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| "My dad had about twenty-five to thirty milkers, and Eddy Eldred did, and George Horst did here up where Barry Horst runs the Christmas tree farm, and Jimmy Horst’s dad Albert had forty milkers. On this road alone there’s twenty, there’s forty here or more, Bill Horst had a couple, Frank Kinney had about twenty milkers, at the end of the road where Shuman lives, he's gone now, Albert Shuman, but the farm is still there the building and thing and the Senekle brothers had about forty milkers, in fifty-something years you can see the change in this area - there’s not a milk cow." | |
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"When did you start to see all the cattle start to just disappear, when the farms started to go?" |
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| "Well a lot of them went out when they started bringing in the bulk tanks; you used to deliver the milk to the processing plan in 40-quart cans, and all the sudden when the bulk tanks come in a lot of the smaller farmers didn’t invest, only the larger farms bought bulk tanks because its cheaper to haul milk in bulk tanks. Before you had to lift all the 40-quart cans and you had to cool them in a special cooler and there was a lot of heavy work, but with bulk tanks it pumps into the bulk tanks and it's sent to the processing plant and nobody lifts anything. Well I’d say 1950, 1953 that’s when they started coming in and that’s when a lot of farmers started fading out, the smaller farms, not the bigger farms, they stayed..." |
A view from The Vermonter |
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Dairy Farm, early 1900's |
"...God there were farms all over the place, all over the place. Just for instance going out Middle Pownal Road you had, lets see, Dick Lepont had a farm there with milkers, you went up Middle Pownal Road there were Devenovs, Stromeyers, Kerry Morgan, just all the way down farm after farm after farm. Not today, but they all farmed it...but there were farms all through North Bennington, I don’t know of an active farm there except Jimmy Williams, there's none up on Route Seven except Polly meadows, it's changed." |
