The extraordinary Silvio O. Conte Wildlife Refuge, on Route 105 on the way to Island Pond is a protected working landscape with endless opportunities for hiking, fishing, and biking.  Maidstone Lake, about seven miles north of the Benton Cottage, is one of Vermont’s most beautiful state parks.

UPDATE:  My friend Linnzi Furman, who homesteads down the road here in Guildhall, has pointed out, rightfully so, the other advantages of our region, including the town being equidistant to St Johnsbury, Colebrook and Littleton, important cultural centers.  And then there’s our relative close proximity to ski areas like Bretton Woods and Burke Mountain.  Plus, Lancaster, New Hampshire, our go-to town is flourishing these days, with a new bakery, natural foods store, and brewery.

When a house goes unsold for long periods of time, it’s tempting to think surely there must be something wrong with the property.  Not in this case.  No, the Benton Cottage is in great shape,  lovingly preserved and maintained over the last hundred years.  No, sadly, it’s the location.  I suspect that this historic house, with all its features and its riverfront location with  stunning view of the White Mountains, would be worth a cool million or more if it were located even an hour south of here.

Here in Guildhall, we even have excellent broadband, which means that earning a living via telecommute is perfectly viable.  (And it takes less time than you might think to get here from Boston, usually 3.5 hours on the interstate)   But location is location.  Ironically, what we love about our  region, its sleepiness, its wild beauty, its lack of tourist madness, are the very things that keep our region a secret beauty, and prevent and inhibit population growth and much-needed economic development.

So those with the Vermont dream, I invite you to expand your notion of what Vermont means.  Come to Essex County. Come to Guildhall.  Have a glass of wine on our porch.  Experience the real Vermont.

For lunch today, we had a salad from the garden, with arugala, sorrel, lettuce, spinach, radishes, and chives.  (We threw in some olives too, but no, I don’t have an olive tree here in northern Vermont.)  It was so satisfying, even magical, to sit on the porch  and look out at the garden as we munched on the produce I had just harvested.

I spent hours in the garden, and it’s almost there.   I’m not sure exactly how  to describe my garden, but I think that over the years it has evolved into a sort of hybrid of  cottage and kitchen garden, with a little chaos and a little control– flowers, herbs, and vegetables mixed in together.

I finally transplanted all my tomato and pepper plants into the raised bed greenhouse, interspersing them between the cool-weather crops that I planted a month ago–lettuce, arugala, mesclun, spinach, radishes.  I learned recently from my gardening guru friends Tim and Peggy Cahill that eggplant doesn’t really need hothouse conditions like the tomatoes and peppers do here in Zone 3,  so I put them into a regular bed and that freed up quite a bit of space.

I planted seeds for two rows of bush beans and one vertical row of cucumbers, and I transplanted the brussel sprout seedlings that I got from Tim and Peggy into one of the beds, too.  Furthermore, Tim gave me a beautiful zucchini plant, and I decided to transplant it right into the ground, with a trellis so it can be trained vertically.

The vegetables I will have this year are:  cauliflower, cabbage, kale, carrots (if I’m lucky), bush beans, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, three different kinds of lettuce, arugala, spinach, radishes, broccoli, brussel sprouts, peas, swiss chard, onions, leeks, turnips, beets, cucumbers, rhubarb, and zucchini.

I now have six flower/herb beds on the property, and I created a seventh today.  Half of them are now cleaned up, weeded, and mulched.  I populated the seventh bed without buying any plants–just took stock of various perennials/wildflowers I have already have plenty of, and divided them for transplanting.

Finally, I got a good start on my container herb garden.  I put tarragon and basil seedlings into windowboxes and pots on the patio–I love my kitchen garden!  I still have yet to plant the borage, anise, coriander, basil, cilantro, fennel, and dill.  But my perennial herbs look pretty good:  lemon and english thyme, oregano, sage, lemon balm, lovage, savory, chives.

And the most satisfying of all?  The patch of lavender that I planted last year not only survived, but thrived.  Yes, you can grow and overwinter lavender in Zone 3!

 

April 22.  The day that my universe expanded to the outdoors.  Although a chilly wind blew periodically today, the temperature soared  to 58 degrees and the sun shone consistently,  radiating warmth.  I felt body and soul relax, as I threw open windows and doors, started turning over the soil in my raised beds, raked and cleaned up yard debris, lifted garden fabric off my lavender plants, and paid attention to long-frozen compost.   I moved a few trays of seedlings out into the sun for a few hours, to start hardening them off for transplant.

I took a long walk around our property here in Guildhall,  looking for spring plants, tree buds, insects, birds and other wildlife.  And then I went for a glorious 1.25 mile run and walk, my first of the season.

My first act in honor of Earth Day was to move my beloved rosemary plant, right, out onto the porch, facing the Connecticut River.  It gives the porch a certain Mediterranean atmosphere.

Below is a freshly-dug raised bed, watered and warmed by the sun.  In a few days, I’ll plant the first round of lettuce, arugala, radishes, spinach, and other greens here.  Around Memorial Day, I’ll replace those cool-weather crops with tomatoes, eggplant, pepper, and basil, and close the greenhouse walls if the temps fall below 70 degrees.

 

 

Here’s my indoor seedling setup, under lights.

 

 

 

I always get a bit excited about composting when spring comes.  Below is my compost area, which has gotten more sophisticated over the years.  The front two bins contain compost for the food and herb gardens.   The two bins in the rear are for dog waste composting.  I use it on the flower gardens and at the base of shrubs and ornamental grasses.  (We never send dog waste to the landfill anymore!)    The metal barrels contain sawdust, which I have learned is the best source of carbon for good compost.  (I get my sawdust from Northeast Kingdom Waste Management, in Lyndonville).  Although you can’t really see it in this photo, my favorite agricultural tool hangs from a tree branch in the upper left. It’s  for aerating the compost–and between it and the sawdust, I’ve had excellent compost over the last couple of years.

We have a fair amount of interesting artwork in our yard now.  Here are the fiddlehead sculptures, which I adore.  Seeing them poke out of the snow has helped me get through this long winter.  I can’t wait for the real, edible fiddleheads to be harvested.

 

For the first time since November, I walked down to the flood plain and stood on the banks of the Connecticut River.  It was downright intoxicating.  Happy Earth Day from the Northeast Kingdom!

 

Bernie Sanders.  I campaigned my butt off for him from December 2015 until the convention in July.  Together, Edward and I knocked on over 800 doors and made over 6,300 phone calls, to 18 states.  (Still exhausted from it!)

In retrospect, I feel that campaigning for Bernie is the best and most important thing I have ever accomplished.

In March, Edward and I and our friend Teri Anderson spent a week in Dublin, Ireland–to celebrate the commemorate the 1916 Easter Uprising.

 

 

Later that spring, back in Guildhall, Vermont, Teri helped me set up a new greenhouse and raised bed system.

 

We got some new outdoor sculpture for our camp in Lunenburg and our house in Guildhall.

In September, we spent several days at a lovely ocean-side getaway in Tenant’s Harbor, Maine, where my mom and her partner David were renting.

Edwards’ 4th grandchild was born in October.  Olivia Ailish Clark, in Brooklyn, New York.  The daughter of James Connolly Clark and Elizabeth Demetriou.

Edward ran a spirited campaign for State Representative here in our district of Essex-Caledonia.  He ran as a Berniecrat Dem, but sadly, lost to the incumbent Republican.  This district has been sending Republicans to the Vermont State House for at least 35 years.  We believe that this long-term GOP history, combined with a massive Trump turnout in the district, accounts for Edward’s loss.  He was enormously courageous for trying.

We spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Boston, staying right downtown at the Park Plaza.  The downtown location meant we could walk to all the familiar locations of my beloved Boston.  We meandered around the Public Garden and the Boston Common and the State House.  We heard Handel’s Messiah at Symphony Hall.  We took a fantastic art and architecture tour of the Boston Public Library. And we had brunch at the Parker House (where both Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X once worked!) And for Thanksgiving itself, we spent the day at Edward’s daughter Rosa, and her husband Matthew’s home.  The children present for the day gave a great Christmas concert.  There is a lot of musical talent in that household!

Fidel Castro died.

The bombshell came on November 8, 2016.

I don’t know what to say about the state of our country now, except that my political energies are, along with Senator Bernie Sanders,  devoted to taking over and transforming the Democratic Party, so that we can take back the Senate and House  in 2018 and the White House, in 2020.  Happy New Year!

 

Last Sunday morning, at 3:30am, I dragged myself out of bed, hastily threw on whatever random items of clothing I could find, half-consciously gulped down a cup of tea and drove 10 minutes to the Polish Princess Bakery in Lancaster, New Hampshire.  3:30am?  The only reason I’m ever awake at 3:30am is insomnia.   What could possibly motivate me?

Well, I’ve been an amateur baker for many years.  And for some time,  I’ve wanted to learn first-hand about the inner workings of a commercial bakery.  I’m especially interested in the early morning schedule for baking breads and pastries and how to coordinate mixing, rising, shaping, decorating, proofing and baking.  The best way to learn?  Spend a morning at the Polish Princess.   In early 2014, Magdalena Randall opened this remarkable bakery and cafe on Main Street in Lancaster.  For several years prior to opening, she’d already built a reputation and following as an accomplished baker, first selling out of her home, and then at the weekly farmers’ market.

I’ve been a regular customer since the bakery opened, but now was the time, I decided, to learn the workings of the “back of the house.”  Magda graciously let me come to observe, ask questions, and even help out a little with the shaping of the loaves.  Throughout the morning, Magda answered my questions about baking, but also shared amusing, fascinating, and sometimes heartrending stories about her struggles as a small business owner and entrepreneur.

Magda and one employee, Lorien,  arrived-as they do all mornings–at 4:00am sharp.  The first two tasks were to turn on the propane steam oven (since it takes at least 90 minutes to warm up), and then to take the temperature of the poolish sitting in the industrial-size mixing stand.  The poolish is a pre-ferment leavening agent, a mix of water, flour and yeast which sits for at least 12 hours, overnight.  Temperature matters a lot for serious bakers.  In fact, I lost count of how many times I saw Magda look at the bakery thermometer or take the temperature of the poolish or the water.   The overall temperature in the bakery governs all of the other steps involved in bread baking, such as the level of hydration in the overall dough and the rising and baking times.

Next step was to mix the poolish (pre-ferment) with the remaining flour and water (but not salt or yeast, yet) for the “autolyse,” a period of about 20-30 minutes in which the dough simply sits at rest.  Meanwhile, Magda pulled out a huge box of apples and started cutting and peeling by hand–I’ve never seen anyone prep apples so fast as she did that morning.  Across the room, her employee, using a table rolling machine, flattened out a huge chunk of croissant dough, and began cutting and rolling it into shape.  The croissant dough had been “laminated,” a time-consuming process of folding and refolding the pastry into layers around a butter block, the previous day, and then refrigerated.    Plain, almond and chocolate croissants are all daily staples of this particular bakery, and I watched in amazement as the ingredients were deftly, and at lightning speed, inserted into the layers of pastry, then stored in a proofing machine (for rising).

Morning production at the bakery is a complex dance in which the bakers must coordinate rolling out, proofing, inserting filling or toppings, second risings, then baking and cooling.  Once the croissants were done, Magda’s employee set to work on lemon curd and apple tarts, blackberry muffins, orange/cranberry scones, cinnamon buns, and cookies.    Meanwhile, Magda checked her orders from the previous day, which included an order for 4 pies (two apple and two cherry) and 2 quiches (broccoli and olive).  She keeps a giant mix of quiche filling in the big refrigerator, and once the pie shells are rolled out and the veggies cut up, the filling gets poured in.

There are two ovens at the bakery, the huge propane, steam oven for the breads and bagels, and then the smaller oven for pastries.   Magda kept a close eye on the pastry oven to make sure it was turned off as needed when not in use.   Her electric bill at the bakery, she told me, is higher than her rent, and the small oven and the cappuccino/espresso machine are the big electricity drains.

By now, the french bread dough has gone through autolyse, two mixings on different speeds,  and has to rise for about two hours.  And of course, those two hours are full of other work, like the bagels and the assortment of pastries.  When the dough is risen to her satisfaction, Magda hauls the massive hunk onto the cutting board table, where she uses a hand dough scraper to cut it into chunks for loaves and baguettes.  She works quickly and efficiently, using a scale to make sure each chunk is the right size for the type of loaf.  And she reserves one sizable chunk as pizza dough, in case anyone orders a pizza for lunch.  (Edward and I have often done this!)

The poolish-fed dough is central to the morning’s production, but it’s not the only bread  in the works.  Sitting inside a plastic covered rack are lovely round loaves in baskets and longer loaves hidden in the folds of linen.  These are various sourdough loaves mixed the previous day and proofed overnight.  And of course, the beautiful bagels, which as far as I can taste and tell, rival any from New York.

Now, she starts baking the sourdough loaves, and while they  bake, she starts shaping the french bread into baguettes and loaves.  I’m watching closely, because I want to remember how she does this, and she has me help her shape and roll out the baguettes, in very precise fashion indeed.  After this, they are placed, seam side up, into the folds of bakers’ linen, for a final rising.

I’m envious of Magda’s big steam oven.  All she has to do for that lovely steam is to push a button.   At home, I usually have to throw ice cubes into a pan on the oven floor 5 minutes before baking, and then a cup of boiling water is poured into a hot pan in the oven right before the loaves go in.   It’s tricky to get it right, and avoid being burned by the steam.

After the final rising of the baguettes and french loaves, Magda scores them with a razor held at a 30 degree angle and they go into the oven for around 24-26 minutes, but the time really depends on how  they look to Magda, and what she knows about the temperature in the bakery and the rising periods leading up to the baking.  It seems complicated to me, but Magda has developed an instinctive sense for how the dough looks and feels as it goes through its many stages.

At about 6:30am, a second employee arrives, and begins to set up the front of the house.  Pastries have been steadily coming out of the smaller oven–croissants, muffins, tarts, scones, the pies on order, a coffee cake.  Those pastries  cool in tall, plastic-covered racks and now  are moved into the glass case on the counter, looking tempting and glorious.  The pace in the room becomes a little feverish, in anticipation of opening at 7am.  The pastries will be ready by then, although most of the bread isn’t ready until about 8am.  Magda has been preoccupied with the dough and the ovens until now, but at this stage, she has to stand on the customer counter to repair a light.  Someone rolls up the blinds.  There’s a brief discussion about the choice of music for the morning.

By 8:00am, the baguettes and virtually all the bread are stacked on a tall cart and rolled close to the counter, where customers can eyeball the loaves and decide which ones they want.  Soon enough, there’s a steady stream of customers, and before long, it will be time to prep the soups and sandwiches for lunch.

I leave at about 8:15am, tired but happy.  Four magical hours at the Polish Princess, and I’ve got  a new  outlook on baking, with some important new tips and tricks.   I’ve been over to the bakery as a customer twice since  that early morning adventure and now, of course, I see the Polish Princess in a wholly different light…

My recent blog post about the Class 4 road that runs by our camp in the hills elicited an intriguing comment from my neighbor and long-time town resident Amos Bell.  He told me that his maternal grandmother, Sadie Hagan Powell, had lived at the “Hagan Place,” (meaning our place), and taught school at the little schoolhouse across the road.   It was once a school, apparently, now it’s a tiny little camp under private ownership.

An email inquiry of the house’s most recent owners before us–who now live in Chittenden County–didn’t really clarify things, so one day this week, I went down to the town office to spend an hour or so combing through the land records to see what I could learn about whether Sadie Hagan’s family had indeed owned our house.

Here are my title search notes from that examination.  I’m an attorney who practices mostly criminal defense and other litigated matters, not transactional law.  However, my senior law partners are experienced real estate lawyers, and they have trained me enough so that I’m competent in handling basic real estate transactions, including title searches, which I do professionally  from time to time.   These are a rough approximation of the kinds of notes I would take for a professional title search on behalf of a client seeking to buy a property, which would then typically be referenced in a formal document called a “title opinion.”

Vermont title standards only mandate that the attorney do a 40 year backward search to establish marketable title, but today, I went much further than that, because my goal was history, not marketable title.  (And of course, no need for the title opinion here!)

As the notes show, I didn’t start with the present day.  That’s because I know who owns the house now, and I know for sure who owned it previous to us.  I started instead in 1962, the date that the parents of our friends (former owners) acquired the house.  (The story of how Francis and Gertrude Nulty, of Somerset, New Jersey, came to visit, and then purchase this farm in the most remote reaches of northern Vermont is a fascinating story in its own right, for another day).

Working back from 1962, I reached something of a dead, or at least dormant, end with the deed in which Charles W. King sold the property to one Patrick McLaughlin, in 1889.  In almost all deeds, I expect to see a property description which includes a clear reference to the previous deed through which the seller acquired the property, including the date the seller acquired it, and the book and page number where that deed is recorded in the land records. These references are the keys to tracing chain of title.  But in the 1889 King to McLaughlin deed, that information just  isn’t there.   Instead, the deed simply makes reference to it being derived from Lot 66, of  “Glebe-right land.”

Ah hah!  This perked my interest and curiosity immediately, because Glebe lands, also known simply as “leased lands” are a unique (and largely arcane) Vermont institution, involving lands that generate revenue for school districts by being leased rather than actually owned.   Here might be an important piece of the puzzle, since I’d already gotten a clue from my neighbor that land in close proximity to ours belonged to a school back in the day.

“Glebe” is defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary as land belonging to or yielding revenue for a parish or other ecclesiastical benefice.”   During the pre-revolutionary era, the governors of New York and New Hampshire, acting on the authority of the English Crown, made numerous land grants all over Vermont,  designed to generate revenue for the Church of England and for their schools.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that all such glebe lots had schools or churches on them, although some did.  The operative, defining feature of the Glebe lots was that they were used to generate income for the churches or their schools.  Hence, the person who occupied a Glebe lot was not the owner, but rather a leaseholder, and paid annual rents to the church or school, in lieu of property taxes.  The Glebe lot leases usually contained language entitling the leaseholder to the use of the property “so long as grass grows and water runs,” or similar “language of durability.”

After the American Revolution, ownership of the Glebe lands–and their revenue–passed to the municipalities, who collected the annual rents and turned them over to school districts.  In 1947, the Vermont legislature passed a statute which allowed municipalities to sell glebe lands, as long as the proceeds went to the school district in town.  I first became familiar with the Glebe lots when I was Town Clerk in my little Town of Guildhall since they crop up periodically in the land records of virtually all Vermont towns.  Our town has several Glebe lots, but no one seems to be collecting any revenue on them any longer, their boundaries are unclear and confusing, and I rather doubt that many municipalities are even following the statutes relating to Glebe lots properly.   They just don’t matter much anymore.   Another example of a Glebe lot in Guildhall is the lot on Guildhall Hill where the old church monument sits.  I wrote a piece on this blog about the monument last year, which you can read here, if you care to.  At some point in the 1890s, that particular church, which no longer even had a building on that location,  decided to lease the Guildhall Hill glebe lot to the Town of Guildhall, for free, and “as long as trees grow and water runs,” the telltale Glebe lot language of durability.

Although Glebe lands are largely arcane and most towns don’t even keep track of them in any systemic way any longer, they still occasionally crop up as mini-obstacles in real estate transactions.  Read about this interesting little recent dust-up in the city of Burlington, from the newsweekly Seven Days, about when a family tried to sell their downtown condo.  A zealous buyer’s attorney for some reason discovered that the property may technically have been a glebe lot.  The buyer considered it a title defect, and so the sellers asked the city to figure out the status and if necessary, execute a quit claim deed to the sellers so that the title “defect” could be resolved to the buyer’s satisfaction.  (In the end, it was resolved by the City of Burlington executing a Quit Claim deed to the owner/sellers, for the nominal sum of $50.00)

It’s not altogether clear in the case of our house whether the land was actually glebe land, or whether it was carved out of previous Glebe lots and conveyed as a conventional deed.    The language in the deed itself is ambiguous and other documents don’t shed much light on it.  Being able to review a previous deed or lease that granted use or ownership of the property to Mr. Charles King would help, but finding that document, if it exists, would take a lot more time.

By looking at an old lot map of the Town, I was at least able to push the date back a little further.  The map shows that in 1878, eleven years earlier, Charles King was still the owner.  That helps a bit.   Armed with that knowledge, however, I would still have to work backwards, going painstakingly through the index of each land record volume.  This is time-consuming.  Starting around roughly the 1890s-1900, all land transactions at the Town Clerk’s office are recorded in a centralized and cross-referenced card catalog, which expedites searching.  But before that, each book has its own index, so you’d have to review each index in each book, name by name.   Some day maybe I’ll get to it.

As for Sadie Hagan?  Well, she and her family’s residence are still a mystery.  My title search from now back to Mr. Charles King indicates that between 1878 and now, no Hagan ever owned this  property.  However, in the oldest four deeds, those dated 1889, 1897, 1902, and 1913, there is a reference in the property description that reads “…and bounded on the south by lands of James Hagan…”    But why then, does the card catalog index, which seems to be reasonably accurate, at least in 1913, show absolutely no property for any Hagan at all anywhere in the Town?   Is this a gap in the card catalog records? (Not unheard of in old New England land records).   Or might it mean that the “lands of James Hagan” alluded to in the deeds’ property descriptions were not actually owned by him, but were themselves Glebe lands, and the Hagans were leaseholders, not owners?    I have a feeling this one is going to remain a mystery.    When and if I find the time to spend hours poring over the indexes in each land record volume, going backward from 1878, I could conceivably find that a Hagan actually owned our property.   But until then….

 

I love August vacations in Vermont, in part because I can bake using my favorite in-season fruits.  This time of year, the meadows, thickets, and byways of northern Vermont are bursting with a profusion of blackberries and apples.

Down in the meadow below our camp, one of us picks blackberries just about every morning.  When we walk up and around highway #46, we can stop at just about any spot on the road and grab handfuls of blackberries to eat.  Even our dogs like them.  It dates back to my childhood somehow–there is something magical about picking blackberries in August, with the buzz of crickets in the air and the fading light.

Apples are equally abundant now, too.  On my morning run up Pond Hill Road this morning, I identified at least 5 different varieties of apples, hanging low and heavy from roadside trees.

Here are some of the things I’ve baked or intend to bake so far on this staycation:

Blackberry Muffins.  (See photo above.  I think these are the best muffins I’ve ever made!)

Blackberry Almond Tart with a Cornmeal Crust.  The cornmeal crust is my favorite variation on the crust.  You just have to substitute half a cup of corn meal for flour.  It gives the pie or tart a great rustic flavor and works well with both apple and blackberry.

Blackberry Scones.

Blackberry Apple Pie.   Blackberries and apples are uniquely suited to one another, with their combination of tartness and sweetness, especially in pastry.  Several years ago, when I entered the pie-making contest at the Lancaster Fair, first prize went to an extraordinary apple-blackberry pie.    I’ve also added apples to the blackberry muffin recipe, above, and it works beautifully.

Apple Galettes.  It took me a while to get the hang of the galette pastry.  Many thanks to Magdalena Randall, of the Polish Princess Bakery in Lancaster, New Hampshire, who gave me one or two simple but incredibly important and effective tips for delicious galettes. (I have also made rhubarb and pear galettes, but I think the apple ones are the best).

Apple Pie with a Cheddar Cheese Crust.  Several years ago, I entered this pie into the contest at the Lancaster Fair, and I won second-prize!

Crab Apple Pie.  This is my favorite apple pie, although crab apples, at first blush, are not very glamorous or interesting in appearance.  I discovered their potential for pastry by accident a few years ago, when I was walking in the woods up on Courthouse Hill near my house in Guildhall, and encountered a bunch of fallen crab apples.  On impulse, I gathered up a bunch, took them home,  and made a pie using this recipe.