The moment I pull into the driveway, I can tell there’s trouble. It’s harvest season, when the soundtrack of a typical country day is filled with the steady hum and roar, sunup to sundown, of farm machinery. But here at Liberty Hill, a farm-stay inn in Rochester, Vermont, that is also the working farm of the Kennett family, it is strangely quiet. All four tractors are sitting idle in the yard.
As I get out of my car, I hear the telltale clanging of a hammer against sheet metal, signaling a futile attempt to free up some balky part. I recognize that sound from growing up on a family farm. It’s the song that sings of something jammed or busted. It’s a call for men to gather around a piece of equipment and exchange advice and ideas. Sure enough, Bob Kennett and his son Tom are sprawled under the corn chopper with greasy hands, bloodied knuckles.
As it turns out, it isn’t big trouble, just typical farm trouble. The corn was finally dry and ready for harvest after a rainy summer. But the machine gave out after chopping just a few rows to stubble, leaving the 100-acre field with the look of a half-shaved face.
For an impossible moment, as I cross the farmyard, I expect to see my own dad crawling out from beneath the tractor, his shirt stuck to his back with sweat. But it is Bob who emerges. Short and wiry, dark hair hidden beneath an ever-present farm co-op baseball cap, Bob looks like the guy who might work on your car at the corner garage. And on this day, he is playing mechanic. He has to, because there isn’t anybody else around to do it. Farm services have disappeared along with the farms.
“When we bought this farm 22 years ago, there were 11 farms with more than 600 cows shipping milk from this little valley,” Bob says as he walks toward the rambling 176-year-old farmhouse and pulls a rag from his back pocket. “We’re the last ones now.”
The nearest shop for that particular chopper part is all the way over in Addison, an hour’s drive to the west. Bob has to make arrangements to pick up the part after the shop has closed that evening. So he comes into the kitchen, wiping his greasy hands on the rag before picking up the telephone receiver. The way in which his wife, Beth, thanks him for that gesture leads me to believe that she’s asked him to do that about a million times in their years together. Every time he does, it’s a surprise. And she’s grateful for those little surprises.
Bob arranges to have a part left for him at the shop, and, even though it is almost suppertime, he gets into his truck to make the drive. For him, dinner will have to wait. So there’s an empty chair at the head of the table as we guests fill our plates with thick, crusty slices of pork loin, carrot soufflé, scalloped potatoes, all the while thinking of the homemade apple pie to come. We feel sorry that Bob has to make that drive. We feel bad for Beth sitting alone at the end of the table. We feel as though we are a small part of this farm family drama. Yet I feel a little guilty pleasure, grateful that I don’t have to make that drive over the mountain.
Tonight, Tom will handle the milking by himself. And we leave him to his task. Normally there’s a crowd in the barn for the evening milking. After dinner last night I had followed the soft glow from the open barn door across the farmyard. Inside the huge, five-story barn, Bob had a firm, comforting hand on the haunches of a cow named Sam.
“That’s short for Samantha,” he explained to five-year-old Anthony, who was sitting on a battered stool with his little fingers tentatively wrapped around one of Sam’s teats. Anthony is a natural. He quickly got the hang of milking, and a steady stream of milk rattled against the tin pail.
“Good job,” Bob said, as he trained an eye on Tom, who had taken charge of milking the 80-cow herd that night also. Tom’s technique was a bit more sophisticated than Anthony’s. Instead of a bucket, he juggled four milking machines hooked to a stainless-steel line. He hopped around like a sailor in a squall, trying to keep up. He dipped each teat cup in antiseptic, then slipped the four cups on a cow’s teats. Then he raced on to the next cow, then rushed back four minutes later to remove the cups and scurried on to another cow. Accompanying all this activity was the rhythmic swooshing of milk flowing through the overhead pipeline.
Hearing the hiss of a machine sucking air, Bob tossed a nearly imperceptible nod in Tom’s direction, and the young man was off to another stall in response.
As kids swirled around, chasing kittens, and Tom shoveled manure into the gutters, Bob stayed focused on the chore at hand. “You’re a patient man,” I said to him. He looked up and smiled.
“Well, just as long as the cow’s patient,” he said. “That’s what counts.”
Bob knows it’s all about the cows. His family has been farming for generations, first in New Hampshire, then in western Vermont. After he and Beth married, they decided to strike out on their own and in 1979 brought their two young sons to central Vermont. Their 200-acre parcel, wedged in between the steep, pine-covered ridge of Liberty Hill and the winding White River, is good river-bottom land that’s been continuously farmed since the 18th century. The local dairy farming community welcomed them in; today, it has just about disappeared.
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