A Strong History

It was cold and rainy as we left the college, walking down to the Strong Farm. We had been through a few challenges of finding someone to interview. We first decided that we were going to choose a couple, both husband and wife, separate them into two rooms and we both would ask the same questions and compare their answers. That was our first challenge, getting the interview. Our next challenge didn’t come too far along after. A friend told us about Burton Strong and his wife and so we decided to go ahead. We then looked in the phone book and to our surprise; there were several Strong, Burton. So we went with our first instinct and left a long message about Black River Voices and our interview and the process hoping that we would get a return phone call. It turned out, we had the wrong Strong. So back to the phone book we went. We called the next Strong and we had a winner. But, let’s get back to the walk down and challenges. We were leaving the school and on the way to the farm. In the rain and cold, we walked to the Strong’s Farm. Now, there is a house next to the Strong Farm, in which we assumed was their house. So we walked around the farm and knocked on each door thinking that someone would answer. Already making us late, we decided; let’s try those houses across the road. It was worth a shot and we went to the first house on the right and finally got the Strong’s we wanted. Still raining, we walked through the door to meet Mr. Burton Strong. The house was just as I pictured it would be. Lightly colored carpets, pictures lined up along the walls of children and grandchildren, as well as Penelope, the collie mix who thought we were there to see her, greeting us at the door. There was a warm and welcoming smell in the air. Mr. Strong greeted us and we sat on the couches. They were firm, but ever so clean and each had their own place. In the background, we heard the wind chimes throughout the interview. He began with schooling, farming and then went to marriage and stories of folks from the town. We came looking for a husband and a wife telling stories, but soon after the interview started, we had a different concept. It turned into a history; A Strong History...

Complete Interview

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Josh Today is October the 30th and we are here with Burton Strong. I am Josh Parker along with Cashea Arrington, and we are going to start off. So if you could just tell us a little bit about where you were born and where you grew up.

Burton  I was actually born in Sudbury Massachusetts but my parents were Vermonters and they happened to be there at the time. We moved to Craftsbury when I was one year old, nineteen… we moved in 1928. My parents started farming just before the depression which was tough going but we were lucky to have bought the farm from a lady who was very co-operative in the situation of the mortgage, and at that time the farm had been leased out for several years and needed a lot of improvement as far as the soil goes. It was a slow process but my father was very interested in pure breed Guernsey cattle and we developed a herd that was one of our chief objectives of farming. During the depression it was touch and go a lot of the time and we had to try to make ends meet. But we always felt farming was the way to go but it was a great life and a great place to raise a family.

Josh  Is that the original farm house location? Do you know?

Burton  That is the first, this was originally the Craft’s family farm and when they went through it was sold to the Root family and they were there for several generations. So the farm has only been in three families since the town was founded. This is the third house that was on that property. The first house of course was a primitive house and then they built a very beautiful house and that burned during the 1920’s.
	
Cashea   Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like growing up in Craftsbury and the area?

B  Well it was a great town to grow up in. it certainly had a good school system and good churches and plenty of work to do on the farm and there was very good neighbors. We had during our first year of farming there was a disease that got into the... that had been brought into the farm and the barn and the vet at the time had inoculated the stock with the wrong vaccine and so they all got very sick but and originally we probably lost all that first herd that we had but or neighbors we very co-operative and they helped us nurse the cattle along and we final got on our feet and got over that disease in the barn, and our neighbors were very helpful. Which I think is a Vermont tradition and a rural tradition; that one person helps another. 

C  was it a lot of the farms did they get the disease as well or was it mainly just your farm?

B  Nope it was just us it was hemratic septicemia that had been brought in, the farm had been used as a cattle… for a cattle dealers operation and he had various cattle coming through which brought the disease to the barn, it was something we had to contend with for a number of years.

(long pause)
J  What made your family want to move to this area of Craftsbury? Did they live here originally? 

B  Nope ahh… My mother was from Chittenden County and my father grew up in West Berlin in Northfield, and probably the main reason we came to Craftsbury was because my Aunt taught school here, she graduate from the university was teaching home ec here at Craftsbury Academy and that how we learned of this farm here that was for sale. My folks had looked at farms in various other parts of the state and this one seemed to be the best one they could find. (pause) We have always been happy to been here in Craftsbury because it was a nice town, nice people.

J  What do you think you would’ve done if you had not gone into the family farming?

B  In high school I was very interested in chemistry, probably if the war had not come on right then I would’ve gone to university and gone into chemical engineering. (laughter) Maybe I would’ve grown up to hate it. I don’t know (laughter) I’ve always enjoyed farming, it’s a challenge and something different comes up every day. We think it’s a great place, we had seven children they all had a chance to get involved with the farming, it was a great way to bring up children.

C  What was the typical day of farming like?

B  Well I don’t know if there was a typical day but you certainly have to get up and go see in the morning and get the milking done, the chores done, then you have breakfast and then you... there is more chores after breakfast. And in summer there is the crops to get in and the haying to do. And then in the fall there is wood to get out for the winter and in the spring there is sugaring to do, there is not a dull moment (laughter) you don’t have to worry about what you’re going to be doing next. I think one of the big advantages is that it is a family affair; and children on a farm know what their parents do for a living which is not the case in the city, some children don’t have any idea what their parents do for a living. Children I think they usually like the idea of helping and it’s a cooperative effort.

J  How many brothers and sisters do you have? Are you the oldest?

B  No I’m the middle one; I had one brother and one sister.

J  And where are they now?

B  Well my brother he lives here in Craftsbury in the summer and Florida… I mean Texas in the winter, and my sister is deceased. My brother and I farmed together after we got out of high school till 1960 when my wife and I bought the farm. And now its been passed on to the next generation.

C  Do they like it just as much as you did?

B  Oh yes, yup. One of our daughters is… she is an editor, works for the World Bank quite a lot, and one of her favorite jobs is putting the hay in the barn in the summer, its hard work but she always liked that part of it. I think it was a lot for everybody working it took a lot of hands to do the job and she knew she was part of it and she still mentions it today. 

J  What are some of the major changes you have seen in and around Craftsbury?

B Well of course the major change you’ve seen is the loss of farming, loss of farms… individual farms. I'm sure we are producing as much milk here in town as any time in history but back in the late 30’s when my father was a lister or assessor he went to a hundred different farms in town, and today you are down to 15. But the best land is still being farmed the pasture land is growing up which is to bad but maybe in this world of climate change its forest land is going to be more important as a carbon absorber and it may change things. We saw an old book that was written way back years ago and at that time it specified that Craftsbury probably had some of the better soils in the state. (pause) At one time there was a big potato growing operation in town and that’s changed to now into corn for our cattle feed. And at one time the poultry industry was going big here in the town but things evolve and they change.

(Wind chimes) 

C  Do you want to talk a little about the stories that you have?

B  Well I've always been interested in water power especially in Mill Village section of town.

When Coronel Craft came to Craftsbury one of his chief objectives was to build a grist mill which was essential in those days. And so he put his mill down at the outlet of Little Hosmer pond. And then he also built a up and down saw mill right at the outlet and there was not sufficient water to run them both all year so the records show that in the town real estate records, he purchased the outlet area at Big Hosmer. And there he dammed up the outlet on the east side of the lake and reversed the flow so it came out the southeast corner, southwest corner and flowed into little Hosmer, which makes a lot more water. He also found that he needed more water so he went up to the brooks that converged from Hearts Pond and Page Pond and built a dam and than a canal down so that water flowed into Little Hosmer. You can still see the water course that he made there although the dam is washed out. And that (cough) water from Little Hosmer goes into the upper reaches of the Black River and when I was a youngster there was two sawmills near South Craftsbury that ran on water power and before that there was another big sawmill at the bottom of Catchum Hill that used water power from the Black River. But the big, the big mill was on the Wild Branch in Collinsville. There was a big saw mill that was later converted to steam power. 

B  and another interesting (pause) facet of farming in this area was the creameries that were in town. Wood Mill Company operated a creamery at Mill Village in the early part of the 1900’s and then later there was… about 1940 Manchester dairies operated a creamery at Mill Village at the receiving station. And they later moved to South Craftsbury where the town garage is and much later bought that creamery from them. And as an interesting story connected with Coronel Craft and his grist mill. It involves Robert Trumble who was born in Scotland and he was impressed into the British navy against his wishes back during the Revolutionary War. Of course, the Scots and the English had been fighting for years and the Scots were not very sympathetic with the (laugh) British fighting the revolutionary war. But the British needed seamen and they just went out and took these young men and put them on ships and expected them to serve in the service and Robert Trumble was one of those that got so treated. And his parents went to the ship captain and tried to get him released but that was no go. But they, the captain, told his parents that they would that he would guarantee that he wouldn’t be going to the States but that was not the case, he arrived in Boston harbor and helped bury the dead from the battle of Bunker Hill. Which was much to his dislike and so later as they were off the coast for the south he jumped overboard and managed to escape and there he met up with the American forces and joined with them and met Colonel Craft and after the war when Colonel Craft came to Craftsbury he needed somebody to help run his grist mill and this Robert Trumble had some training in that and being from Scotland he was instrumental in bringing other Scottish settlers into this area and he turned out to be a very influential man in the East Craftsbury Presbyterian church. 

 and another interesting character which is more up to date would be Ted Camera who was here in town during the late 20’s and 30’s and 30’s. His father was an envoy to the Canada and was stationed in Montréal and when Ted was a young man his father offered him the choice of a college education or an airplane. And Ted of course took the airplane and learned how to fly and during that time of prohibition it was quite handy for him to go up to Montréal to visit his father in his airplane and load up with booze and he would fly back down and instead of landing right in Craftsbury he would go to Hardwick and then turn around and come right up through over the villages and land on Wiley Hill and so people of course knew that he was landing and they were there to help him unload his cargo (laugh) and after the prohibition ended Ted was very interested in skiing, he and some of the local fellows made one of the first ski areas around and had some very interesting ski meets they had a tower and ski jump on the east side of Kecthum… Prospect Hill and a downhill of course on the east side that ended up crossing King Farm Road and heading down toward the river, And that he was so interested in skiing that he started making skis in a house on the Common and later the old creamery at mill village. I do not know just where he was during the war but after the war he was a bush pilot in Alaska and was killed in an accident. And that’s my story. 

C  - Did his family reside here or are they in Canada still?

B- I’m not sure, no I don’t know. No his family was not here in town, but he was instrumental of in getting Elliot Merrick to come to town. Elliot Merrick was from New York City and he and his wife had been into nurses, nurses training up in Labrador for several years and Ted told him of a farm just north of mill village that was for sale and Elliot Merrick came there and was a back to the land person and wrote books and he has quite a few in the local library. (Pause) 

(WIND CHIMES IN BACKGROUND)

C  Where did you meet Mrs. Strong at? 

B  Well I met her when she first came to teach here at Craftsbury Academy, she grew up near Enosburg in Franklin County and went to university and I guess that was another good thing about Craftsbury Academy for me (laugh) yes. 

J  What is it like to be married and be living and working on a farm together like that, really strengthens a relationship? See a lot of hardships?

B  Well you certainly have to work together and I think that is one of the big advantages of farm life, it’s a family affair. And I think your children grow up with a sense of knowing what life is all about and it takes work to make the thing go. Yeah. You have (pause) and they all seem to grow up to be useful citizens. 

C  Do you like the winter, or do you actually hate it? Growing up here for so long?

B  No no no, winter its all part of the cycle, yearly cycle and you wish it wasn’t quite so long sometimes but you, no its interesting, it’s a change. I can see I’ve talked to some people who have been to Hawaii and it’s the same everyday year round and it’s fellow a local fellow who went there and he took it for a year and a half and it bothered him there’s not that change not that variety. No it’s I think it’s… winter is good for the soil it gives it a rest and covers it where as in some places its not protected during the winter and washes and erodes during the winter and here is kind of put to rest. 

J  And in the winter you do your sugaring?

(WIND CHIMES IN BACKGROUND)

B  do that in the spring. yup and that’s a good feeling too you have that inner feeling that in sugaring you just kind of feel its time to do something. Get out and tap the trees. It’s… you know what they say about sugaring. It’s a disease. Its not life threatening but you can’t get over it. (laugh) 

C  Does the family help with sugaring or is that more of just you? 

B  well of course when we were all farming there of course they were all involved but now my oldest son helps with the sugaring, when he was time. Yeah it’s a lot of work but its… 

J  How many trees do you have tapped? What’s your average?

B  Oh we tap around 1300, 1400. There scattered all around and it’s not an ideal situation but you make it work. Yup it’s. 

B.  Better not get me into talking about stories (laugh) ah no its… I’ll have to tell you one and I’ll let you figure it out. We had a hired man that used to work for us some and maybe not the brightest light in the world but he was a good fellow and he had a cow which most people used to have a family cow and she went fallow one year so he butchered her, and he was livin with John and his family so he said I gave John a half and my other brother he had a bigger half so I gave him two thirds. (pause) (LAUGH) Yeah its interesting I’d like to see how he divided it up. 

B  And another time he hadn’t come to work for a couple of weeks. When he finally came back my father asked him, well what happened Roly what is the problem. Well my father died.  Well dad said sorry to hear about that when was that, Roly figured and figured and figured and finally said, if he’d live to the day after tomorrow he’d been dead two weeks (laugh) 

B  Well you can see what he meant but he had a little different way of expressing it. Hmm.. 

C  Going back to the grist mill, when did they, why did they all close or go out of business?

B  well I expect is when they started bringing in imported flour. Yeah. Of course the agriculture has changed a lot and really when they first had agriculture here they had to raise what they needed for themselves so they would raise wheat and corn and get it ground for there own and then there’s as more land was cleared they got into more beef cattle and were shipping beef to the beef market and when transportation got better they were making butter and sending that to Boston and when later on Boston needed more milk they shipped milk there, so its been sort of an evolution and there its just kind of interesting how things have changed when the Manchester dairies were here at mill village they would have a big influx of milk in the spring when cows naturally give more milk. And so they have skim off the cream which is the part they wanted and they didn’t have a use for the skim milk so they dumped it in the mill pond which now skim milk is what people want and later on after they moved the Manchester dairy to South Craftsbury there was a cheese factory that was making use of that skim milk down here at Mill Village they were making Italian cheese that was in the 40’s and they were getting skim milk that was in excess, especially in the spring. But now everything is gone, by 1960 was pretty well into bulk tanks on these farms and all these local creameries have gone by. All these towns around here you can think of they all had at least one creamery and it’s… all our milk goes to Saint Albans and just put it in the bulk tank and they take it to Boston or wherever. 

C  It’s pretty funny a milk truck just drove by. (all laugh)

B  Well actually most of our milk goes by truck to Coventry then the good share of it goes right to Boston and the rest of it goes to Saint Albans where they sell the cream to Ben and Jerry’s and skim milk is powdered (fades out) 

C  how much milk do you usually put out? 

B  Well we have a tank load everyday. It’s pretty interesting when the bulk tanks first came out you were supposed to have room for every other day pick-up. That didn’t last very long (laughs) and farms get bigger and pretty much everyone gets it picked up everyday. But a new aspect now which is gaining in popularity is the organic milk. Quite a lot of farms have changed over to organic milk which is quite a ordeal to get things switched over it takes two or three years unless you can prove you haven’t used any artificial fertilizers or chemicals. 

C  Are you interested in switching over? 

B  No I don’t think so. My son figured out how much it was going to cost to do it and it just didn’t pan out but those farmers who didn’t raise corn they just grass farming it’s a shorter length of time. It’s hard to raise corn without using sprays. Course right now the world market for milk is pretty good it’s changed so much and so rapidly it’s kind of amazing but you’ve got a big demand and these other countries for dried milk and Australia which used to be a big exporter they are actually importing now because of their drought and it looks good right now. (LAUGH)

(WIND CHIMES)

C  Living on a farm did you ever drink milk straight out of the farm unpasteurized? 

B  Oh absolutely. No I don’t go by that theory. Well of course you produce the milk you know what’s there. Of course there was a problem one time with cattle having TB (tuberculosis) but the state has instituted a real rigid set of rules and testing and that’s a thing of the past. And buffalosis doesn’t seem to be a factor anymore. There’s always seems to be a new problem come up with farming and if you get certain ones taken care of you always got more coming along. But it’s amazing on the advances of production per animal. What we used to consider were the best cows for production and now all the ones you’re selling because they don’t produce enough (Laugh) 

So it’s a lot of that is due to better breeding better care better feed, lots of factors. Artificial insemination has been a big boom to breeding higher producing cattle. 

C  anything you want to say to close this up? 

B  Well I’ve never regretted my choice of occupations and it’s been a challenge and a lot of satisfaction to it. 

J  Thank you very much.

Burton's Stories of Craftsbury

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C  Do you want to talk a little about the stories that you have?

B  Well I've always been interested in water power especially in Mill Village section of town.

When Coronel Craft came to Craftsbury one of his chief objectives was to build a grist mill which was essential in those days. And so he put his mill down at the outlet of Little Hosmer pond. And then he also built a up and down saw mill right at the outlet and there was not sufficient water to run them both all year so the records show that in the town real estate records, he purchased the outlet area at Big Hosmer. And there he dammed up the outlet on the east side of the lake and reversed the flow so it came out the southeast corner, southwest corner and flowed into little Hosmer, which makes a lot more water. He also found that he needed more water so he went up to the brooks that converged from Hearts Pond and Page Pond and built a dam and than a canal down so that water flowed into Little Hosmer. You can still see the water course that he made there although the dam is washed out. And that (cough) water from Little Hosmer goes into the upper reaches of the Black River and when I was a youngster there was two sawmills near South Craftsbury that ran on water power and before that there was another big sawmill at the bottom of Catchum Hill that used water power from the Black River. But the big, the big mill was on the Wild Branch in Collinsville. There was a big saw mill that was later converted to steam power. 

B  and another interesting (pause) facet of farming in this area was the creameries that were in town. Wood Mill Company operated a creamery at Mill Village in the early part of the 1900’s and then later there was… about 1940 Manchester dairies operated a creamery at Mill Village at the receiving station. And they later moved to South Craftsbury where the town garage is and much later bought that creamery from them. And as an interesting story connected with Coronel Craft and his grist mill. It involves Robert Trumble who was born in Scotland and he was impressed into the British navy against his wishes back during the Revolutionary War. Of course, the Scots and the English had been fighting for years and the Scots were not very sympathetic with the (laugh) British fighting the revolutionary war. But the British needed seamen and they just went out and took these young men and put them on ships and expected them to serve in the service and Robert Trumble was one of those that got so treated. And his parents went to the ship captain and tried to get him released but that was no go. But they, the captain, told his parents that they would that he would guarantee that he wouldn’t be going to the States but that was not the case, he arrived in Boston harbor and helped bury the dead from the battle of Bunker Hill. Which was much to his dislike and so later as they were off the coast for the south he jumped overboard and managed to escape and there he met up with the American forces and joined with them and met Colonel Craft and after the war when Colonel Craft came to Craftsbury he needed somebody to help run his grist mill and this Robert Trumble had some training in that and being from Scotland he was instrumental in bringing other Scottish settlers into this area and he turned out to be a very influential man in the East Craftsbury Presbyterian church. 

 and another interesting character which is more up to date would be Ted Camera who was here in town during the late 20’s and 30’s and 30’s. His father was an envoy to the Canada and was stationed in Montréal and when Ted was a young man his father offered him the choice of a college education or an airplane. And Ted of course took the airplane and learned how to fly and during that time of prohibition it was quite handy for him to go up to Montréal to visit his father in his airplane and load up with booze and he would fly back down and instead of landing right in Craftsbury he would go to Hardwick and then turn around and come right up through over the villages and land on Wiley Hill and so people of course knew that he was landing and they were there to help him unload his cargo (laugh) and after the prohibition ended Ted was very interested in skiing, he and some of the local fellows made one of the first ski areas around and had some very interesting ski meets they had a tower and ski jump on the east side of Kecthum… Prospect Hill and a downhill of course on the east side that ended up crossing King Farm Road and heading down toward the river, And that he was so interested in skiing that he started making skis in a house on the Common and later the old creamery at mill village. I do not know just where he was during the war but after the war he was a bush pilot in Alaska and was killed in an accident. And that’s my story. 

C  - Did his family reside here or are they in Canada still?

B- I’m not sure, no I don’t know. No his family was not here in town, but he was instrumental of in getting Elliot Merrick to come to town. Elliot Merrick was from New York City and he and his wife had been into nurses, nurses training up in Labrador for several years and Ted told him of a farm just north of mill village that was for sale and Elliot Merrick came there and was a back to the land person and wrote books and he has quite a few in the local library. (Pause) 

(WIND CHIMES IN BACKGROUND)

Burton's Life History

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Josh  Today is October the 30th and we are here with Burton Strong. I am Josh Parker along with Cashea Arrington, and we are going to start off. So if you could just tell us a little bit about where you were born and where you grew up.

Burton  I was actually born in Sudbury Massachusetts but my parents were Vermonters and they happened to be there at the time. We moved to Craftsbury when I was one year old, nineteen… we moved in 1928. My parents started farming just before the depression which was tough going but we were lucky to have bought the farm from a lady who was very co-operative in the situation of the mortgage, and at that time the farm had been leased out for several years and needed a lot of improvement as far as the soil goes. It was a slow process but my father was very interested in pure breed Guernsey cattle and we developed a herd that was one of our chief objectives of farming. During the depression it was touch and go a lot of the time and we had to try to make ends meet. But we always felt farming was the way to go but it was a great life and a great place to raise a family.

Josh  Is that the original farm house location? Do you know?

Burton  That is the first, this was originally the Craft’s family farm and when they went through it was sold to the Root family and they were there for several generations. So the farm has only been in three families since the town was founded. This is the third house that was on that property. The first house of course was a primitive house and then they built a very beautiful house and that burned during the 1920’s.
	
Cashea  Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like growing up in Craftsbury and the area?

B  Well it was a great town to grow up in. it certainly had a good school system and good churches and plenty of work to do on the farm and there was very good neighbors. We had during our first year of farming there was a disease that got into the... that had been brought into the farm and the barn and the vet at the time had inoculated the stock with the wrong vaccine and so they all got very sick but and originally we probably lost all that first herd that we had but or neighbors we very co-operative and they helped us nurse the cattle along and we final got on our feet and got over that disease in the barn, and our neighbors were very helpful. Which I think is a Vermont tradition and a rural tradition; that one person helps another. 

C  was it a lot of the farms did they get the disease as well or was it mainly just your farm?

B  Nope it was just us it was hemratic septicemia that had been brought in, the farm had been used as a cattle… for a cattle dealers operation and he had various cattle coming through which brought the disease to the barn, it was something we had to contend with for a number of years.

(long pause)
J  What made your family want to move to this area of Craftsbury? Did they live here originally? 

B  Nope ahh… My mother was from Chittenden County and my father grew up in West Berlin in Northfield, and probably the main reason we came to Craftsbury was because my Aunt taught school here, she graduate from the university was teaching home ec here at Craftsbury Academy and that how we learned of this farm here that was for sale. My folks had looked at farms in various other parts of the state and this one seemed to be the best one they could find. (pause) We have always been happy to been here in Craftsbury because it was a nice town, nice people.

J  What do you think you would’ve done if you had not gone into the family farming?

B  In high school I was very interested in chemistry, probably if the war had not come on right then I would’ve gone to university and gone into chemical engineering. (laughter) Maybe I would’ve grown up to hate it. I don’t know (laughter) I’ve always enjoyed farming, it’s a challenge and something different comes up every day. We think it’s a great place, we had seven children they all had a chance to get involved with the farming, it was a great way to bring up children.

C  What was the typical day of farming like?

B  Well I don’t know if there was a typical day but you certainly have to get up and go see in the morning and get the milking done, the chores done, then you have breakfast and then you... there is more chores after breakfast. And in summer there is the crops to get in and the haying to do. And then in the fall there is wood to get out for the winter and in the spring there is sugaring to do, there is not a dull moment (laughter) you don’t have to worry about what you’re going to be doing next. I think one of the big advantages is that it is a family affair; and children on a farm know what their parents do for a living which is not the case in the city, some children don’t have any idea what their parents do for a living. Children I think they usually like the idea of helping and it’s a cooperative effort.

J  How many brothers and sisters do you have? Are you the oldest?

B  No I’m the middle one; I had one brother and one sister.

J  And where are they now?

B  Well my brother he lives here in Craftsbury in the summer and Florida… I mean Texas in the winter, and my sister is deceased. My brother and I farmed together after we got out of high school till 1960 when my wife and I bought the farm. And now its been passed on to the next generation.

C  Do they like it just as much as you did?

B  Oh yes, yup. One of our daughters is… she is an editor, works for the World Bank quite a lot, and one of her favorite jobs is putting the hay in the barn in the summer, its hard work but she always liked that part of it. I think it was a lot for everybody working it took a lot of hands to do the job and she knew she was part of it and she still mentions it today. 

J  What are some of the major changes you have seen in and around Craftsbury?

B  Well of course the major change you’ve seen is the loss of farming, loss of farms… individual farms. I'm sure we are producing as much milk here in town as any time in history but back in the late 30’s when my father was a lister or assessor he went to a hundred different farms in town, and today you are down to 15. But the best land is still being farmed the pasture land is growing up which is to bad but maybe in this world of climate change its forest land is going to be more important as a carbon absorber and it may change things. We saw an old book that was written way back years ago and at that time it specified that Craftsbury probably had some of the better soils in the state. (pause) At one time there was a big potato growing operation in town and that’s changed to now into corn for our cattle feed. And at one time the poultry industry was going big here in the town but things evolve and they change.

(Wind chimes) 
C  Where did you meet Mrs. Strong at? 

B  Well I met her when she first came to teach here at Craftsbury Academy, she grew up near Enosburg in Franklin County and went to university and I guess that was another good thing about Craftsbury Academy for me (laugh) yes. 

J  What is it like to be married and be living and working on a farm together like that, really strengthens a relationship? See a lot of hardships?

B  Well you certainly have to work together and I think that is one of the big advantages of farm life, it’s a family affair. And I think your children grow up with a sense of knowing what life is all about and it takes work to make the thing go. Yeah. You have (pause) and they all seem to grow up to be useful citizens. 

C  Do you like the winter, or do you actually hate it? Growing up here for so long?

B  No no no, winter its all part of the cycle, yearly cycle and you wish it wasn’t quite so long sometimes but you, no its interesting, it’s a change. I can see I’ve talked to some people who have been to Hawaii and it’s the same everyday year round and it’s fellow a local fellow who went there and he took it for a year and a half and it bothered him there’s not that change not that variety. No it’s I think it’s… winter is good for the soil it gives it a rest and covers it where as in some places its not protected during the winter and washes and erodes during the winter and here is kind of put to rest. 

J  And in the winter you do your sugaring?

(WIND CHIMES IN BACKGROUND)

B  do that in the spring. yup and that’s a good feeling too you have that inner feeling that in sugaring you just kind of feel its time to do something. Get out and tap the trees. It’s… you know what they say about sugaring. It’s a disease. Its not life threatening but you can’t get over it. (laugh) 

C  Does the family help with sugaring or is that more of just you? 

B  well of course when we were all farming there of course they were all involved but now my oldest son helps with the sugaring, when he was time. Yeah it’s a lot of work but its… 

J  How many trees do you have tapped? What’s your average?

B  Oh we tap around 1300, 1400. There scattered all around and it’s not an ideal situation but you make it work. Yup it’s. 

B.  Better not get me into talking about stories (laugh) ah no its… I’ll have to tell you one and I’ll let you figure it out. We had a hired man that used to work for us some and maybe not the brightest light in the world but he was a good fellow and he had a cow which most people used to have a family cow and she went fallow one year so he butchered her, and he was livin with John and his family so he said I gave John a half and my other brother he had a bigger half so I gave him two thirds. (pause) (LAUGH) Yeah its interesting I’d like to see how he divided it up. 

B  And another time he hadn’t come to work for a couple of weeks. When he finally came back my father asked him, well what happened Roly what is the problem. Well my father died.  Well dad said sorry to hear about that when was that, Roly figured and figured and figured and finally said, if he’d live to the day after tomorrow he’d been dead two weeks (laugh) 

B  Well you can see what he meant but he had a little different way of expressing it. Hmm.. 

C  Going back to the grist mill, when did they, why did they all close or go out of business?

B  well I expect is when they started bringing in imported flour. Yeah. Of course the agriculture has changed a lot and really when they first had agriculture here they had to raise what they needed for themselves so they would raise wheat and corn and get it ground for there own and then there’s as more land was cleared they got into more beef cattle and were shipping beef to the beef market and when transportation got better they were making butter and sending that to Boston and when later on Boston needed more milk they shipped milk there, so its been sort of an evolution and there its just kind of interesting how things have changed when the Manchester dairies were here at mill village they would have a big influx of milk in the spring when cows naturally give more milk. And so they have skim off the cream which is the part they wanted and they didn’t have a use for the skim milk so they dumped it in the mill pond which now skim milk is what people want and later on after they moved the Manchester dairy to South Craftsbury there was a cheese factory that was making use of that skim milk down here at Mill Village they were making Italian cheese that was in the 40’s and they were getting skim milk that was in excess, especially in the spring. But now everything is gone, by 1960 was pretty well into bulk tanks on these farms and all these local creameries have gone by. All these towns around here you can think of they all had at least one creamery and it’s… all our milk goes to Saint Albans and just put it in the bulk tank and they take it to Boston or wherever. 

C  It’s pretty funny a milk truck just drove by. (all laugh)

B  Well actually most of our milk goes by truck to Coventry then the good share of it goes right to Boston and the rest of it goes to Saint Albans where they sell the cream to Ben and Jerry’s and skim milk is powdered (fades out) 

C  how much milk do you usually put out? 

B  Well we have a tank load everyday. It’s pretty interesting when the bulk tanks first came out you were supposed to have room for every other day pick-up. That didn’t last very long (laughs) and farms get bigger and pretty much everyone gets it picked up everyday. But a new aspect now which is gaining in popularity is the organic milk. Quite a lot of farms have changed over to organic milk which is quite a ordeal to get things switched over it takes two or three years unless you can prove you haven’t used any artificial fertilizers or chemicals. 

C  Are you interested in switching over? 

B  No I don’t think so. My son figured out how much it was going to cost to do it and it just didn’t pan out but those farmers who didn’t raise corn they just grass farming it’s a shorter length of time. It’s hard to raise corn without using sprays. Course right now the world market for milk is pretty good it’s changed so much and so rapidly it’s kind of amazing but you’ve got a big demand and these other countries for dried milk and Australia which used to be a big exporter they are actually importing now because of their drought and it looks good right now. (LAUGH)

(WIND CHIMES)

C  Living on a farm did you ever drink milk straight out of the farm unpasteurized? 

B  Oh absolutely. No I don’t go by that theory. Well of course you produce the milk you know what’s there. Of course there was a problem one time with cattle having TB (tuberculosis) but the state has instituted a real rigid set of rules and testing and that’s a thing of the past. And buffalosis doesn’t seem to be a factor anymore. There’s always seems to be a new problem come up with farming and if you get certain ones taken care of you always got more coming along. But it’s amazing on the advances of production per animal. What we used to consider were the best cows for production and now all the ones you’re selling because they don’t produce enough (Laugh) 

So it’s a lot of that is due to better breeding better care better feed, lots of factors. Artificial insemination has been a big boom to breeding higher producing cattle. 

C  anything you want to say to close this up? 

B  Well I’ve never regretted my choice of occupations and it’s been a challenge and a lot of satisfaction to it. 

J  Thank you very much.