This is a brief biographical sketch of a Vermont farmer whose life spanned the years 1831-1915. Some forty years of that life were spent on a hill farm in Stowe, Vermont. The only object in writing a chronicle of this farm, its owner and operator Eliakim Bigelow, an uncle of the writer, is to portray the life of a typical hardworking Vermont farmer, as well as something of the economic and social environment in which he worked.
The source of information for this life and times is Eliakim Bigelow's personal diaries kept during the years from 1881 to November 1915. The way of life portrayed in them is so different than that of today's farm enterprises that it should be of some his­torical interest. Two letters written to a brother in Massachusetts give an interesting account of an 1852 trip to California, but that has nothing to do with this chronicle of farm life.
The bare biographical facts are these: Eliakim Bigelow was born in Shelburne, Massachusetts, June 18, 1831, one of a family of seven sons and three daughters of Jonathan Bigelow, who migrated to Stowe in 1841. He was in the eighth generation of Bigelows, descended from John Biglo or Bigelow of Watertown, Massachu­setts, who is supposed to have arrived there from England in the 16003. His was the first marriage in Watertown as recorded in 1642. His wife Mary Warren seems to have descended from a line of ancestors in whose veins flowed blood of the royal families of England, France, Germany, and Italy.
Aside from the time of the California trip in 1852 referred to above, Eliakim's life after 1841 was spent in Stowe, though all but one of his brothers and sisters found their life work in more distant places. Brother Newell occupied another Stowe farm on Luce Hill where he carried on like Eliakim for some forty years. He usually came over to Eliakim's to do the fall butchering and the two families visited back and forth on many occasions during the years. For some time they alternated Thanksgiving dinners.
As to Eliakim's education, we know nothing, but there is reason to surmise that it was meager in terms of formal schooling. How­ever, he was very cooperative in the matter of education for his children. Some of his four daughters attended the normal school at Johnson, Vermont, and three of them taught school, one of them, Susan, for forty years in Stowe. His son Edwin also taught school some. He eventually attended the University of Vermont, and located as a practicing physician in Wolcott, Vermont.
Eliakim married Sarah Jane Handy October 20, 1858, a few days less than a month after he bought the farm. She died April 29, 1864, and he married Sarah Louise Barrows of Stowe April 12, 1865. She is the Louise mentioned throughout the diaries. There were two daughters, Mary and Addie, born of the first marriage, three daughters and a son Edwin of the second. One daughter only lived to be thirteen years old.
     This family membership is worth recording, because that farm was a family farm, and much of Eliakim's activity was concerned with serving family needs, that usually did not pertain to farm operations. While the place of the girls in the family circle may not have contributed much to the farm operations compared with the work of Edwin, who performed all the labors of a hired man, yet their presence, needs, and education cast considerable influence on the homestead activity.
     The number of diary entries concerned with taking the girls to or from school either to the normal school at Johnson some sixteen miles away or their own teaching positions in the town's district schools, bear witness to what was an important segment of the activities of the family life. While the accounts of Eliakim's work were mostly concerned with outdoor labor, the regular butter churning was an inside chore, and he frequently helped with the washing.
While the diaries cast much light on the everyday doings, much is omitted that we wish might have been recorded. Eliakim was a man of few words as far as speech was concerned, and that charac­teristic was very evident in the diaries. Page after page during the time he served in the legislature bore the single entry "routine business." There was no account of questions voted on except one, not even what committee he served on, but one trip to Rutland on legislative business is recorded, and the passage of a bill dealing with Rutland afterward. And another, to the State Prison at Windsor.
Though it was many years ago, I can still recall a personal in­cident that illustrates his laconic speech. It was during my college years. I majored in history and was telling the family about the history courses I planned to take, and when I was through, Uncle Like, as we called him, looked at me through his steel rimmed spectacles, and made one brief comment, "Be pretty well posted, won't ye."
The farm where he spent most of his life, though on a hill, was one of gently sloping meadows, and on the whole quite level. It was one of 100 acres, Lot 21 in the third division of the original Stowe land survey. It was sold by the original grantee, Benjamin Green of Windsor, Vermont, in 1801.
Eliakim bought it for $2,500 in 1859, and added an additional thirty-five acres of woodland and pasture in 1883, so that the farm was one of 135 acres the greater part of the time he lived there. It was situated on a hill about a mile north of West Branch, a hamlet located on what is now Route 108. The farm was at the end of the public road, though there was a wood road kept open through a neighboring farm to the Edson-West Hill road still farther north. It was about three miles from Stowe Village.
The farm was a well watered one with its general slope toward the east. According to the diaries it appears to have been well managed. The buildings were kept in good repair, and new ones built as needed. Painting, papering and carpeting the house interi­or are frequently mentioned. Practically all the lumber needed for repairs and new construction was secured from the farm wood lots, the logs being hauled to a mill for sawing.
In May 1881 the old manure shed was torn down. In 1885 a new shed of some sort was built, as timbers were hewed for it April 6 and May 21. The frame was assembled May 25, and the building raised May 28. A new sugar house was also built that year. A milk house was built in 1888, and a new barn erected in 1890, in the stable of which the cows were put for the first time August 30. A silo was added in 1897.
The variety of products secured for income, as the following items mentioned in the diaries from time to time indicate, is some­what amazing. Wood, logs, bark, balsam, maple sugar and syrup, butter, milk, dried beef, beef, pork, potatoes, apples, cider, with hay and grain were occasionally sold. The principal field crops seem to have been barley, corn, India wheat, oats, potatoes, pump­kins, turnips, and wheat. No wheat is mentioned after 1892, but India wheat, a variety of buckwheat, was raised right up to the time he left the farm. Beans and cow beets were also mentioned. The garden crops included corn, pop corn, squashes, pole beans, cab­bage, cucumbers, and onions. Raspberries were set out in 1887. A random sampling of the years will give some idea of the amount of the crops raised. There were 185 bushels turnips 1890; 120 bushels oats, 3 barley in 1891; n1/^ bushels India wheat, 13 bushels wheat, 145 bushels oats were raised in 1892. In 1893 the total potato crop was 230 bushels, and the yield in 1888 was 30-40 bushels per acre. In 1893 there were 228 bushels oats and 31 bushels India wheat. There were at least 36 bushels apples in 1884. Up to April 19, 1893, 2,408 pounds of maple sugar had been made for the season. A traveling crew did the threshing, which cost from $5 to $7.
The farm carried about fifteen head of milking stock, some young cattle, two or three hogs, a bull, a pair of oxen and a pair of horses, about thirty sheep, and an equal number of poultry. The feeding, watering, cleaning stables, and the general care of such an assortment of livestock through the winter months, as well as the dairy work the year round, meant a considerable amount of time and work in addition to the outdoor labor. Other than cleaning out the stables or hog pen and drawing manure, the barn work is seldom alluded to .in the diaries, but it was always there, in addi­tion to the other daily work. To get some idea of the labor involved to secure a living from this family farm establishment, we might begin with the diary record of the 1881 sugar season.
March   7   Tapped 156 trees. Sap ran well.
March   8   Broke into the west woods.
March   9    Gathered sap and commenced boiling.
March 10    Sugared off 125 pounds.
March 11    Made a bargain with Mr. Fiske to work a month for $18.50.
March 13    Tapped 139 trees.
March 14    Tapped some trees.
March 15    Finished tapping. Boiled all night.
March 17    Gathered sap. Boiled all night.
March 19    Boiled sap most all night.
March 21    Gathered 200 pails of sap. Boiled until midnight.
March 22    Boiled sap all day.
March 23    Gathered 100 pails sap. Paid off EH Fiske.
March 24    Delivered 62 cans 555 pounds syrup 7 1/2 cents a pound.
March 31    Gathered sap all day. Churned in the evening.
April   1    Boiled all night.
April   2    Gathered sap in forenoon. Took 1 tub butter to the village.
April   4    Went to the village with 40 cans syrup. Chopped sugar wood in forenoon.
April 25    Gathered sap tubs in forenoon and washed them in afternoon.
April 26    Finished washing the wooden buckets and put things up at the sugar house.

     Succeeding seasons were much the same, except that more trees were tapped after the purchase of adjoining woodland in 1883. Apparently more than 600 trees were eventually tapped. The evaporator burned a couple of times, and a sugaring off arch was added to the equipment, and a new sugar house built. The follow­ing diary entry for April 8, 1896, is interesting:
     Sugared off in the forenoon, had 180 pounds. Done a batch of syrup in the afternoon.
     Ella and her sister in law visited here. Came out to the sugaring off. Boiled awhile in the evening.
     Gathered 280 pails of sap. Am very much driven.
     Apparently the town maintenance of the road to the farm from the West Branch was limited to running the road machine up to the farm once a year, since the fact that the road machine "worked the road today" is recorded one day a year for several years. Other­wise its maintenance, particularly in the winter, depended upon the residents of the farm, though they were paid by the town for the time put in, which varied with the storminess of the seasons.
     In the winter a portion of the road was shifted to a route across the pasture of a neighboring farm where it could be kept open more easily than on the usual route used in the summer down the hill. There were no snow fences in those days, and in 1889 it was April 11 when "they come all the way in the regular road." One other farm on that road joined the Bigelow farm on the south between it and the main road at West Branch. It was occupied by Fred Sears for most of the years Eliakim lived on the hill.
     Part of the preparation for keeping the road open in the winter was to secure from the woods a supply of spruce boughs which, when fastened to the runners of a sled, were used to "brush out" the road. A plow was also used and there was a great deal of hand shoveling. The following entries from various diaries show how the road problem was met with pay at the rate of 12 cents an hour for a man and 25 cents for a team.

December 11, 1881 Worked on winter road. 8 below.
February 12, 1885 Roads bad. had to shovel to get to school.
February 17. 1885  For breaking road .75.
February 18, 1885 Lame back in morning. So lame can do nothing.
January 2, 1888 Worked self and team on road 4 hours.
January 13, 1888 Shovelled out road so children could get home from school.
January 23, 1888 Self and team on road 2 hours. .50.
February 8, 1888 Made out highway bill to date $9.39.
August 17, 1892 Edwin I and horses worked on road. $3.75.
March 14, 1892 Shoveled on road i!/2 hours. .18.
May 31, 1894 Edwin worked on road with oxen an hour..50.
March 3, 1897    Plowed and brushed out road 3 hours. .75.

The winter of 1896 seems to have been a rough one as far as the road was concerned according to the following diary entries:
February 10    Brushed out the road. .25.
February 12    Plowed and brushed the road. 1.25
February 16    Plowed and brushed the road. .50.
February 20    Brushed out the road and went for a load of sawdust. Fred Sears put on his horses and helped me up the hill.
February 21    Plowed and brushed out the road and drawed up the load of sawdust left at the foot of the hill last night.
February 22    Plowed out the road and brushed it out. 25.
February 25    Plowed out the road and fixed the sidling place.
March 2    We shovelled out and plowed the summer road. Worked all day 2.50
March 7    Geo. and I finished shovelling out the road in the fore­noon. Worked 3 hours.75. March 8    The stormy weather continues through the day. The road is filled some. Shovelled 1 hour .13.
March 15    Plowed out the road .25.
March 26    Shovelled on the road until 3 o'clock and then plowed it out 2.00.
Continued  in Forge Vol. 29, No.4; 

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