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Celebrating 84 Christmas Seasons At Elgin Spring Farm

photo by provided With 67 Christmases shared together, Earl & Raymonde Bessette have many memories to share and stories of family.

photo by provided Earl & Raymonde share the photo with some of the 15 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren

photo by provided Elgin Spring Farm has been home to Earl and generations since 1938.

photo by provided Generations of Earl's family have worked the land and called New Haven home.

photo by provided Earl's dad Solon Bessette worked hard and taught his children well the lessons of life on the land and living in the Champlain Valley. Traditions that have been passed on to four generations still at the corners and on the farm.

Friday December 23, 2016

By Cookie Steponaitis

Earl Bessette was only two years old when his family crossed the railroad tracks and came up to the land that was to be his home for over eighty years. Elgin Spring Farm is just over the hill as the crow flies in New Haven and sits at a junction where a family began a farming tradition that has now passed to the third and fourth generations. It is the site where electricity came to the farm on July 26, 1946 after Earl’s father Solon spent the winter of 1945 digging holes, skidding poles with horses and securing the dead man anchors that allowed the new technology to come to New Haven. The farm was at the crossroads for changing ways and techniques in Vermont agriculture and in the hearts of Earl and Raymonde Bessette who have called it home for their sixty seven years of marriage, seven children, fifteen grandchildren and fourteen great-grandchildren.
      “You know it does dawn on me from time to time that a lot of years have passed,” grinned Earl. “I was standing outside on the yard this past fall and thinking that I was on the same spot where I boarded the bus and rode to graded school at Beeman Academy with your mother and uncle,” shared Bessette with this reporter, “and then I watched my great-grandchildren stand on the same spot getting on their bus to school.” His wife Raymonde chuckled and chimed in, “It is true that the older we get the faster the time passes.”  With so many wonderful memories to pull from, spending time sitting on the enclosed porch with Earl and Raymonde Bessette is a stroll into the Vermont of the past and yet of the present at the same time. While the modes of transportation and destinations change, the Bessette family holds to three constants of farm, family and faith when explaining their lives.
     “We would always have a Christmas tree when I was a young boy,” reminisced Bessette. “We would take a team of draft horses and hitch them up to sleds. We didn’t have anything as frivolous as a sleigh. We would go into the forty-acre swamp just down the road and we would get a tree. If the land was too harsh for the sleds we took the old gravel wagon and hitched it to the team. One way or another we had a tree.” When asked about lights, ornaments and decorations both Earl and Raymonde shook their heads. “We only had icicles,” remarked Earl. “We were too poor for anything else.” In fact, Raymonde shared that her family did not even have a tree. Christmas at her house revolved around going to Midnight Mass and her mom’s famous meat pies. “I was eleven or twelve years old when I got my first doll,” shared Raymonde. “And it was not new. Another relative had two dolls and I got the one she didn’t play with.” Both of the couple shared that gifts were very minimal and in their stockings there might be an orange, a small piece of candy or something homemade.
     As the couple’s children were born and the Bessette clan grew having Christmas day dinner for all family members and relatives became a part of the holiday traditions. “We would have around forty five or so as the years went on,” shared Raymonde with a smile. “We all loved to be together and to eat, laugh and share stories. Earl’s brother- in- law Spencer Holly would make and bring homemade strawberry ice cream and that was a wonderful treat.” This year in fact the group Christmas was several days ahead of the holiday as family commitments to plays and other events made gathering the whole crew impossible. “We had a special toast this year as it was not only to celebrate Christmas but to congratulate a granddaughter who had just graduated college,” explained Raymonde. “And you can be sure no one had their hats on during dinner either, “chuckled Earl. “I tell it straight out that anyone who wants to eat at my table doesn’t wear a hat. My granddaughter Becca invited me a few years back to her history class to talk about local stories and I commented on when I went to school boys didn’t wear their hats in class and that girls wore dresses of a certain length. I am not too sure she will invite me back again anytime soon.” With family members also having birthdays in December, the Bessette clan celebrated together at the local American Legion Fish Fry and had three tables and four generations out together for a meal.
     During the course of the interview the conversation flowed crossing generations, counties, and reminiscing about farm life and holiday gatherings spanning the Bessette’s eighty plus years on the land. Whether talking about the fire that burned the barn in 1945, the arrival of electricity in 1946 and his dad earning $3.00 for each hole dug, $1.00 for each pole skidded in with a horse, and $4.00 for each dead man anchor put in place, Earl and Raymonde Bessette are the perfect storytellers for each focus on the details the other does not. Earl carries on the dialogue, recollects the exact conversations and events, while Raymonde knows to heart each birthday, gathering, picnic and status of each child and generations moving forward of the Bessette clan.
     “I will tell you that Christmas was made ever so special when we got skates as a gift,” remarked Earl. “The yard would shimmer with the winter moonlight and we could skate from this yard the three miles to New Haven Junction. There were only two places that had the cattails to slow us up and we would skate and skate. It truly was a beautiful way to spend a winter night.”  At that moment in the interview the laughter of children could be heard outside and in the light cast by the moon and a floodlight on the garage generation four of Bessette children came out in full snow gear to slide down the hill, laughing and helping each other back up the slope to ride yet again into the darkening night of a cold December. “We would not go back and change a thing,” concluded Earl and Raymonde Bessette. “We enjoy this way of life and we never had to worry about where the kids were. I learned from my father and my children learned from me and so on.”
     While 2017 beckons and a New Year will soon be upon us, Merry Christmas from the Valley Voice and from the Bessette family at Elgin Spring Farm. May your gatherings be many and your blessings be the most important ones to keep. May you have family near, food on your plate and spend time sharing stories, laughter and maybe even go out and play in the cold. For those interested in the newest things to be coming to the farm, Earl has a new edition of his book about recollections on life and farming coming out in 2017 and it will contain as always, the heartbeat of Elgin Spring, the stories of farm, family and faith with lessons for life with Earl and Raymonde Bessette.

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