Matt Randall (W. Shore Rd.) stopped by the 90th anniversary party at Cabot Creamery yesterday (Saturday). He took some pictures and wrote us a note:

Here are the pics that I took while at the creamery. Vermont Historical Society [exhibit]. They had a whole old fashioned sales pitch too haha. Ben & Jerrys was also there, Lake Champlain Chocolates (samples!), Vermont Common Cookies, etc. They had emu summer sausage, Vermont pepperoni, live folk music, all types of butters to sample. Basically everything that they sell in the visitors' center had a table with a representative and samples of everything for free...I didn't spend a cent except the gas to get there :-) It was very enjoying but small so you couldn't spend too much time there unless you made 3 or 4 rounds to every table which I did haha! Matt

The butter churn they are demonstrating in the photo was popular in the 1890's. There were various types of churns over the years, and they came in all sizes. We have a handmade wooden one at the Cabot Historical Society. I was working upstairs there today and that was one of the items I inventoried. There's a picture of our butter churn below.

We have many interesting items on display. Like the completely wooden washing machine (last photo). It is literally a water tight box on legs and by working a long handle, the clothes were sloshed back and forth in the "box." At one end of the box is a slanted wooden washboard with horizontal grooves for scrubbing by hand. In addition to sloshing the clothes, the same handle would lower a wooden plate against a shelf at the far end of the tub to squeeze out the water before taking the clothes to dry either by hanging over a line strung between trees or by spreading them out on the grass. Later on washing machines were designed with wringers, of course. There is a wooden plug in the bottom of the box tub to drain the water. I worked the handle and tried to imagine how much strength it would take to move heavy wet garments around by that method. Better than scrubbing everything by hand, I'm sure, but still a lot of hard work. Just carrying hot water for the wash would be hard work - the handmade wooden buckets are quite heavy even without water in them.

It's amazing how people made their own utensils and machines to help do the work. Some items are pretty crude, but they were also quite durable. Many of these wooden "machines" we have on display show signs of wear, but still operate.

The historical society building is on Main Street in Cabot and will be open every Sunday through the summer, or other times by appointment if you call Bonnie Dannenberg. Plan to spend some time there as we have lots of interesting items to see. We have a research corner on the ground floor, with historic photographs, newspaper clippings, obituaries, and yearbooks, etc. We even have a farm equipment display off the main display room with some pretty large and unusual items displayed there.

I got a lot done today, but there's a lot more to do. I enjoy documenting our collection, and it's always pleasant to imagine our ancestors using some of the things I'm photographing. Life was difficult and for many, brief. We are very fortunate to have so many artifacts that reveal what life was like in Vermont in the late 1700's and 1800's.