Finding Life at Elysian Hills

Elysian Hills is the name of a 140-acre farm in southern Vermont, a diverse haven of woods and fields nestled in the green mountain state’s lush rolling hills, the land Mary Lou, my stepmother, called home and a literal extension of her physical being. She sensed a spiritual energy of connection immediately as the farmhouse came into view when approaching the property with her realtor in the late 1950s.

Mary Lou had been raised under the heavy hand of a misogynistic father in rural Pennsylvania. Born in 1927, seven or eight years after the youngest of her three siblings, she navigated her upbringing at a sprawling estate farm named Lockerby largely on her own. This context spurred her independent spirit, and she found her way to being the head of her own life and family with little to tie her to her heritage there.

As a strong young woman in her thirties, she ventured north to Vermont and quickly came to find and fall in love with the property that is now Elysian Hills. Initially, she and her first husband lived in the farmhouse, which was already more than 160 years old having been erected in 1791, as tenants renting from the estate of Ruth Knapp.

Ruth was the last heir in a family that had accumulated the various properties making up the farm 135 years earlier. Through three or more generations, the Knapp family had worked the land as one of many “hill farms” common in the area. The remnants of stone fences and maple sap collection tanks can still be found in the woods as evidence of their trade in one of the state’s prized agricultural products, maple syrup. Census records also reveal their production of various crops including tobacco and likely corn and hay for livestock feed.

In an act of defiance to her father, Mary Lou purchased the Knapp Farm at the start of the 1960s and settled in, building a barn, tack shop, and riding arena and clearing pastures for a Morgan horse operation. Horses were mostly Mary Lou’s thing, and as the first official American breed, Morgans had originated in Vermont as stunningly beautiful, well mannered, smart animals well suited to everything from farm work to pleasure riding and competition. Mary Lou grew the operation to provide breeding, training, and sales of horses and all related tack and supplies. Their Morgans won English, Western, Pleasure, and Trail Riding shows and became known in the region for their quality. Notably, a couple of years after starting the horse farm, state legislation was passed naming the Morgan horse Vermont’s state animal.

All this while also raising three children. ….. (continued in book)