Friday, June 21, 2013

FARMS FOR SATURDAY...

And here's my favorite post...

We’ve got our share of old farms in Maine: they’re spread throughout the width and breadth of the state. Follow any old road in the area and you’ll eventually find one – or what’s left of one. They’re a slowly vanishing species around here – tumbledown barns, shells of old houses, sometimes nothing more than an old foundation and cellar hole, thick with sumac, saplings and memories of a lifestyle gone by.
 


This old beauty, spreading here from one end of the photograph to the other, is (or was) Ratherwyck Jersey farm. I lived and worked on this farm in the late 1960s and early 1970s (back in my hippie days), and took this photograph one fine summer morning while standing near the fenceline of what we called Maum’s Field – I was heading out to get the cows for morning milking.
         
The house was built in the early 1800s (the main house is the smallest piece on the far right) by the Lunt family, part of a Quaker community of farmers that settled in a corner of Freeport and Durham. As the farm expanded, more buildings were tacked onto the main house – this is a perfect example of New England connecting architecture: Big house, little house, backhouse, barn.
          Big house? The main part of the house, with dining room, living room, bath; bedrooms upstairs. The front door opened onto the road.
          The little house, perpendicular to the main house, was the kitchen and outkitchen – the outkitchen contained the laundry room (do you have any idea of how much laundry a working dairy farm generates daily?) and two enormous chest freezers in which I stored 30 cubic feet of vegetables for winter consumption.
          The backhouse was a jangle of purpose: in the 1800s, it housed the Lunts’ sleighs and carriages, had a workshop and a passageway to the outhouse (you can see the outhouse jutting out from the middle of the backhouse wall). We, too, had a workshop there and also stored machinery: the tractor (an Allis-Chalmers that was as old as I was), mower, bailer, and tools.
          And the barn – oh, that barn! Big, sweeping bays, grain bins, hay elevators straddling the uppermost rafters to help us load the tons of hay we needed to feed our forty Jersey milkers over the winters.
         
We milked twice a day, starting at 5:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. That early morning start meant, of course, that we had to wake up at 4:15 or so – and in order to make that wretchedly early start a bit sweeter, resorted to living our lives on Farm Time: we set all the clocks forty-five minutes ahead – so on Farm Time, we were up at 5:00 every morning.
          Much easier to bear!
         
I left the farm in 1975, went on to other things.
I still drive by occasionally; it is no longer a working farm. That great huge barn is gone – nothing there but smooth lawn – and the backhouse has been converted to a garage with upstairs storage. The meadows and fields have disappeared; some of the land has gone back to secondary growth forest, some to real estate development – there are houses and driveways where our cows used to graze.
         
It’s a bittersweet thing, this remembering.
But I know that somewhere, there will always be Farm Time.

Deb Gould is a retired ASL interpreter (educational specialist) and author; she lives, quite happily, in Maine, USA.

24 comments:

  1. Lovely photo and lovely memories.

    Nah - a 5am start (or earlier) is definitely not for me.

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    1. Well, 5:00 sure beats 4:15, which is why we had Farm Time! It wasn't bad...we ALL got up then, so it became normal very quickly.

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  2. I adore cows. I would love to own a farm where I could live in the house and rent the fields to someone with cows. But I wouldn't want the life of a farmer -- much too hard for my princess-self and too restricting.

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    1. I love cows, too, Wendy! They've got a sense of self that just can't be topped. Farming is restricting (cows don't know about holidays and/or travel plans), but neighborhood farmers would help out for some downtime.

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  3. A lovely nostalgic account, with your opening paragraph capturing my interest straightaway.

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    1. Thank you! It was one of the best times of my life, believe me; nostalgia for the best reasons.

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  4. Ah a Sepian who has actually got experience of milking, how wonderful!

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    1. And it's a wonderful experience, too. Gives you a whole new appreciation for how food gets to the table.

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  5. An extra special privilege to work with a Jersey herd. My first paid holiday job was unloading the empty milk bottle crates in a dairy and passing them to the man who fed them into the bottle washer machine. We were allowed as much milk as we wanted, and being no fool I always went for the "gold top". I may need to explain this...Jersey and Guernsey herd milk always had a gold foil bottle top and of course was more expensive, the cream (no crazy homogenisation then) a deep yellow, almost the colour of this page!

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    1. Jerseys ARE the best! And you're absolutely right about that cream -- we'd skim the cream off the top of the milk tank, then agitate it for a bit for the pitcher of milk that came inside every morning & evening -- rich, rich, rich!

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  6. I miss that old barn with a window for every girl! Great post, Deb!

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    1. I do, too, Mike -- I can still see it, though, in my heart, whenever I drive by!

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  7. A fine memory boosted by an excellent photograph. Good post.

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  8. Thank you so much! Nice to have you stop by.

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  9. What wonderful memories, Deb! Lucky you, that you got to live and work there, and that you had some real "hippie days". Growing up in Eugene, I was certainly familiar with the hippie ways, but never got much further than tie-dyed dresses and Birkenstocks.

    Thanks so much for stopping by to visit me already today. No, school isn't out for us, since we are actually s childcare center and are open year round.

    Kathy M.

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  10. Your farm experience must have been interesting, but a lot of work. "Farm time" is a practical idea.

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  11. That sounds like very hard, but also fulfilling, work and a lot of poignant memories wrapped up in the photograph. Here in New Zealand, where most houses are constructed from timber framing, I have become used to seeing brick fireplaces/chimneys standing alone in paddocks, the last solid remnant of some old timer's homestead, and I guess full of memories for someone.

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    1. Sometimes we find chimneys, too, Brett -- but the true giveaway here in Maine is sumac, especially in the fall when the leaves are reddish. If you see sumac, you'll find a foundation!

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  12. I worked on a dairy farm during school holidays in the mid 1950s but nothing on the scale you describe. The Colonel who owned the farm gave 2 hours to be able to recognise and be able to name the 20 plus cows by name. Taking them back to the fields after morning milking was my job but not really necessary as they knew where they were going - all I had to do was to shut the gate.
    What a shame that that fine building you describe has disappeared.

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    1. Oh, that naming thing! Telling them apart is no easy task, especially if they're all Jerseys or all Holsteins, etc. I loved the little paths they made to get from one field to the next...

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  13. I too drive by the remains of part of my life --- that now have little bearing on the memories of those days -- just remembering Farm Time..

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    1. It's interesting how things change, isn't it? We look at what is there "now;" we easily remember how it was "then." It's a good thing, I think -- it keeps us in place somehow. Thanks for the comment, Joan.

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  14. The farming industry sure has changed over time, leaving families behind,meaning bbig business for some big consortiums. I wonder, do you still get up THAT early after this experience?!?
    :D~
    HUGZ

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    1. No, but I still get up between 5:30-6:00 World Time!

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