Amanda, Emmie, Eilidh, and I started our Sunday morning at The Vermont Country Store, an expansive and impressive variety store that took up a full block of downtown Weston, Vermont. We explored much of the sprawling store, managing to make only a few impulsive purchases to accompany some Vermont-made pepperoni, crackers, and cheese for a charcuterie lunch.
Our charcuterie lunch included Vermont-made cheese and pepperoni, and “common crackers,” which were like giant oyster crackers.
We were back in the car, heading north again, but with a shorter drive for a tour of the Baird Maple Syrup Farm. I didn’t have a great idea of what to expect from the tour, but the spot was rated extremely well on Google and seemed to be considered a quintessential thing to do in Vermont.
When we arrived at the farm’s modest gift shop, it was determined we were the only people signed up for a tour in our time slot, so we were able to customize it to meet our needs. We went with a slightly shortened version of the hour-long tour, which included stops at maple trees, the sugar house, and a syrup tasting. Our tour guide Jacob was incredibly passionate about maple syrup, and I think we all enjoyed learning more about the setup at a modern maple syrup farm.
The farm’s 14,000 sugar maple trees are connected by miles of tubing to collect sap.
The sap is vacuumed into giant steel vats within these modest wooden structures on the farm.
Sap is boiled down to syrup in this large heating unit.
The tour was followed by a taste test, where we sat around a picnic table and sampled 6 different types of syrup. The girls and I managed to drink all of our syrup samples, but Amanda and Noah were over the tastings by the last couple of varieties. We finished our time at the farm in their small store, purchasing a couple of boxes of syrup to take home for ourselves and friends and family.
Next up was a visit to the Calvin Coolidge historic site in Plymouth, Vermont. The tour guide lacked the enthusiasm we experienced at Baird Farm, but there were still some interesting nuggets. The exact room Coolidge was born was intact, as was his Vermont home where he took the Oath of Office to become the 30th U.S. president.
Eilidh had some Vermont-made chocolate at the general store, which was once operated by the Coolidge family and connected to his boyhood home.
President Calvin Coolidge was born inside this home.
Most of Coolidge’s childhood, and some of his adulthood, took place in this home. During the tour, we saw photographs of Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and other famous businessmen visiting Coolidge on this porch.
In the summer of 1924, Coolidge ran the country from his “Summer White House,” above the general store in Plymouth, Vermont.
We mosied up to the Plymouth Creamery, where we learned a bit about the cheesemaking process and history of the company, and of course, purchased a few wax-coated blocks of cheese. We rounded out our visit by greeting a few sheep, checking out the historic church, and perusing the adjacent barn.
After dropping off Amanda, Noah, and Eilidh at our Vermont home, Emmie and I made a return visit to Taylor Farm. The weather held out enough for a pleasant visit where she fed the horses and saw some of her favorite animals again. We rounded out the evening with a to-go pizza order from Jake’s in Londonderry.
