Fri July 22 and Sat the 22

We headed off to the Cabot Cheese plant on Fri. I had read in a book on covered bridges there was an unusual one in Wolcott. It is a covered railroad bridge, with a full length cupola to allow the smoke to escape. Enlarge the picture and you can read the sign for more info. It was very nicely restored and mammoth, as you can imagine inside. The proportions just seem out of order compared to other covered bridges.

Cabot cheese is a dairy co-operative, all of the participating farmers put their product into it, and they own, run, and profit from the results. Cabot has become best known for their Cheddars due to the leadership of a manager from the 50’s and 60’s. There are many dairy co-operatives, another well known is “Land of Lakes” out in Wisconsin. A lot of these are formed because the farmers do not like the government’s subsidy program where we pay farmers not to produce milk. The ones we all know have done a great job of marketing their name. These farmers are promoting their product as opposed to accepting subsidies. This has increased the values of the farmers investment in their farms and in their share of the co-op. Their cop-op has merged with another one form NY, that I had never heard of. Cabot’s farmers are not rich by any extent, and they work hard. But they have beautiful well maintained farms, and we were impressed.

Cabot has developed a much wider variety of cheddars than we had known from the supermarket. They had a great selection of sharp and extra sharp cheddars that are really good, are not sold in CT, and we bought a few of them. They are all made the same way that cheeses are made, the trick is in the ingredients, and the post processing, and aging. We liked the Crowley “cheddar-colby” sharp cheese, we saw earlier, and this was due to the rinse they performed.

Another interesting thing about Cabot, was that even up in small Cabot VT, the heat wave has impacted them, They were on a “reduced power” day due to the heat wave.

ON the 23^rd we moved over to North Conway NH. We decided on Rt 302 through Crawford Notch State Park. What a dramatic entry. The weather was clear and the views of the White Mountains was beautiful. We could see the summit of Mt Washington and the whole Presidential range. Wow!

Unfortunately, there are no pictures, because I was driving. By the way, the way we outfitted the truck trailer combo worked out perfectly. The disc brakes on the trailer were incredible, and the truck gave me complete control. I came down a couple of double-digit grades with very little braking, using the exhaust brake.Great!