(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] From the
congestion of the Kittery Malls,
take a right along Maine
Route 101 Northwest
on Wilson and Goodwin
Roads to Route 236.
This is farming country
and it has been for
several centuries.
- [Man] When I was younger
there were many farms
on Wilson Road and Goodwin Road.
Starting down at Kittery
is the Pettigrew Farm.
And then there was
Nelson Pearson,
The Johnsons, and across
the street from the Johnsons
was Woodland Dairy and Hy Rowan.
He milked cows and he
also processed milk.
And then, the Moulton
Farm, Larry Cashmere,
who still operates that today.
Still has cattle there.
And then the next
one would be our own.
And then Schultz was milk cows.
Before him was Frost
in there that milked.
(lively harmonica music)
- [Narrator] In
1771, Daniel Goodwin
joined other farmers on
this winding country road.
He raised 15 children
and had 91 grandchildren,
many of whom settled along
the same road that was
eventually named for the
many Goodwin families.
(upbeat music)
If you were driving
here 50 years ago,
the scenery would look
much as it does today.
During the growing season,
the road is bordered
with fields of alfalfa
and corn and pastures
of grass later to be
cut for hay and silage.
These crops feed dairy cows.
50 years ago there were
eight or nine dairy farms
along this eight mile
stretch of winding road.
Many of the farmhouses
and some of the fields
and a few of the barns remain.
Now there are just
two dairy farms,
the last two in
this area of Maine.
Five generations of the
Pettigrew family operated
the first farm at the
east end of Wilson Road.
The Pettigrews were
self sufficient for
most of their needs.
In addition to a
small dairy herd,
the family raised barn
yard animals for meat
and also had a large
vegetable garden
and a variety of fruit trees.
Home canned vegetables,
hams, turkeys, chickens,
sheep and root crops sustained
the family through the winter.
Many of the long gone
farms along this road
operated in a similar fashion.
Willis Pettigrew was
the last working farmer
but he stopped in the 1960s.
Like many other farmers,
Willis eventually tired
of milking his cows
twice a day in addition
to working at the
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
Today, Willis' granddaughter
has a dog kennel here.
Just up the road is
the Pearson place,
farmed most recently
by Nelson Pearson, Sr.,
who died in 2008.
He grew up on the
farm and eventually
bought it from his mother.
She had operated
the farm herself
for a number of years
after her husband died.
- My family bought
the farm in 1921.
And it had not
been used as a farm
for probably 30 years,
it'd been going down hill.
So, they end up clearing
the land that was growing up
and bringing it up to a
more modern type farm.
My father bought the farm
from his mother about 1947
and he kept farming and
modernizing 'til about '89,
he sold the main
part of the land.
He kept a few cows
into the early 90s.
And he hayed the property
up until about 2000, 2001.
He also had worked out,
he worked in the woods
when he was young
to help bring in
extra money for them.
And, my mother
worked on the farm.
She also was a delivery
mail, for the post office.
My father was a true
animal lover, we'll say.
He hated to see his
cows go into slaughter.
He was a non-sentimental
animal lover.
(video camera buzz
drowns out man)
- He had 38 milking
cows and then he had
young stock usually
around 50 to 55 head.
He had, I think it was about
120-some acres all together,
some pastureland,
mostly hay and corn.
- [Narrator] Now the Pearson
place is no longer a farm.
Its barn is empty but its
pastures remain productive
as others continue
to hay the fields.
(motor hums)
In 2010, Young Alex Tobey
of South Berwick was haying,
making large rolled bails
for the current owner
who has the fields
mowed and bailed
and uses the hay for his
cattle in North Berwick.
(birds call)
A half mile beyond the Pearson
Farm is the Johnson Farm.
The current Pearsons and
Johnsons are related.
Their grandmothers
were friends in Sweden
and emigrated to
the United States.
The women married Swedish
men and the families
first settled in Massachusetts.
In 1921, the Pearsons
bought an old
rundown farm on Wilson Road.
The Johnsons often
visited the farm
and their son, Chester,
enjoyed helping out.
Eventually, he
studied agriculture
at the University
of Massachusetts.
He also got to know the
Pearson's daughter, Elsa.
They married and began a farm
in Bridgewater, Massachusetts.
Chet and Elsa then
bought an abandoned farm
on Wilson Road in
1947 and built a barn.
They raised nine children
and operated award-winning
Rustlewood Farm together,
until Elsa's death in 2003.
In an oral history
interview, Chester Johnson
recalled the beginning
of that farm.
- We moved to Maine in '47.
Well this farm was
George Haye's farm,
and actually hadn't been farmed,
I think he was the
last one that mowed it,
he said he hadn't
mowed it for 22 years
and I don't think
it had been farmed
for maybe like about 35 years,
but the land was still
in pretty good shape and
Nels let me use his
tractor, well in fact
he did most of the plowing.
Then we moved up
here and Nels let me
use the field
across the road that
was Hy Rowan's that he had used.
That shows how farmers
treat one another.
I really appreciated that.
He helped me build
the barn and then
he wanted all the
way over to York
and rented a field over there.
He let me use that
one field, so,
that's the history
of North Kittery
as far as I'm concerned.
We moved up with three kids
and wound up with nine.
(crowd laughs)
There's two still on the
farm working with me now.
I was told there
were 29 dairy farms
in the early '30s
in Kittery, and now
we're the only one left.
- [Narrator] Today, Richard
Johnson and his wife,
Beth, operate Rustlewood Farm.
Brother David Johnson,
also works on the farm
along with several
part time people
who help with field
work, milking and
equipment maintenance.
- They moved up in '47 with
three kids and I think 20 cows.
They just built a brand new barn
before they moved
all the cows up.
(upbeat music)
Too many people can't say this,
but I've never had another job.
I've spent my entire life
working on this farm.
I've always enjoyed the
farm, always had chores to do
from little grasshopper
all the way up.
My job here in the
summertime as a kid,
I used to let the
cows out there.
They used go out to
pasture day and night.
We actually own
320 acres of land.
It's not all open land, it's
a lot of woods and swamps,
got a couple ponds and
streams and wetlands.
We also rent probably
another 100 acres
and I actually have 250
acres tillable of field land
that I actually use,
crop every year,
between corn silage and
raising alfalfa and grass.
I either make silage
out of the grass
or dry it down to
make bailed hay.
- I remember when I was like 13,
I started milking
cows but previous,
I guess I would just
come up here with my mom
and get to kind of like hang out
and ride my bike around,
that sort of thing.
I definitely learned what
hard work is, for sure.
And it's just, you know,
not a lot of people
get to live on a
farm and enjoy it
and it's beautiful up here.
- A lot of it is
hands-on experience.
I've seen about
everything you could
possibly see with cows.
I have a veterinary
that comes in,
does preg checks
with an ultrasound.
He can detect a
pregnancy at 28 days.
Other than that, I do all
the health work of the cows.
I vaccinate 'em, I dehorn
em, I hoof trim em.
Whatever it takes to kind
of keep them healthy.
We feed them a balanced
diet of corn, hay and grain.
We grow about 60 acres off
corn, probably another 60 acres
of alfalfa and the
remainder of it
is grass that we use to
chop up and make silage.
Anything that we chop
we store in Ag-Bags,
they call 'em, they
look like a great big
white caterpillar, as my
youngest boy would say.
And, the bags are 200 feet long,
they're nine feet
in diameter and
they're folded like an accordion
and the machine that
have will actually
pack it right into
the bag and push
the machine ahead
as it's packing it.
And it basically packs
it to keep the air
out of it, to keep
an air tight seal
and it stays good
for quite a while
until there's a hole pole
poked into the Ag-Bags from,
crows are the biggest problems.
Crows with corn silage,
they're buggers.
The corn is a real good
energy source for cows.
I mostly use the
corn for the cows
because I have plenty of
grass for the heifers.
Corn and alfalfa make a
real good combination.
Alfalfa is a good protein source
and corn is a good
energy source.
The two combined makes
a real good ration
for dairy cows, milking cows.
They're stored all separately,
but when they're
fed to the cows,
they're all mixed together.
When a cow takes a bite,
a mouthful of feed,
they're basically getting
all the same stuff
through every mouthful.
We still do buy a commercial
grain to balance it off.
- We met at church and he
finally caught up to me
and asked me out, and
when he told me he was
a dairy farmer, I just
thought he was pulling my leg.
I didn't believe him, you
know, until he actually
took me to the farm
and showed me around.
I was like totally amazed.
I register the cows like
his mother used to do.
That puts them into the
Holstein association,
gives them a name and number,
it's kind of like a pedigree,
who their mother and
father, or dam and sire are.
And it just kind of
gives the information
and makes them a little
bit more valuable
to people that may
want to buy them.
I do all the bookwork
and see all the bills
and pay everybody,
all the help and
the guys that come up
and do our haying for us.
And basically keep his
head screwed on tight,
so that he can keep on farming.
Feed him, feed and
water him (laughs).
I have to take
care of the farmer
so the farmer can
take care of the cows.
Yeah, I mean, it's
a constant paycheck
but that paycheck can
vary so very greatly
due to host of
things, market value,
what's going over as
exports and imports.
It just seems like when
farmers are not getting
a good price for the
milk, then they start
adding more cows on
to make more milk
and that's a problem
because then you have
a glut of milk
and then you have,
you know, a lot of
cheese sitting around
and butter and all that excess
and that just brings
your prices back down.
Over the last 2009,
it's been horrendous
and a lot of farms had
to go out of business
because they just
couldn't make it.
So, it's a constant battle.
And something that
farmers definitely have to
figure out what
they're gonna do,
dairy farmers I should say,
how they're gonna control
that milk so that they
can get a decent price
and that will sustain
them through, you know,
different varying times.
- We used to hay a lot,
and then we found out
that actually chopping
and making silage
is a lot quicker, a
lot less manual labor.
I've been doing a lot
of haying and selling
the hay for horse
hay or whatever.
And I hire a lot of
local neighborhood kids
or whatever to help pick up
the hay in the summertime
and get a pretty
good crew together
and they kinda
enjoy that at times.
(engine rumbles)
I sell most all the
baled hay, the dry hay.
I've actually baled as
many as 5,000 bales.
We have Holsteins,
they're black and white,
they're all registered.
The actually probably average
weight of our Holstein
is anywheres between
14-1700 pounds.
My cows right now
are giving anywheres
from 70 to 80 pounds
of milk a day.
And a gallon of
milk is 8.6 pounds.
If a cow gave 86
pounds, that would
be 10 gallons of milk
that's they give.
And I do have cows
that are giving that.
I got some cows giving
over 100 pounds of milk.
- I have 10 Jersey cows and was
selling some raw milk
here till last year
and then I teamed up
with Richard Johnson
and Richard now milks my
cows and he breeds 'em
and they calve, they come
back to the farm here
and calve and I raise
the calves for him.
So, we're kind of working
team work together.
He helps me out
financially with it
and I'm able to keep the cows.
- Right now I have
70 milking cows
and when you have 70 milking
cows, you always have
some that are what
we call dry cows.
In other words,
they're on vacation.
There's a period of 50
days where you don't
actually milk em, and
then after 50 days,
they'll be having
their baby or calf,
and then when
they're due to calf,
they'll actually
start bagging up
and it will, the
udder will become full
and swollen and
uncomfortable and (laughs)
and when they calf,
you start milking em
and some of them
don't like but they
appreciate it
afterwards (laughs).
- [Narrator] Richard
Johnson breeds
his dairy cows using
semen delivered
by Amy Jasmine.
- The semen comes
from bulls housed in
Ithaca and in
Shawano in Wisconsin.
We have, we contract
certain bulls
and we also have
our own dairy herd
out in Wisconsin
that we do a lot
of research with on the
semen and on the bulls.
(machine whirs)
I Will say that
the smaller farms,
the herds this size,
they're managed well
and those are the ones that are
better able to stay in
it, so it has gotten
a lot better over the last year.
The milk prices have gone up.
The only question is,
it's always a question
hopefully they'll
stay there so they can
(laughs) keep going
and make a living
not just break even, but
actually make a profit.
- After a cow calves,
the first six milkings
we discard, it basically
is colostrum milk,
that milk goes to
feed the calves.
We feed em with a
bottle and nipple
(clears throat) we
found out if you take
a new born calf and let
it suck on the mother,
you really don't know
just how much milk
the calf is getting
in and they actually
should get about
a gallon of milk
within the first
two hours of birth
but you only, most
cows give a lot more
than what the calf can drink,
so we discard the rest of it.
- The average working
lifespan of a veterinary now
is 30 years and three months
and I've done it for 46.
I absolutely love what I do.
Many of my young farmers
now have advanced degrees
in bovine nutrition,
bovine genetics
agronomy, type of thing
and so I'm dealing
with a much higher
educated population.
My work in many
respects is consulting,
more than hands on,
I've got Rick trained
to do a lot of
things and helping
with delivery of calves coming,
that I used to have
to run and do myself.
I have him trained in
preventative health care.
He's very very good at it.
Rick Johnson and
this Johnson Farm
is one of the good farms
in Northern New England
and a few years back, they won
what was called the
Green Pastures Award
which is the top dairy
farm in the state of Maine.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Across the
street from the Johnson Farm
is the former Woodland Dairy.
Harry Cook started the business,
but it was later
acquired by Hy Rowan,
who lived and worked there with
his wife and 10 children.
They had a dairy herd
in processed milk
acquired from other farmers.
The dairy closed in the 1960s.
Robert Rowan, the
youngest children,
and his daughter
Jenna live there now
and both of them work
part time milking
for the Johnsons.
- Dad had a pasteurizing
plant down the stairs
and he pasteurized milk and
delivered it door to door
and delivered on Saturday
and on my days off
I used to go with
him and deliver milk.
Father had Holsteins.
- Holsteins?
- He had some golden
Guernseys to start with,
but as everybody knows,
the Holsteins give
more milk, and so they
he gradually switched
over to all Holsteins.
It's called green cut
where he went from
the chopper, green
cut everything,
and take it back
to the bunk silo,
unload it, and then
a tractor would
ride over it back and
forth to pack it down.
(cows moo)
(machine whirs)
- [Jenna] So I've been
milking the cows for 10 years.
I started when I
twas 14 years old,
learned how to milk a cow and
I've been using
obviously the machines
that they have
here, so I help out
milking, just the
milking portion.
Yeah, originally I
was very frightened.
I was very frightened
of the cows,
and they can kick,
so it can hurt
and at times I've
been hurt, but a lot
of people ask me
if I like farming
and enjoy the cows
and more so I really
like helping out Ricky,
he has a lot to do
on the farm and it's a good job
and such like
that, so it's good,
hard honest work and
boss taught me a lot
about what it is to work
and the work ethic here.
Definitely has one
of those here, so.
(machine whirs)
- Been driving,
hauling milk since 1965
and it's been a
long time, really.
On this road, I've been
driving on this road there
for quite a few
years, had about five,
six farms I used to pick
up then on this road.
One of them was David
Leavitt and Larry Cashmere,
and Freddy Schultz, and
Mr Johnson over here
and then his,
there's another farm
down the road's
a relation to him
over there down the road and
I've picked up a lot
of milk in my days.
Years ago, a big
farm, that was two,
three thousand pounds
of milk, now it's
a big farm is 30,000,
that's half a truck load.
That's the way it is
now, 'cause they had to
put up more volume so
they could make it.
But I've seen a lot of
farms go out of business.
(machine beeps)
(machine whirs)
Yeah, got 16 farms
and one day and put it
in a 3500 gallon
tank, we thought
that was pretty good
(laughs) but now
we're hauling 69,000
pound on a 22 wheeler
and so that's pretty good.
Today's going to Franklin, Mass,
over at Garelick
and that's where
I've been hauling every
other day I go there.
Hood's, sometimes
we go over to Hood's
when they need it in Portland.
And West Lynn in Lynn,
Mass, we go there.
Started six o'clock this morning
and I won't get
back to garage until
probably about eight
o'clock tonight
if everything goes good (laughs)
and so it is, you know,
that's milk business.
You never know.
(machine whirs)
- [Narrator] Larry and
Nancy Cashmere moved
to the Moulton Farm in 1973.
He is descended from
Major Joseph Hammond
who arrived in
South Eliot in 1670.
Later members of
the Hammond family
spread to East Eliot and York.
A Hammond daughter
married a Moulton,
beginning the Moulton farm.
Sylvester Moulton built
the current house in 1840.
Although no longer
dairy farming,
Cashmere still has a small herd.
More pets than anything
else, and he does
custom sawing with
a portable rig.
His 150 acres of
fields and woods
stretches from
Goodwin Road to the
marshes of the York River.
Larry hopes that
one day, his land
will be preserved as open space.
- We moved here in 1973.
Over the course of three years,
we got the place ready
to start milking cows
and so in '76 we
started shipping milk,
in September of '76.
I had the bright idea I
wanted to be a dairy farmer.
(laughs) I did it till '99.
Yeah, and it got
to a point where
I decided the price
of milk goes down,
the kids were all gone.
It's just too much
work for the two of us.
So I figured now's the time
to get rid of the animals.
We had 91 milkers
and we had 90 heifers
so we had about 180, 181 head.
I think it was bigger
than Johnsons even, yeah.
Johnsons at the time
about 160 head, I believe.
Yeah, they're my pets,
there's 20 of em.
Nah, just I don't
know, I just like
having em around
(laughs) I don't know.
Everybody asks me,
why do I keep em
I don't know, I still grow corn,
I still crow 19 acres of corn.
I still maintain the fields.
Back in the '70s
we bought some land
so it's up to a
area of 150 acres.
Not much for row furnace,
it all goes down back.
I don't know so much
of the saw mill's just
something to do,
something else to do.
I enjoy cutting wood,
I need to cut wood
for my own use,
people come around
like they have some logs
cut out for themselves.
They like the thicker
number, especially
for your older homes,
they require a little bit
thicker than what
there is today.
- [Narrator] In Eliot
the rolling fields
of David and Jeannie
Leavitt, once a dairy farm
and now a productive
haying operation,
catches the eyes of passers by.
The beauty of the
roadside hay field
belies its utilitarian purpose.
The story of the Leavitt
family is typical
of many former diary farms.
(machine whirs)
- I started in 1958.
My father had decided
he did not wanna
milk cows anymore,
my brother and I
didn't want the cows
to go and we agreed to
keep milking them
even though we were
still in high school, I
was a senior at the time
my brother was a freshman.
I graduated from
high school, I also
played baseball through
the fall season.
My brother would milk
nights so I could do that
and that was the very beginning.
(machine whirs)
My father lost his farm in
a disastrous fire in 1956.
(fire crackles)
He was not comfortable
with borrowing money
and the credit that had
been extended to him
to get going again
and he wanted out
and that's when my brother and I
decided to milk the cows.
In 1963, I purchased the cattle
and the machinery from him
and then later on,
I purchased the farm
I think about 1965,
didn't have a house on it,
my father kept his house,
but I bought the barns
and all the land, and then about
1967, Jeanne and I
built a new house
down where the new
barn was located
and I bought other
land and added to that
and at one time I
owned about 232 acres
of which about 105
were crop land.
It grew all the feed for
the dairy herd that we had
and we only had
to buy the grain.
After we got rid of
the cows, we sold some
of that land off, so that
the present operation
is 131 acres left
here and about 60
to 65 of that is crop
land that we hay.
When we first got
married, Jeanne worked
on the Air Base Exchange.
When she was pregnant
with the first child
she came back on the farm,
worked on the farm with me.
(upbeat music)
- It's been nice
being a farmer's wife
raising our children here.
They've worked hard,
kept em out of trouble.
They've learned a lot of things
that they've been
able to take with em
into their adult
life and they've all
got different jobs
now that don't pertain
to the farm but they
seem to come back
and help us on the farm.
So they still enjoy it.
- My farming knowledge and genes
would go back
through my mother's
side of the family, her
father John S. Barnard
came to Eliot in
1906 and he bought
the airport property,
it was about 260 acres
in that at the time, he
was an orchard farmer,
he had other
businesses, he milked
a few cows and did
a lot of things
but my mother grew up
on that hill over there
at the airport and she
married the farmer,
Mills Goodwin, who
owned this farm
out here on Goodwin
Road, and he only lived
a year and he died
and she became
the sole owner of the place.
And my grandfather that
was called on there,
he milked his cows
at the airport
and he came over and took
care of her herd of cows
and eventually he
moved his over here
and he still, he
ran the whole place
which was probably
350-400 acres of land
that he farmed and.
My father started
working for him
and eventually married my mother
and everything was
going great because
my grandfather was
running the place
my father was just really
a hired hand around here
but when my grandfather
died, he became
the soul operator and
he did not like that.
He really didn't.
I can remember now
when I was a kid
following him round
the barn, he used to
turn his hat around
backwards when
he was milking the
cows and he'd lean up
on the flanks and
he was singing away
over and over he said
once I was happy,
but look at me now,
I'm tied to the tail
of this old brown cow (laughs)
and so when I came
along and he had
an opportunity to get
out and it took him
20 years, he had
a 20 year detour
on what he wanted
to do before he
before I came along
and took over the farm
and he could leave
and he went on
to work for the state of Maine
as a field man
for the Tax Bureau
but when Jeanne
got more involved
in the operation, we decided to
go with registered Holsteins and
that's when we decided
we'd set a number
that we would milk
just 40 and just
try to keep improving
the herd and culling out
the less desirable ones.
We didn't feed much hay.
We'd feed maybe four,
five, six pounds of hay
per cow per day, we
chopped all the first crop
put it in the silos
and we could do that
earlier in the year and
it made better feed,
higher protein and we
used to grow alfalfa
for the protein and
that is a hard crop
to make in the hay anyway,
so that's the only thing
this part of the country
you can do with it
is to make it into silage.
We used that for
the protein source
and then we grew corn
silage for the energy.
Then we blended those
two in a feed wagon
and we fed it right
on top of the ground
to the cows at the feed bunk
and they stood out there
in the sleet, the rain,
snow, wind whatever
and they ate (laughs).
When we first started,
we hired part-timers.
Larry Cashmere
took in work for us
for two years, he
milked once a day for us
that helped, then following him,
Robert Rowan worked here.
Paul Randalf comes
to mind as one of em.
- I went to work
for Frank Sergeant,
who lived over on
the Beech Road and
Frank took me over
one day to see
David Leavitt and David
Leavitt gave me a job.
I was 11 years old and I worked
every day after
school and Saturday
and Sundays and I
enjoyed it immensely.
(cock crows)
- We had full time help.
We had the time off,
but we didn't have
as much money to travel
or do what we wanted
and it just, the farm
wasn't big enough
to support two families with it
and we milked cows for 30 years
and then in the 1980s,
the dairy business
turned down, for us
anyway, and we decided
that it was time to
take the money out
and we sold the herd.
(upbeat music)
Well after we sold
the cows, I thought
I was gonna retire (laughs).
Well I found out that I
didn't like that particularly,
and also pay the taxes
and keep things up
that we needed and
wanted, I needed
more income, so we
decided to go back
into the haying business
and there's a pretty good
market in this
part of the country
for a small bale of hay,
for the horse people
and alpacas and
sheep and goats and
a lot of small farms buy hay and
that has become profitable
for a side line.
It would be hard to
make a full living on it
but on our small
farm, it's very good
supplemental income and in 2011,
we put 8100 bales of hay.
Up until just a short time ago,
I did that haying
pretty much myself.
We took in, we bought
an automatic bail wagon
which picks that
hay up in the field
and sets it into the barn and
you don't have to stack it.
The mulch barn we
still stack by hand
and my kids were called
in to help on that
and they did so,
but at one time,
I mowed the hay,
I tended the hay
I raked the hay, I baled
the hay and hauled the hay
and that hay wasn't
touched by human hands
until we loaded
in on a truck and
sold it to customers.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Just
beyond the Leavitt farm
is the home of Eleanor Pearsall.
For several decades, she
and her husband David
sold and serviced
Case farm tractors
and related farming equipment.
Born 84 years ago in the house
where she now lives,
Eleanor remembers when
nearly every place on
Goodwin Road was a farm.
(upbeat music)
Most of them owned
by families named Goodwin.
- One day my husband
came in and he said
you know, he said, the
man from Massachusetts
from Rowley that
repairs Case tractors
keeps coming in here, he keeps
coming down to repair
Mr. Blake's tractors,
he has two Case tractors
and he's getting tired
of coming all this way to put in
a 50 cent bolt, so he
came in and he said
to my husband, why
don't you take on
the Case franchise
tractor business.
So my husband came
in and he said
how would you like to
get into tractor business
and I said my, I don't
know anything about it
but I guess we
could, and I pictured
one tractor In
the yard out here.
Little did I know
they came by 12s.
They came by 12 agricultural
and 12 industrial.
They came by 12
manure spreaders,
12 plows, 12 bailors, 12 rakes,
and I had panic city
when I of course
saw the invoices coming
in, but we made a go of it.
I worked nights nursing
and then I'd work
in the garage in the
parts department all day.
I didn't know a
bailor needle from
the plowshare, but I
sure learned (laughs).
- [Narrator] John Sullivan was
a farm worker in his
youth, but he spent
his working life elsewhere.
What remained for him was a love
of tractors and
eventually, he began
to buy old tractors
and restore them.
One or two tractors
have led to many more,
mostly bright green John Deeres.
- Well, when I worked
down here on this farm,
I used the John Deere,
that John Deere B here,
the John Deere A, he used that,
and I used the John Deere B and
when I got out of
Simplex, went to
the Navy Yard to
work, there was a guy
in there looking for
a cut down tractor
and the guy in the machine shop
said he had a regular tractor.
He said it was a
John Deere, this guy
said I don't want it,
would you like it,
you like John
Deeres, so I went up
to look at it and
ended up buying that.
While we was waiting
for the coil to dry
in the oven to get it started,
we went over to his
father's, which was
Fred Oback, and he had
another John Deere,
the same model with a
mowing machine on it
out in the barn so
we looked at that and
then he said we've
got another one
for what we use for
parts out in the pasture,
so I went and looked
at that and ended up
buying all three of em
and bringing em home.
I sold one, used the
other one for parts
and I ended up buying
John Deere Ls and LAs,
I had about six of
them for a while but
I didn't like them
too good and I bought
these big As what I
use in the parade.
Got one there that's 1936,
I pulled it all apart
sand blasted it, primed
it and painted it
and put new fenders,
tires, rings,
valve job and done it
all over I used that
in parades, shows all the time
and I got a John Deere
40 that I just done
redone last year, I
got a John Deere H
in the shed, one
of the first ones
I ever bought there,
and I got a couple
more John Deere As
hanging around here.
And I bought a Kubota
way back when they
first came out to
mow my lawn with.
I ended up I got
three of them now
and I got a Silver
King in the shed.
I got a Gibson in
the shed and I got
seven pedal tractors,
all different makes
here and there, yep (laughs).
- Bert Tuttle knew farmers
were a thirsty bunch
so in 1903, he bought
a used cider press
and began King Tut's Cider Mill,
turning out barrels of
cider for local consumption.
Now, more than a
hundred years later,
Bert's grandson, Ken, continues
the family tradition
using the original press
in the original building.
From late September
through the end
of the year, Tuttle
produces choice,
sweet cider from
crisp Maine apples.
- Yep, my grandfather
bought the mill used
and he put it together
in 1903, so I'm not sure
how old the thing
really is, but it's been
running every yeah since.
(machines whir)
And we had a farm, we
had about 200 acres
of dairy farm and
he put the mill in
just to make cider
for the farmers.
(machine clacks)
Every farm had their own orchard
so he was only
open for four weeks
out of the year just
while the apple season
was going on.
(machine whirs)
He had a saw mill, and the slabs
from the saw mill used
to run the press here
which was run by steam.
(machine whirs)
He was a conductor on the PD&Y,
which is the Portsmouth,
Dover and York
railroad line, or trolley
line, out back here
and he wired into
that for electricity
back in the 30s and
busted up the boiler
and started using
electric motors,
which mad it a lot
easier, more convenient.
(machine whirs)
(machine hisses)
We buy apples from
all over the area,
we don't have our own orchards.
(machines clack)
Dump em in, grind em up.
(machine whirs)
And then there's a 50 ton press
that squeezes the juice
out in the cheese cloths.
(machine clacks)
(machine whirs)
(machine clacks)
And the juice is
transferred to a
bottling facility
and we bottle it
into gallons and half
gallons and pints.
(machine clacks)
And it goes out into the
store and under refrigeration.
We're only open
weekends, so any time,
come on down and
the end of September
till Christmas, and get some of
the best cider in
the country (laughs).
- [Narrator] Most
farmers say farming
is in their blood.
They begin working
on the family farm
as youngsters, and
eventually acquire the farm
when their parents retire.
For Fred Schultz, farming
came later in life.
He caught lobsters as
a high school student,
graduated from college,
and then worked
in Portsmouth for his
father's frankfurter
and sausage making business.
In the 1960s, he
and his wife Tony,
bought an old farm in Eliot.
Soon they became farmers too.
Fred mainly works
alone, although he often
has assistance with milking.
- My father had
horses, race horses
and I learned the value of
the attraction of trying
to breed better animals and
just really take
an enjoyment from
the care of the animals
and the nourishment
of em and trying
to do everything
as good as you can to
make as comfortable
and productive an
animal as you can and
when I was a kid in high school,
every summer I caught lobsters.
That's very similar,
doesn't sound similar,
probably to the
average person, but
it's similar in that
you're on your own,
every day you gotta
get up and do something
and make something
out of the day
and it's your responsibility and
really if you start with
that, you can do something.
1968 I was in college
and casting around
looking while at the
same time I was working
for my father, I was
finishing college at night.
I kinda thought I
had a career with
my father's business,
he had a very successful
sausage business, but as I
as time went on
and I really grew
to like the place I
increasingly became
attracted to this way
of life and I started
in earnest in 1976 on my own.
(machine whirs)
Chester Frost bought
the little parcel
over there in about
1860 and then he added
this major piece,
the Gowan piece in 19
about 1900 and the other one was
from a Shapley, in
the Shapley years,
their cemetery is
across the street there
and they constructed those
two barns over there.
So I started out with purebreds,
they are purebred,
but I start keeping
the papers up
this is the second herd I've had
and the second herd
I didn't have time
really to do it, but
I know the lineage
of all of em, I keep
a record of that
and right now
there's about 80 head
on the farm, there's
about 45 cows
and 45 milking cows as they say.
The bankers always
wanna know how many
milking cows you have,
how many young stock.
There's about 40/45 milking cows
we were miking this
morning 37 cows
produced about 2300/2400
pounds of milk today
yesterday, so and
there's probably about
so that means there's
about 40 young stock.
There's two animals
right over there in heat
that's one of the
primary jobs I have is
to keep them bred and
keep em reproducing.
(upbeat music)
Generally, you try to keep a cow
as long as you can, you
enjoy sustaining the cow,
seeing the cow go
through the cycles
of calving, milking, breasting,
starting it again and
you try your damnedest
to keep em happy and healthy.
But it's a constant
learning experience.
It's constantly challenging.
And you get the
feelings sometimes
you don't do as good
a job as you should
or you can't and you
have to pay for it.
It's very important
what you get done
at this time of
year, get your first
crop off on hay
as soon as you can
to make the best
feed you can for em
to get your corn
planted and get things
set up for the whole year.
So a day like today you get up,
it's the same as every
day and you first
take care of your
cows, that's the way
I look at it, is
the cows come first.
- And when we got
married, that's when
he informed me that
some day he's going
to have a farm, oh I
guess it must have been
probably 10 years later,
we did have a farm
and we didn't have
cows then, it was
a real mess, the farm,
the house was a mess and
after a couple of years
fixing the house up
and the fields a
little, we, I decided
we probably should have
a cow, so we got a cow
and we named her
Blossom and from there
Fred liked it and used to visit
Dave Leavitt's farm and
Frank Sergeant's farm
and to learn about
farming because Fred has
an education, he's
a English major
and he also has a
degree in sociology
but he didn't have any
knowledge of farming
and cows and animal husbandry so
then we had five
cows and he started
milking em all himself,
he still worked
in Portsmouth and we
got to about 15 cows
he stopped working in Portsmouth
and we'd milk the cows.
At that time, I
think Fred was doing
all the milking and
the two older children
and I would do chores,
we'd take care of calves
and clean the aisles
and help feed and
then of course as
the years went by
we got more and
more cows and then
at one point I started
milking and as the girls
got older, they started
milking and then
our son came along
and eventually
all the children had
chores in the morning
before they went to
school, so they'd get up
in the morning and run
out and do their chores
and come in and take
their clothes off and
wash themselves up because
they didn't wanna smell
and go off and then at
night, when they came home
from school, we used
to eat supper early.
We'd eat around
four, 4:30, and then
we'd go do the chores,
because otherwise,
we didn't know what time
we would get in at night
because there's always
something happening in the barn.
(upbeat music)
- Today I'm gonna do,
I'm gonna chop that
grass feed I made
three, four days ago.
It's really finest kind of feed.
We've had this dry
weather and I cut it
really a great pleasure
to make feed like that
in comparison to, for example,
last year it just seemed
to rain all the time
it was tough and so
it's all about after
you get your cows
taken care off,
getting in the middle
of the day, your
equipment maintained
and operating right.
And the other thing is the cows
have to out every day
for a certain amount
of time and depending
on how hot it is,
like today it looks
like it's gonna be
real nice, I'm gonna put
em out in the afternoon.
So they don't like
wind, they don't like
hot sun, and they don't
like a hard rain, so.
You kinda work around that.
They're like you and
I that you can see
they look forward when
the weather's good,
when the weather's
nice, you can see
they look forward
to getting out,
walking around, you
know bumping each other,
being in the herd
and you can see
they enjoy it, I always
have in the summertime,
when you have that hot weather,
it's hot all day and the barn is
you try to keep it, as
much air going through
the barn as you can,
it's comfortable,
but it's not like outside
and it's quite a feeling
that at night,
when they're milked
and you put, I try to
when the weather's right
to turn em out all night
and they just love it.
They march out and
I have feed for em
outside in those
racks and they just
march out, take a drink of water
and the air is so
different, you can just
appreciate how
much they like it.
All right, all right,
all right, come on.
Ready.
Come on.
(cow moos)
Come on.
(bucket clangs)
Come on.
- [Narrator] What
does the future hold
for other farms on
this winding road?
From Route 1 in
Kittery to Route 236,
there are nearly 1000
acres of open land
along route 101.
With good highways
near by, Kittery
and Eliot residents
can easily commute
to jobs in Portsmouth and Dover
and even Portland,
Manchester, and Boston.
Prime, open land no
longer farmed or hayed
becomes ripe for
residential development.
What happened to
those other farms
on Wilson and Goodwin roads?
Some farmers worked
until they died
or got too old to
work the long hours
necessary to maintain the farm.
If there were no family
members to carry on
then the farmer's
family sold off the cows
and the farm closed.
Other farmers, perhaps
tired of the long hours
and low pay just gave up farming
and in many cases, went to work
at the Portsmouth
Naval Shipyard.
The Pearson Farm
lasted more than
half a century, but
it too finally ended.
Its fields sold to other farmers
and its milking shed
became a machine shop.
Nelson Pearson Jr.
is not optimistic
about the future of
dairy farming in Maine.
- It really started,
earlier, I mean a small
10 cow, 12 cow operation
replaced by 20 cows.
Everybody said you got 20 cows
you can make a living,
so they had 20 cows
and then they went,
they said well it was 32
was the magic number,
so people worked the 32,
other ones dropped out,
and then of course the
Boat Tank pickup came and
was quite an investment
to most farms and
then there was a
and equipment changed, faster,
more expensive equipment
plus help and it slowly
couldn't keep up.
People kept dropping
out and an awful lotta
people that were
dairy and they slowly
fell by the wayside, well
now there's only a few left.
- The farming community
here in Northern
New England, there
were many more farms,
now there are, the
number's a lot less
but the number of
cattle probably
is the same or even more.
When I got out of
veterinary college in '66,
probably the average
number of cows
on the dairy farm was 25 or 30.
The smallest farm that
I take care of now
milks 65 and I have
several that milk 500.
I have many that milk
a hundred to 200.
Here at the Johnson Farm, I mean
back in '66 they
were probably milking
40 cows, now they milk
99, so for every farm
that went out, the
other farms expanded
and so the number
of cattle probably
hasn't changed
really much of any.
Today, I will make four stops.
In 1966, a normal day
perhaps was 12 stops.
- [Narrator] Fred Schultz
has a passion for farming.
He enjoys working with the cows
and producing fields
of high quality corn,
hay and alfalfa.
His children have other careers,
so the farm likely
will end when Fred
is no longer able to manage it.
He has no plans for
the farm's future.
- Well right now, it
would go to my wife
and she would probably,
she would no doubt
sell off the cows
and in concert with
my four other children,
I've got four children
that have good judgment,
they're all adults now and
they're all competent
but none of them
have any interest
in, well my son would
like to see it stay a farm, but
when you combine that with the
necessity to do
something with this
because you know, a place
once someone stops caring
for it, it starts to fragment.
I know that if a
person wants to have
a dairy farm here,
you have to have
the person with the mindset
and the skills to do it.
Especially the mindset
because a person
needs to be feels
responsible for these animals
an empathy for them and
enjoyment from them.
- [Narrator] Dave
Leavitt cares for
his fields like a golf
course greens keeper.
He has been at it for
more than 50 years
but each time he hays
requires at least
five trips across the fields,
usually on hot, sunny days.
Even driving the
tractor is hard work.
Often he cuts his
fields three times
in the season.
What will happen to
the farm when he is
no longer here to manage it?
- My feelings and maybe
not my wife's feelings
completely, but if
something happened to me
'cause she would own
the farm, if something
happened to both
of us, it would be
divided up among our
four children equally
in some method, probably
have to survey it
and give em each a part of it
'cause we gave em
the thing as a whole,
they'd fight over it.
I don't know if
there's a future for it
as far as agriculture,
I think probably
more recreational
and I've got a couple
of kids that are somewhat
interested in that and
that's kinda what we
are looking at right
now, but I don't wanna do
anything to it that
would tie their hands.
When I received it,
I had the freedom
to do what I wanted
with it, you have to
make the changes that
come along in life
and I would want
the same for them.
That they could do
what they thought
they had to do to make
it pay and make it gold.
Whether any one of em
could make a living
on it without any outside
income, I don't know.
Every farmer wants
his farmer to continue
wants somebody in
the family to run it,
want it to succeed,
especially when you have
a herd of registered
Holsteins, you hope
they'll take it over,
they can keep breeding
the cattle and continue,
but in this area
it just isn't easy
to stay farming.
- So like I say,
I have enjoyed it,
I don't wanna leave
it, I wanna stay here
the rest of my life, it's
really a nice place to live.
(somber music)
- [Narrator] For
Richard Johnson,
the continuation
of the family farm
has been difficult.
He was a partner with his father
and an older brother,
but Chester died in 2007
and the brother
wanted out of farming,
although he remained a
part-owner of the property.
That left Richard alone
to operate the farm.
Richard loves farming and
he loves the farm land.
To settle financial
issues and preserve
the farm for the future,
Richard has begun working
with Kittery Land Trust to
sell the development rights
and create an
agricultural easement.
The process is
complicated and will take
several years to complete.
The farm includes
streams that flow
into Spruce Creek
and the York River
and it has acres of
both fields and forests.
As time passes, this
land will remain
and important natural
resource for Kittery.
- This is kinda like
a dream come true,
this conservation easement,
I've always fought along
the way growing up
to not let somebody
build here or buy that
or put a road down
through the fields or
whatever, I always wanted
to maintain the original acres.
If this went to houses, I
think it would have been
a domino effect going
right up the road
with all the other
field land that the
other farmer's
have, but hopefully,
with this conservation easement,
it might be just the opposite,
time will tell and
I'm sure later on
down the road, it
will be the best thing
that ever happened.
- To get back to
your grass roots
is something that is necessary
for all of us, I
mean you can't forget
what came before
because otherwise,
what are we gonna
have in the future?
Somebody's gotta farm,
somebody's gotta fish,
somebody's gotta
cut lumber and do
those kinds of things
that are basic,
but very necessary, we
can't live without that.
It just, it's so
beautiful, I just can't
imagine seeing it turned
into anything else.
And we wanna protect that beauty
and I'd rather see
it growing something
than growing houses.
- [Narrator] Wilson
and Goodwin Roads
bisect a large portion
of the remaining
open space in Kittery and Eliot.
Along this winding road,
for several centuries,
people have cared
for their land as
they grew crops, hayed
fields, raised animals
and carefully cut
their wood lots.
When we began to film
this story in 2009,
the future of the open
land along Route 101
was unknown, now
the recent decision
of the Johnsons, ensures
that their undeveloped
fields and woodlands
will always border
at least part of the road.
(machine whirs)
Land protection
can happen quickly,
but farm land lost
to development
can never be reclaimed.
Eliot's open space plan
is calling attention
to the need for land protection.
Organizations such as
the Kittery Land Trust
and the Great Works Land Trust
provide a means for
individuals and communities
to permanently set aside
important and threatened acreage
for environmental
protection, water resources,
habitat preservation
and scenic beauty.
These historical farms
may be forgotten in time,
but the preservation
of their acres
will be a continual
reminder of the foresight
of the people in
the 21st century
and maybe, just maybe,
many years from now,
others will come to
these fertile lands
and, like the 20th
century Pearsons
and Johnsons, they will
bring the old farms
back to life, continuing a
tradition along Route 101.
- [Deidre] One,
two, three, four.
("Dig" by Deidre Randall)
♪ Dig
♪ Dig
♪ Down in the soil
♪ Almost time to
till the fields ♪
♪ So you change
the tractor's oil ♪
♪ Down in your heart
♪ Down where you steep
♪ You have always known
♪ How to dig deep
♪ The corn goes in
♪ Comes up green
♪ Wind shakes the tassels high
♪ As far as the eye can see
♪ Down in your heart
♪ Down where you know
♪ You have got a way
♪ Of making things grow
♪ It's been your family's land
♪ For 200 years
♪ Who'll be next in line
♪ To keep the farm
♪ Heavy hoof
♪ Copper bell
♪ You raise them up
♪ You treat them well
♪ Up at the farm
it's three a.m. ♪
♪ That Jersey Delilah
is calving again ♪
♪ Earth and land
♪ Land and sky
♪ Once it's gone
won't get it back ♪
♪ No matter what you try
♪ Down in your heart
♪ Down where you steep
♪ You have always known
♪ How to dig deep
♪ It's been your family's land
♪ For 100 years
♪ Who'll be next in line
♪ To keep the farm