Alvan Lawrence
Alvan Lawrence had an interesting story to tell about his years as a farmer. Though he didn't come to his present site in Shaftsbury until 1953, he's been farming all of his life and tells his experience farming at his home site in Morrisville as well. Alvan focused on the tremendous impact electricity brought to the world of farming. Alvan graduated high school in 1944. It wasn't till fours year after that that they finally got electricity on the farm. Alvan recalls the intensive physical labor required prior to the modernization that came as a result of the introduction of electricity in 1948. Before electric coolers, milk was put into 40 quart cans like the ones below.
He recalls that it was National Electrification Act that "forced the local power company to put power to the farm, or else..."
Before electricity, they sometimes would use milking machines that operated with 2 stroke cycle motors. However, they weren't very time efficient and quite a lot of time they ended up milking by hand anyway. The cost of gasoline then was a mere 15 cents a gallon.
Alvan put the time into perspective with his story about the family radio. Service was not regular because the battery needed to be charged in town. He remembers going into school after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 having no idea what had happened because their radio had run out of batteries that weekend.
In addition to dairy farming, Alvan's father and family ran a Maple sugaring business and harvested lumber and coal. They produced 300-400 cords of Maple wood each year. That's a lot of wood!