Both registered guests and daily visitors were welcome at Battell’s dinner table, and the fare was notable: fresh brook trout from the streams around the Inn, freshly cut meat from the slaughterhouse built in 1868, and milk and cream from the herd of well-bred Jersey cows raised on Bread Loaf Farm.
Battell favored fresh produce – but until the Inn’s outdoor gardens and wild berries were ready, lettuce, tomatoes and melons were started in a greenhouse heated with wood stoves while snow was still in the mountains, assuring that fresh fruits and vegetables were available inJune. Hot-house grapes were harvested as late as September.
Dinner at the Inn was announced with a bugle and served by the light of a hundred candles. When the English School was in session, guests and students gathered afterward for lectures, musicals or plays, and every evening ended with a nighttime snack of milk, cheese and doughnuts, all made on the Farm.
