Saying Goodbye to a Vermont Farmer

so several years back shortly after we bought this farm and I found something of great interest I was upstairs on the second floor of our barn exploring getting to know the space and I found something very very interesting you see up here on the milking parlor of our old barn I actually found these they're breeding records and charts and based on the dates of them they were from like the 1970s so from a time before I was even born you see this old barn that we have here on our Vermont farm is a former dairy barn and back in the day they used to milk a whole heck of a lot of cattle up here and while this Barn was built in the late 1800s and for the first half of the 20th century it was used very very heavily for dairy by the end of the 20th century there were no longer cattle here on this property and now when we bought the farm the realtor had said that some of the neighbors had been renting the farm over the years back in the late 20th century but the people who owned it in the early 21st century had ultimately turned it into an organic vegetable farm and so it really wasn't being used for dairy and so the fact that I found these records that hinted at an agricultural past long before my time and stewardship of this Farm it all kind of fascinated me and I started to go on a little bit of a quest to find the origin of these breeding records and the only thing that I had to go on was one simple name that was scrawled on the front of these breeding records and so I took that name and I put it into Google and searched around and I found a name for somebody right here in Peach em and then I punched the address in and found out that oh wait the address is actually the farm directly across the street from us here and so then I put two and two together and said oh wait a minute these were the breeding records of my neighbor and I had always heard that my neighbor had rented the farm back in the 70s and 80s good morning large white Farm dog how are you guys doing huh good morning Mr Toby dog how are you buddy huh how are you doing good to see you all right let's go dog come on we got foreign let's go check on the little baby goose links good morning guys how's everybody doing so you can see our Gosling clock one happy family we've got the teenagers mixed in with the I don't know I think four day old goslings and so they make a nice little crew it's actually 38 degrees Fahrenheit right now as I'm recording this but everybody seems to be pretty happy and healthy they have their heating plates and they have each other and so the combination of those two things keeps them all warm this red watering tray is for the little guys because I think they're still a little too short to reach the big one but then the big thing is for the adults and I don't know why I call them adults because they're I don't know I think about two and a half weeks old almost three weeks old but basically the reasons on this platform is it catches all the water that might drip down so if you like see right here you can see it just drifting out and then you know every other day or so I'll come in and just dump that and clean that out particularly if you're raising waterfowl it's a great trick to keep them all healthy yeah you want some socialization time with your goose links don't go in but you can say hi I know Abby isn't it exciting they're nice little baby birds what do you think huh what do you think come on Abby we got more chores to do [Music] so on tap for their breakfast this morning is spent Brewers grain a little bit of crack corn and a whole bunch of household kitchen scraps which they never can seem like they can get enough of good morning girls I got food for you let's go let's go come on Fresh slime I got more I got more back up girls are so bossy these days all right that's good for now now when I found those Dairy breeding records I was still living down in Washington DC and so I picked a weekend when I knew I was going to be up here at the farm and on a nice Saturday morning I headed across the street to the farm across the street with those breeding records in hand and knocked on the door and an old man answered the door and I introduced himself as the guy who had just purchased the farm across the street and he seemed really friendly and really happy to meet me and as we shook hands as a way of an introduction I pulled out the breeding records that I had found in the barn and said I know that your name is Francis and I found these in our barn would you like them back and I presented them with these big old moldy breeding records the man looked taken aback by the fact that these things still existed that I had found them and that I had brought them back to him as a way of returning it he looked at the breeding records and he chuckled and said ah I'm retired at this point I have no use for dairy records you can keep and he proceeded to invite me inside to have a little chat and that was the start of my friendship with my neighbor Fran you come with me Kobe dog you stay here foreign [Music] I stopped by the farm and I met Fran and I met his wife Gracia and they were just the most friendliest nicest people they were super excited to hear about all the dreams I had for this farm and what I wanted to ultimately do with it Fran told me stories about how he used to rent this Farm yeah in like the 70s and 80s and think even into like the very early 90s he showed me trophies of turkeys that he shot out in the back pasture way back over there and he was able to share just so much of the history of this place with me that I will be eternally grateful for all of the insights that I now have really it all comes from Fran and his wife Gracia and even their sons you see because when they bought their Farm across the street I think in like 1956. the Shaws were still here on our farm their Farm was kind of in the last of its days before transitioning to really not being a farming operation and before they ultimately sold it in the the 70s but that connection to the farm and what it once was they were able to directly share that with me and it was just so incredible good morning girls how are you doing how's it going there Amanda hug and kiss being on better Behavior now and so yeah I would go over there pretty regularly especially when I was first moving up here and I would just love to sit and chat with them and Fran would tell me stories of all types and sorts like probably my favorite story he's ever told me and I actually relayed it once in a video was this time when he was a kid growing up here in East peacham and the barn that his father kept where they had all the heifers in actually collapsed and all the heifers came tumbling down I'll actually leave a link for that video at the end of this video if you want to watch that and hear the story speaking of heifers here's my heifers still hanging out close to their moms but you know you can actually even see they've sort of worn a path going back and forth but pretty soon once the girls get down to the end of this fence row and make the turn up that way these girls are gonna go down that way and make a turn and so they will eventually be splitting off from their moms what do you say hey girls would you like some fresh grass looks like you've mowed this strip down pretty darn well hey Toby dog you can see Toby dogs up here to visit as well and a lot of folks were worried that you know when I move Abby up here full time that Toby will be separated from Abby and they won't even recognize each other but you know much like the heifer calves are nuzzling through the fence here with their moms the dogs are going to be directly accessible to each other as well water hose I don't want this water yeah I definitely like using the smaller water trough versus the big one that I used to use are you helping Abby you're being a very good girl yeah Abby's still kind of like in her trial period like she's not fully gonna be up here yet but probably in the next month she'll make the full-time move up to this pasture I know people might be impatient with that but I don't know I feel like you got to take your time and be very thoughtful with these things and don't rush it here we go with the water flow in I will admit I'm a little disappointed that this is still kind of just a trickle and I'm not getting as good a flow as I might have hoped I'm gonna have to figure something out to get more pump out here I mean the reality is all of this water is coming from the very bottom of that hill so gravity is working against it and so it takes a lot of effort to get the water up this hill that's why when I start to develop the spring over there as well as the spring over there I'm really hoping it's going to make for a better more long-term sustainable solution for how I bring water to my animals and speaking of which if you guys are trying to connect the dots my neighbor Bruce who found the spring for me he's actually Fran's son you know actually both of Fran's sons are my neighbor on the back side over there they like live right next door to each other and much like their parents they've been just such super nice and helpful folks to me I just really appreciate having great neighbors like that come on girls fresh grass fresh grass come on hey guess come on come on girl let's go out you're blocking the way there come on gosh I can't tell you how much I love hearing friends stories particularly about the old ways of how he would farm this land and even though it was very different than the way I farmed this land or what I was dreaming of at the time of how I wanted to farm this land I still felt like I had so much to appreciate and learn from Fran's stories and I am going to be forever grateful to him for sharing that information with me I mean heck the only way I'm able to share a lot of this stuff with you guys is because someone like Fran was able to share it with me like another good example of this is you know Fran and his friends actually used to buy really fancy registered Holstein cattle so the big black and white milking cattle that pretty much from the second half of the 20th century even to today they're like the predominant cow you're going to see here when you're talking about dairy cow well Fran would go to these auctions and bid on cattle like that and like this one time they had this Holstein Bowl so like a big Holstein bolt thing was probably ginormous it actually ended up being bid on and sold to these by fires in Japan and so a Vermont bull ending up in Japan was just such a crazy situation and Fran just told such a great story about it you know to hear Frank tell those stories it's hard not to look back on that era with tintings of nostalgia and your sunglasses it's a bygone era that you know things aren't the way they are today not that that's all bad it's just different where is my Abby dog oh there she is way over there I bet you guys can't even see her so let's magnify in zooming there she is way out there let's call her Abby dog come here she comes here she comes here she comes come here Abby dog notice how she knows the certain points to slip under the fence now she's learning Abby come and she also doesn't cut right through the cattle and make them all scatter I think she's learning that too good job sweetie good job so I'm Gonna Leave You up here on this upper pasture here this morning I'll come back and check on you in a little bit okay you behave watch over your cattle all right Mr Toby dog I'm gonna need your help for this next project oh boy you ready for this how'd your balls get so dirty and muddy and so our next task of the day is that we're gonna release the quacking you know the other thing that I really always appreciated about Fran is other than his old stories was the fact that he was a guy who I could relate to really really well because for most of his career he had one foot in the farming world and one foot in the insurance world you see Fran and his wife actually ran an insurance agency and it was originally started out of their Farmhouse right across the street and in fact it's an insurance agency that I still buy my insurance through to this very day you know when I said I was releasing the quack today I meant it in the truest sense of the word I'm going to be opening up this gate and getting the ducks and geese in particular up under the upper pasture and they're going to start free-ranging for the entire summer so now they have an open gate where they can get up to there if they can't get to the pond now all I need to do is get some birds now part one of moving your birds involves moving your water and watering infrastructure and then part two involves moving the location of their food rations so you can see I got their food set up here now and their water set up right here and because they have these Quick Connect points scattered pretty much everywhere it's easy to just run a hose right to where their water goes now eventually actually they're going to get hungry and thirsty and so they will start to naturally migrate their way through that gate and out into this big pasture I even set up housing for them and shelters over on that side and so I'll just kind of let them free range I might restrict them from certain parts of this at various times of the year I just got to kind of watch carefully and figure that one out I'll leave this gate open for several days letting them all kind of eventually migrate out before I chase them all out I also still need to move the chickens from the lower pasture to the upper pasture so they're following the cattle but yes it's time for this area to get some rest and I'll do some clean out and composting as well as planting food into the hoop coop so that I have feed for the animals come winter time you see that Abby dog high up there on the pasture watching over the farm I really kind of like that site [Music] well yesterday I received word that Fran passed away he was 88 years old and he's been dealing with some health challenges the last couple of years man oh I got that news just I've been in just a very very sad mood ever since he was such a good guy he lived such an incredible life I'm gonna personally miss his friendship and going over there and hearing his stories and I just feel like his passing is another marker of an end of an era you know Fran was a guy who spent his entire life living here in Peach him in fact he even used to joke that his wife was an immigrant because she came from Danville which is like just the next town over you know he was a guy who grew up on his father's old-fashioned dairy farm went to school in a one-room schoolhouse but then he saw that shift of what happened to the dairy industry in Vermont and really lived through that entire era and now is that era of the Vermont dairy farm starts to end and shift and change Fran's passing kind of coincides with it now there's a really great family who misses their husband father grandfather uncle and I find myself missing my friend awesome [Music] foreign

Channel: Gold Shaw Farm

Views: 129,053

Keywords: gold shaw farm, duck farm, goose farm, vermont farm, farm fence, farm vlog, highland cattle, scottish highland, scottish highlands, scottish highland cow, scottish highland cattle, scottish highland calf, goose farmer, small farm, organic farming, family farm

Id: 1TMVc-Dhyco

Length: 14min 53sec (893 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 10 2023