Bob
Fowler
The
following is a transcription of our interview with Bob Fowler on May 20, 2005.
A ">>" denotes a prompt from the interviewer; the rest is Mr.
Fowler.
>>Have you lived here all of your life?
No, we’ve been here 50 years on this place. But I farmed all my life. That’s all I ever did.
>> What kind of farming?
Dairy. My grandfather was a sheep. He had sheep. I don’t know how he lived on a hundred acres with a few sheep but that’s what their income was back in the 1800’s.
>> What would you say your typical day was like when you first started farming?
When I first started farming we did it all with the horses. You get up in the morning, you feed the horses first thing so that they’ll be ready to go to work when you get done with cows and chickens and whatever. But back then usually the farm they had cows, horses, sheep, chickens, pigs, everything. Did the work all with the horses. So I got my first tractor in 1946.
>> Was that a really big change?
That was, let’s see I was 30 years old when I got my first tractor. I’d been farming for 10 years. Ten years with the horses... did it all with the horses for the first 10 years. And then when I got the tractor I still had the horses, but usually when you use the tractor you eliminate the horses… with the tractor you just have to put gas in it. Of course then you could get it for 15 cents a gallon.
>> Wow… definitely different.
It sure is. That’s the biggest difference. And then of course back then you put the milk all in well… when I first started farming I separated the milk, sent the cream to Buffalo, made butter of it, and fed the skim milk to the pigs- the fat free milk now that you buy now in the store- that went to the pigs, and the chickens, calves, whatever.
>>How many cows did you start with?
Three. When I first started I had three and then I bought two more so I had… it was a pretty small farm then, but at that time I was working for other farmers. And then it grew up to I was milking, when I sold the herd here, I was milking 85 and I worked on rented land you know, rented the farms for the first, well it was 50 years ago that we bought this place, before then I was doing it all on rented land rented, you know, rented barns, the land. But back when I first started, you depended a lot on your neighbors, especially when you were doing to work with your horses because you have, to fill silo you get together with your neighbors and get the corn, chop it, bring it to the silo and chop it up into the silo. Now of course they go out into the field with the harvester and it’s all chopped in the wagon they just bring it and blow it up in the silo, or put it in a pile- now they have trench silos. Most of them are using that because they can just go in the tractor and scoop it out. Tower silos you had to either go up there everyday and shovel it out or else… after I was up here I got an unloader for the silo that would throw it out and I had a feeder in the barn that distributed it in front of the cows. It was a (Stanchin?) barn which now the have loose housing so cows just wander around the place, I don’t know I never got into that. I was out before that was, well it was around then, but now it’s practically all loose housing. You depended a lot on your neighbors back then. ‘Cuz when I first started we didn’t even have telephone, didn’t have electricity. But when I was a kid growing up my neighbors, you know, it was a lot more open. Space was where the trees are now. We had signals- two of the neighbors that we could see their places, if you needed something you’d put a white cloth up in the window- they could see it. They would, back and forth, you know, you’d communicate with that. For instance, if they wanted to butcher their pigs that day they’d have the cloth up and you’d just go to the yard, butcher their pigs, whatever. And if they didn’t put the cloth up you’d know they weren’t going to do it that day. The neighbors all get together to do most everything, everybody helped everybody else out. Now, everybody’s for himself. You don’t have hardly any of that, I mean maybe you hire custom, somebody to custom work for you, but you don’t go back and do it for them. You either do your own or you hire somebody to do it. So maybe you’d rather ask me some questions.
>> Okay, so when you stopped farming, were you still milking by hand?
No. I stopped that a long time ago. I milked by hand, I guess when I got up to about 15 cows I gave up milking by hand. When I started, when I only had a few cows, I did, but that took a lot of time. If you had 4 or 5 cows, that was not long, but you got to do thirty. I ended up with a pipeline milker, so you never saw the milk till it got in the bulk tank out in the milk house. It was 6 milkers at a time, two of us would milk each 2-3 milkers. When you had 80, it took about an hour.
>>Wow. Only an hour…
Well I mean when you milked by hand, took an hour to do 10. But now the hand milking, that’s been gone for a long time.
>>Was it a big change to go from hand milking to the new technology?
No. You were just glad to do it. Some of the cows didn’t exactly like it, but if they didn’t like it they went to the butcher shop. You learn, the cow had to conform or else she went down the road. Most of them would take to it right away. I had a couple of them, 3 or 4 of them, that I milked by hand for a while and then I said the heck with this, get another one to take its place.
>> So did you run the farm by yourself or did you have hired help?
Well when I started and I had only a few I was by myself and then.. My father and I worked together for a few years and then I hired help, mostly boys from high school in the summer. A lot of it in the winter I did myself up until I got up in milking, up in milkings, 60 or 80 cows, then I had a full-time man. But I always had help in the summer to get crops and hay and.. and usually there was always some high school boys that were anxious for a summer job.
>> So can you describe a little bit how like the process of work, of what it entails to keep the cows and feed them. Is that why you grew the crops, to feed them or did you also sell the crops?
Yeah it was, well yeah… I find that corn and oats worked for grain, and the corn for the silo, then you got hay. Most everything you did for the cows, what the cows needed. And of course when we did it with horses we raised a lot of oats because that was what you fed the horses. When they were working they took a lot of oats, working hard. I did, after I got up here I had more land here and I rented land from the neighbors so we had quite a lot of hay, especially when the race track was down there. That was a good hay market when it was going down there. We put up what hay we needed, tried to get the first hay was for the milking cows- that was the best hay. Then after that we had the young stock had to eat hay then several others. So usually after the first of July, by the first of July, I had what hay I needed and then after that I sold. Sometimes you get three crops, sometimes two, some fields you only got one. Up until the last when I didn’t need the oats so much anymore, I used to plant the grass seed and the oats at the same time and then you harvest the oats in the summer and then the next year you’ve got grass. But in the later years when I didn’t need the oats I just planted the grass in the spring and then you’d get a crop of hay off of it that same year you planted it.
>> So was farming like a family thing?
Yes, that was family was always an important part of a farming operation. Of course I had a girl and a boy and they helped a lot. My daughter, she milked at nights . . . when we were busy with the farm work. And my son, he could do everything on the farm. He never milked much, but he didn’t like cows so that’s probably why he’s not farming anymore- the cows are what pay the bills and he didnd’t like cows . . .
>> Was dairy farming bigger in the past here?
Yeah, there used to be dairy farms all over the place here, now there’s . . . 4 or 5 in the whole town, but there used to be cows all over everywhere. Everybody who had a few acres had a few cows when I was younger. Surprisingly they’ve gone out but now you’re either big or you’re out. By big I mean, well one farmer here is in the 500’s- they were, I don’t know if they still are. I don’t know how many are selling milk now, they’re all getting old and the young ones don’t come in here much. I mean you just do it till you have to give up. They was you change when the milk goes to the beef, sort of keep the fields pastured down and eventually it goes like this place did, goes to building lots. I’ve tried to sell this, to keep it rural but you know I sell big pieces of land. I try to get them so you’re still in a rural place here, I could’ve had that field there full of trailers but I didn’t want that, I wanted to stay rural the way it is. This place here isn’t really good for the modern farmer, it was alright back in the horse and buggy days when you do the work with horses. The fields are small, notice that one out there is the only field with any size to it.
>> Do the hills matter?
Well it’s harder to work with a tractor on the hills, it’s harder. But with the horses you just did it, the horses go anywhere. A tractor will tip before a horse would, a horse would put one foot here and another there. If you put a tractor on a hill it’ll tip over, and nobody wants to do that.
>> So where do you see farming in the present and where it will be in the future, how do you see it going?
Well it’s going more to along rivers, flatlands. These hill farms are pretty obsolete, because nobody wants.. You want to (??) and plow where you can start out and do it. In fact there’s a lot of (??) now that don’t even bother to plow anymore. I never got into that so I don’t know much about it.
>> So as far as the cows go, that was your biggest, the main . . .
That was always the biggest, was cows. I had some sheep at first, yeah, like my grandfather did and it was.. but they weren’t, I mean what do you got? You got a lamb, you get a little wool . . .
>> How long would a cow be able to produce milk?
Usually they start when they’re 2, 2 and a half years old and they’ll go for, figure maybe 4 years. A lot of them go for longer now. You have to figure you have to replace about a third of your herd every year. Maybe they’ll be sick or get hurt or something, or they don’t produce enough so that you keep them. I had one that lived to be 20 years old . . . but that’s, 10 years is old for a cow in the milking part.
>> I didn’t realize . . . how big they are!
Yeah they’re bigger than they sued to be. I started in with Jerseys, they’re the nice little short ones, but they don’t give as much milk as the Holsteins . . . A lot of people like the Jerseys . . . when I started in my first three cows were registered Jerseys. Then I started selling milk by the quart, so then I started mixing the Holstein in.
>> so when you were farming here how would that affect the local economy? Would you sell your milk locally?
Well I sold my milk to a peddler in North Adams for quite a few years and he got old like I did, and he sold out. So then I sold it to . . . a put in the tank (??) and they came and took it. I don’t know whether I sold any to Agway or not, they’re the biggest one now around here. But the first I had was H.P. Hood- that was when it was still cans. Sold it in cans, I did that when I only had a few cows. Sell two or three cans a day and they’d pick it up and take it to Boston. I don’t know what they did with it there. But they’d pick it up every day because back then they didn’t have the, back when I had a few cows you cooled it with ice. We didn’t have electricity, so you had to fill the icehouse in the wintertime and drag the ice out . . . to cool the milk in the summertime. If you had a spring of cold water you could let that run over, but that didn't last in July and August. And then when we had electricity, we had the electric coolers. They would cool water in the tank and then you put the 40 quarts of milk in a can in there and cool it . . . then it just went into bulk tanks . . .just like your refrigerator.
>>How long does it keep for?
Well actually we started putting it in the bulk tank they picked it up every other day, so you don't have milk going 2 days old, but then they take it to the milk man, they have to pasteurize it and then cool it back down, get it bottled up, peddle it. So I guess milk probably now.. I don't have any idea, from the time it comes from the cow till you get it in the store. Probably four or five days, maybe longer, then they keep it in the store for a week or so, then you're supposed to be able to keep it in your refrigerator longer than that. Back when I was just getting started you got your milk every morning set on your doorstep. If you left it out there very long you got a bottle of sour milk! You have to cool it down fast in order to keep it. Depends how fast it's cooled down and how you keep it, how long it'll keep, but two days is how long you're supposed to keep it on a farm. Two days milk, they pick it up every other day, that makes it so the milkman has to come on some days every other week.
>> Can you explain a little bit how the milking machine would work? Would it all just, is it just a big line of cows and then they would all go into the same tube?
What do you mean?
>>Like you hook the cow up and then does it all just like fill straight into the tank or is there other stuff?
Yeah, with a pipeline milker you put the thing on a cow and it goes up in the pipe, and the pipe brings it right into the cooler, goes direct from the cow to the cooler through the pipe. Try to keep it down below 40, the temperature in the tank. So you have two small a tank and your milk, getting too much milk, gets higher than that, the bacteria grows if it goes over 40. But the milk should when you finish milking within an hour it should be down in the 30's, don't want to freeze it. That's no good, freezing the tank.
>> Is that a problem in the winter?
No, because the tank is insulated so it don't matter if it's warm or cold, if it's cold the cold can't get in, if it's warm the heat can't get in. The same as a refrigerator works, so it doesn't matter what the temperature was. I suppose if it was, they do have tanks outdoors, some of the tanks are outdoors, but then you're putting enough volume of milk, if you've got it outdoors you've got a big tank and there's so much volume it couldn't freeze . . . the most thing I missed was the neighbors coming in . . . when it's milking time, someone stops in. If there's no cows, the community connections slowed down.
>> What’s the biggest change in running the farm from when you started to when you finished?
Well there were certainly changes, doing everything by hand to doing everything by machines. And it was gradual, you just went along with it so you didn't notice much. I mean you knew it was a lot easier, but on the other hand there were a lot of times where if you had extra help, if you've got a silo in order it was a great help . . . on the other hand if you had a man working with you he could go up and throw it out and then he could go and do something else rather than the silo lowerer, that's all it did was throw it out. So there was advantages to all these modern things . . . you missed some of the things, you know, the help you had, that could do other things, help you out during the day. But I had good help, I always was able to get good help. Did whatever had to be done, I mean they didn't just have a job to do just this, of course now that you have a milker and a few men or something with these operations now, the whole thing was one unit, you had someone working for you they just filled in where ever you needed it, whatever needed doing they helped. But I wasn't big enough so I could have just a milker or just a feed man.. Everybody filled in, anything, every job that needed to be done, whoever was there did it.
>> Did you have to wake up really early?
Have to get up early? . . . I don’t know if I would encourage anyone to start farming dairy in this area anymore. If they don’t like it, they sure don’t want to be in it.
>> Well thank you very much.