 My name is Perry Jasek, and I am the interim chair of the Old Town Hall Board, otherwise known as the Brookfield Community Partnership, and we are exceedingly happy, not only that you're here, but so many of you are here tonight for the presentation. Now, I know some of you actually wanted to come to have John Benson to explain the grand list. Oh, we're not going to do that. What we're going to do tonight is get very well educated about the history of the very part of the Brookfield, and we are delighted to have Keith Sprague here to do it. I'm going to tell you a little bit about him. Before I do that, I wanted to tell you that the reason we're doing this is because this was a joint project between the Brookfield Historical Society and the Brookfield Community Partnership that runs those managers of what have you, the Old Town Hall, both organizations which are completely voluntary, and the reason that we can do that is because of your generous support both during the fundraising to the Old Town Hall that we do, and also for people who join the Brookfield Historical Society as members. And I'm especially interested in that because I'm the membership chairman, and I really want your membership right now. So it's a joint project and I think it's the beginning of a lot of group activity, joint activity that we can use between having the capacity to have Benson, the Old Town Hall, and to have Dell be even further into the history, the wonderful histories we're through. So, thank you. I'm so glad you're here. Let me tell you a little bit about him. Sure. Now you're going to suffer hearing right there. Okay. You want to do that all over again? Keith Sprague, the Brookfield Native, represents the fifth generation to operate the families to dairy farm along the middle branch of the White River and Brookfield. Keith attended high school in Randolph, and in 1993 received a degree in mechanical engineering from Vermont Tech. For the next five years, he was employed as an engineer by applied research associates, a national research and engineering company. In 1998, when his father, John, retired, Keith opted to take over the family farm, readily forsaking engineering for agriculture. Since then, under Keith's management, the dairy herd has grown from 100 to 700 milking cows, and he now employs a workforce of 16. Keith was one of the first farmers in the region to adopt no-till cropping practices, which combat soil erosion, and run and run of the mill nurturing microorganisms, run off while run and nurturing microorganisms in the soil. In 2008, the Sprig Dairy was designated Vermont Farm of the Year. Keith is served on the board of directors of the Farm Credit East, and a co-op, a co-op of financial institutions serving the needs of agriculture, forestry, and fishing. Currently, Keith serves on the Brookfield Select Board as the road commissioner following in the footsteps of his father, John, who served for 24 years as a smart former member. Keith is also a lone standing member of the Heaver Stock Car Racing team that competes in the American Canadian Tour. Keith and his wife, Chelsea, are the proud parents of two daughters, Sarah, a sophomore, and UVM, and Annabelle, a freshman at the University of Kentucky, who had an equestrian competition last week in Lexington, Kentucky, won the title of the Young Rider National Champion. So how we're going to proceed is that Keith is going to make his presentation with a wonderful slide show that was prepared with Ashley Lincoln, who's got the clicker in the room to help him proceed with that. And after he gives this presentation, I'll come back up and help Keith feel questions from the audience. So here you are, boss. Good spot to stand. Thank you. I probably does not need to be said here, but this is not my natural setting standing in front of this crowd here. Yeah, you put me in 10 people and a beer in my hand and like everything is just goes a lot easier. Anyway, we'll get through it. I think, oh, and the other thing about me is I'm a paper guy here. So you can see this old school stuff up here, which is the same as the presentation. I just got some of my notes on it. And so you'll see me stumbling through that as we go along. Anyway, and also, as you'll see that I need glasses now. Yeah, so there's there's the historical society in the old town hall, you know, asked me to do this. And so I'm standing up here, more or less the face of the farm that many generations, you know, have worked hard to bring. And so I just want to be known that, excuse me, my wife Chelsea is is very much, very much the reason and very much the face of this farm, not just myself standing here. So if she's here and and and the the other two people I'd like to thank which has already been mentioned once is Ashley. She has helped Ashley Lincoln who's sitting here and she's helped put this presentation together. If it was not for her, it would be, you'd all be getting pieces of paper. So anyway, and the third is Gary Lord. So probably two weeks ago, Gary, Gary sends me this text. And he's like, Keith, I haven't heard from you in several weeks. And I'm getting concerned. And I'm thinking, as my mind, as I'm reading this, I'm God, I'm not the only one getting concerned here. I think he's getting because I felt like, all right, this is good, we got two people concerned there now. Anyway, and so yeah, so without Gary, this whole thing wouldn't be put together. And and Gary gave me great directions and and and gave me a great horse with a car that I could jump on and just took off and we had no idea what direction it was going to go. So anyway, without being said, thank you, Gary, for that. So anyway, so the leading into from that is the development of this presentation. I would have never guessed I'd be standing up here presenting what I'm about to present to you when Gary first called me and said, hey, will you do something about the history of farming in Burkfield? You know, my mind instantly just went went back to my dad, my granddad, the churchills, the wake fields go way, way back. And like, I'm like, I can just picture myself going and knocking on doors and visiting these farms and this and that. And then as my research as my research went on and forward, it just developed into something totally different, which I hope you'll you'll all enjoy here tonight. So it's more of a view from say 10,000, 20,000 feet looking over over the history of farming. And then eventually we are landing down with our feet on the ground at the end. And hopefully we can tie it all together at that point. So with that being said, one of the first times I came here to a presentation what was I think a little bit about the history, the history of farming or something along those lines and Kit Gage did it. And so I want to tell two Kit Gage stories that just influenced me to this day and all truthfulness. So the first was, I think I was in third grade. And when the teacher all brought us in after recess and said, okay, somebody's putting nails and snowballs. Okay, this is not in all the things this is back. And you can't and it can't be done again. This was like on a Thursday or something. And so or maybe a Friday, I don't remember. Anyway, so we're all like panicking and whatever, like who's doing it, who's doing it. Nobody really knew who was doing it. So that was all fine the next day. I don't remember it being an issue, which I think was a Friday. And then Monday I came into school. And the Kit Gage was the principal and also our neighbor growing up. And he came into the class and he made an announcement that there was more nails and snowballs and he's going to go through everybody's jackets and snow suits. This is like snow suits. Remember putting on snow suits, right? Yeah. So anyway, and I'm like my heart went right to the bottom of my feet and I'm like, oh my God. So I knew that weekend I'd help my dad build the shed and I had nails. I had a handful of nails. I remember on the school bus having this handful of nails in my pockets. Anyway, so I'm like watching kid. He's go through and he stops at my snow suit and he feels the nails, takes the nails. And he said, whoever this is, I want to see in the principal's office. So he about died when I walked into the principal's office. And so what happened that day was I, first off, I didn't put any nails and snowballs. But when he saw me, he knew exactly what had happened because he was there with my dad helping help him fix this shed. And, and I just, I walked away that day. Probably didn't know it maybe that day, but shortly after that, I was in the right town. I was in the right group of people. So that's the first gate score. The second one is he did a presentation here and he spoke of, you know, like say the guy in Pennsylvania that just escaped from prison. And he murdered two people and all this sort of stuff. And he spoke of farming community in the Brookfield community and him growing up. And the fact that he grew up with life, life was a cherished thing. And death happens. Like constantly with animals, like you learned it at a very, very young age. And it just dawned on me that day when I was talking about that. And my kids were little at that time. And I went home and I made sure in the following years that they understood those values. Anyway, without being sad, those two things all joined together to, to bring bring together what Brookfield is and what Brookfield is to me. I think it is a good portion of these people in this room that came out here tonight. It's just those values are instilled because in 1850, there were 70 dairy farms in this town. It was everybody was a farmer. So anyway, we're going to start into the presentation now. For the next one. So, so from in 1880, there were 70 farms as I just mentioned in 2023. There's two active dairy farms. And the population is almost to a T the exact same in 2023 and 1880. How did we get there? This is where my research took me. How did we get there? How does it relate to Brookfield? Yeah, let's roll the next guy. So if we go up from up to 1845, first up before we go beyond a little bit, so pre 1850 or so the state of Vermont was just plastered with wood. And so, you know, if you just died back in deeper, you know, you could do a whole presentation on that whole era. But somewhere around this time, the state 10 to 15% hand to mouth home consumption was happening. Invention of the plow with heavy manure practices resulted in higher yields, corn, potato and grasses. Hay production at this time was the most nutrient values sold in the Massachusetts markets. There were 4 million sheep in Vermont at that time. 57 cents is a pound, which was paid for wool. Just on a side note, as it'll tie in later on the year 2025. Yeah, it's about 90 90% of the land was bare by 1850, as I was saying earlier. The plow was invented in 1937 by, as we all know, the green tractors, John Deere. And so that plow is what took us from this era into the next era, but before we get to that. So like some of these things in my research, can you back up Ashley to the bulletins? Like that hay produces this time the most nutrient value and sold at Massachusetts auctions. So some of those are all reported in the 1945 issue of what was the cultivator, like this just a little newspaper circulated around. If you take So if you even today, even today, we see signs of this in Brookfield or particularly I do because of the amount of land that we travel over. But you just go to anything in the historical society, open up any of the Brookfield town books. And you'll see pictures of just land being plowed. And this is when you start to see the farms go away from the self sufficient to producing more than what they needed. And then eventually, you know, that led to the market. So on my farm, we farm about 16 to 1700 acres every year. And there are still fields that we call the old potato field. And I mean, to this day. And, you know, in those old potato fields, you see dead furrows all the time. You know, some of them have been fixed and the dead furrow is just like the plow is just flipping the soil to one side and just leaves this dead furrow. And then, you know, over time they fill in and you try to get them smoothed up and whatnot, but they're still there. They're still present. So yeah, I mean, we're just seeing signs of this whole era. The area canal was significant in later events. But these are just some of the great technologies or not, whatever your opinion is that advanced things along here. So that brings us to the next phase, Sheep King of the Hills from 1845 to 1900. And we go on this one, actually. Hillside with sheep. So there's, I think, some of the attraction that happened with Vermont. It was just easy landscape for this sort of thing to happen. Throughout this phase, there's a lot of things that that that did happen. So before we dive into then on some of my notes, I have a little bit more information here, but in 1814, the first textile mill opened in Boston by a guy named Francis Lowell in the town that that was built and was named after him. Because whether it still is today, I'm not I'm not certain. Anyway, around 1830, there was a million. Sorry, there was a less than a million sheep in the time. So this is 1830. And so jumping forward a little bit now, there's 33,000 farms in Vermont. So a fireman definition that this time, 99% of them had dairy on them. They had many, many things. They had sheep, they had chickens. In 1850, there's 3.4 million pounds of wool that being produced annually. And that supplied half of the wool needs in all of New England. So the use of the wool in the early, early times were burned down for pot ash or fertilizer for fields or used for installation. And then in the later times, it was heavily desired in the textile mills, you know, for clothing and all that sort of stuff. So as we as we move along through this era, at the peak of this sheep era, there's 33,000 sheep in the state of Vermont. And there was also 33,000 people. So it was a two or equal. By the end of this era, if you remember from the previous slide, it was 57 cents for a pound of wool. So it's less than half what it was. So the writing was on the wall. So what what made these things happen? Before we get on to that, on a side note, I did look because during this time, it was it was around the late 1800s and early 1900s, there were chicken farms propping up here in Vermont all the way. And so you see evidence of that in Brookfield. It's not heavily spoken of in the deep and in the research that I did. It must not have been maybe significant enough to be worthy of it. But even where my farm is just just a few miles or not less than a mile down the road is, you know, resemblance of an old chicken farm in there. So I know I know they happened. I just didn't. So how does this tie into Brookfield? You know, all these state of Vermont numbers, you can go into any field. I see it daily. Saw it multiple times today on Sarah Ishons land and Charlie Blues land is their stone walls. And the stone walls were there to clear the land. And then they were a natural fence for the sheet. So the feet, the sheep would would hesitate on those. And that was that was how what the start of it was. The obvious hillside in Vermont, you know, back to that picture, you know, and then like I spoke of the story. So during during 1949, the rail system enters Vermont for the first time. This this was the death of the sheep industry. So what happened? I had more notes on that yet. So what happened during this time was that the textile or the textile mills in Boston, or many of them propped up and Vermont was feeding those textile mills. And at that time, Vermont had between one and $2 per head is what it cost annually to to per head of sheep and to get the wool off of it. So the West was doing it for 25 cents an animal. So when the railroad and which was happening the whole time, but when the railroad finally came through and weaseled this way into the lower New England's and up into Vermont, it just the textile mills were just turned to their neighbors in the West. And that's where all all the all the all the product for the textile mill was coming from from those sheep farmers there. So change some things. With change, we can go to the next slide and ask your thanks, Jersey Girls, Queen of Blood. So there is a prime example. There's a beautiful cow. They were the first dominant breed here in Vermont and and very much so here in Brookfield, just just equally so Jersey. So during this era, it was up to 40 million pounds of butter was produced here in Vermont. St. Albans co-op, which was up in St. Albans, Vermont. Shockingly, as that is written right there in bold letters, it was the world's largest supplier of butter at the time. I had to look it up in multiple things to just get my head around that. During this, during this time, we'll ended up at first being a blessing. The reefer car was invented. Maybe we can show a picture that Ashley is there. Yeah, so there's the reefer car invented by Jonas Wilder. And so he worked for Central Vermont Railroad at the time. Not a native Vermonner, but ended up living in Vermont and working for the Central Vermont Railroad during during this time, putting the railroad tracks in up into the northern Vermont. And he could just see that these guys were all these northern farms, mid state farms, were having to truck all this butter down to Boston and losing half of it. And or people are building creameries around the area. Like there was one in West Brookfield, 1900s that was built. Anyway, so he invented the reefer car and at first it was a blessing and it changed it so they could move they can move butter efficiently and very quickly into the Boston market compared to what it was. So that happened. Another another thing that happened in these two areas, which were extremely important, Gustus de Laval invented the cream separator. So, you know, you could take milk and put it in there and separate the cream from from the milk. And then, you know, from there you can make the butter. So a very important invention to happen at that time. The second what's the other second is the the bag Babcock tester, which could test the butter fat of someone's milk. So you knew you knew you could put a new value on milk and see and so that helped influence the Jersey area because the Jersey cow had extremely more butter fat than the Holstein cow. So that that built up this Jersey cow during this whole time. So Cabot 50 back up again. Actually, Cabot Creamy was formed in 1890, 3700 dollar investment from 94 farms. This will play into significance as time goes on, but it was invented, you know, formed during this time because of the Jersey era, because of the need to make butter and also cheese. And so that's why it was formed. An interesting little side note here. So milk priced in today's world is it's fairly low right now at 20 bucks at this time. It was a dollar 13 and a high of 295. Just tie things in. How does all this relate to Brookfield? How are we seeing this in Brookfield? So if you do a little more research at this time in Brookfield there's 567 cows in Brookfield, 415 of them were jerseys. If you walk in some of these older barns that are all storage now, hay storage, equipment storage, or I don't know what storage, jump storage probably. I mean you can see the history of the Jersey cow without there even being a cow in there. You know, a stall is four feet long. Everything is really low. You've got to bend over. And then the West Brookfield Creamery, which was formed and built in 1900s and it was all because of the Jersey cow. And then obviously any old pictures that the Historical Society has is just, you know, loaded with Jersey cows. Anyway, we can actually come to we did the reefer car. Oh, so yeah, so the reefer car I spoke earlier was a blessing when it first came on. So what killed this era here is also the reefer car. So the reefer car just so you know it still exists today. It's on rubber tires and goes down the interstate at 90 miles an hour by you and moves your car off to the side of the road as it goes by. But back then this is what a reefer car was. And so all this guy did was pack ice around it whatnot. So what in turn happened was the reefer car so this Jonas while they're never going to patent for this thing. And so you can see that this era of the Jersey cow was fairly short. And a lot of it was because he never got a patent and it was instantly taken and built in the Midwest and the West just took this whole era away by again being able to do it cheaper and moving product up up into these plants at a much cheaper much cheaper rate. And from the multiple from the multiple researchers that I did, a lot of it is tied to the state of Wisconsin. They figure they took over 75 to 80 percent of the sales in the state of Wisconsin itself. I suspect maybe there was a direct railroad line through there or something. I don't know. I couldn't find enough details about it. Anyway, I definitely did not say that this is the beginning. But if anybody does want like feels like they need to say something right now and can't wait to the end, just feel free. I'll keep looking. So our next our next phase is going to be another short one here. But 1920s 1960 is the need to be fluid. So the need to be fluid. There's a double meaning here. So the Holstein cow started her dominance at this time and the Jersey cow began to fade. And so the Holstein cow had lower pounds of components, a lower but a fat lower protein values, but she she produced a lot more milk. And so because of the butter industry going down the tubes, if you will, or becoming less profitable, the Holstein cow slowly came up. So interesting things technology wise that changed throughout this time. I in a state and I came through and at the very end of this era. So that probably really should have been down at the bottom. But anyway, we'll get the gist of it. Dairy's dairy's expansion just started happening at a rapid pace compared to what it was before. Diverse diversification started to slow down and firms started just slowly turning to dairy or turning to something else. Throughout this time, Vermont was applying 50% of New England's mill. Oh, another thing that happened in the early stages of time. New electricity was in most every household and every barn was retrofitted was with electricity. First of the government support programs came into place. The buyout program, which was where the government would come in and purchase your your cows and equipment and pay you so much just to stop farming. What was going on here was just a massive ramp up of of needed fluid mill bottling plants were being built. And so they were encouraging firms to expand and grow and do all that. So all that was happening. But then it just kind of slowly spiraled out of control. So as we spoke earlier, hostings are becoming more popular, high volume, lower butter fat. In the 1960s, agrimaric formed a co-op with a formation of its processors. So it's just another little side note there. You heard me speak of Cabot being formed. Agrimaric had many processors at the time and they bottled milk. So that that was formed for this this reason. The the impacts of the Great Depression led to innovation by a lot of Vermont farmers in this era. Also in this time, the land use tax was written in say, Vermont by Madeline Cunan. And then so the signs of this era in Brookfield, like I I wasn't alive in this era, but I'm sure they were even just as relevant as they are when I was when I became into this world and old enough to see things. But you could just go down through any of any of these old farms that there's no cows on before. And you could see all of these things. Forming it as a as as as the farms began to dwindle. So when when I was a kid in the 70s, just after this era, I remember there being and I counted them up and and spoke to the elders around here. There's about 16 farms in Brookfield at the time. You know, that were dairy farms. Anyway, so 19. If we go to the next one, I actually thank you. So here's a great picture at the very tail end of this era and maybe even leading into the next era here. I spoke of this over population of milk and it all was ramped up with the, you know, all the government subsidies and whatnot. But 1954, the average herd size is 25 cows, 10,500 farms in Vermont. It wasn't the slide before we were at 23,000. I think it was the one before that we were at 33,000 farms in Vermont. The price of milk did not keep pace with inflation. 85% of the small dairy sold out due to high debt and low profits. From the research that I did, Vermont is thought to have fared better during this period than its Western competitors. And in a lot of it, they felt like it was because of their innovations. The Vermonter's ability to turn water into wine, if you will, so to speak. And I saw that growing up as a kid. This naturally turned into the mechanical revolution. And so this one here, I'm starting at this point to start to narrow in to our farm, if you will, and or maybe even I named it the mechanical revolution in my presentation. And then we stumbled across this here, you know, from Governor Johnson. Farm fault milk tanks are rapidly changing the method of handling milk. There are approximately 9,000 commercial dairies in Vermont to time. Many country milk plants are being closed. This is a part of the great mechanical revolution in agriculture, which is common with all revolutions, great hardship for some people. But if wisely handled, it can reduce the cost of assembling and transporting milk and keeping Vermont competitors in our great milk market. So, yeah, like he said, this creates other consequences, large herds in the end of the diversified farmer and the decline of the hillside farm. That was in 1996, the time is August. If you go to the next one, yeah, so adapting to change in technology, this is where the or the heading of this section need to be fluid is double meaning. You know, fluid milk was needed at the beginning and then all of a sudden it changed to where the farmer needed to be fluid himself and able to move and able to wiggle and able to adjust to new technologies. Yeah, so the Baylor came in during this era, the milking machines, the artificial insemination. We spoke earlier how electricity rolled in. You heard Governor Johnson talking about the bulk tanks, barn efficiencies, the tractor, parlors obviously reduced labor happened. And a funny thing happened also during this time. There's organic diversification, small processes started back up, tourism, consolidations with neighboring farms. The signs in Brookfield that you see on a regular basis, you know, like, so there's the sprague farm, you know, which was spoken earlier is a farm that I'm fortunate enough to be a part of today is five generations now. And there's more than nine farms that are that have been all purchased over all these multiple generations now. Other signs of telling in Brookfield, if you could just check out any other of the old dairy farms in Brookfield during this time, the ones that didn't make it through this transition, you can just walk into those barns and you can say, okay, yeah, like they made it to the canned milk era. You know, they never transferred to the bulk tank. There's a farm on McKegg Road where we were just hanging the field the other day that I walked into that barn. And that's where that that story ended right there was the bulk tank, you know, ultimately killed that killed that farm. Not not that all these farms like we're forced out, you know, I mean, there's many that just who knows, you know, maybe they just want to stop farming or there's a death there or that sort of thing. But a lot of these changes are the things that either the farmer adjusted or or didn't and, you know, affected affected on my what was the time frame on this one, Ashley? Yeah. So during this era, like on my farm, it was in my dad's era at that point. And I remember very how are we doing on time, Ashley? Perfect. If I should ramp it up a little maybe. Anyway, so during during a story that I remember that just nails this era is I remember, so we put all our silage up and old silage wagons and you would chop into the wagon and the wagon had all this mechanicalness to it to unload. And these things were just old weapons and breaking down all the time. And I remember saying to my dad, I think we need to get some new wagons, you know, next year, like this is crazy. And he's and he's like, now we're not going to get some new wagons. And I'm like, oh my god, like this is just crazy. And I was still in high school and possibly college at this time. And then he's like, I got a project for you tomorrow morning. And so I got up, did chores and he sent me in my in his pickup. I went to Donnie Davis's farm in Peachum and his neighbor had a high dump. And it was the first high dump that I'd seen. I'd heard about these things. And it was feed was dumped into these high dumps. And then it was dumped sideways and dumps into the truck. And then the truck brings the feed to the field. And so it was, it was just an example here in Brookfield, Vermont of one little spot of where where that generation was able to transfer through the technology era. And there's and there's ones that didn't. So these farms like I spoke of where you could go walk visit these, you know, any farm in Brookfield or throughout the state and you'll see the old silage boxes still parked in the shed out back or dilapidated and trees going up in them and that sort of stuff. And it's like, okay, that's that's where they ended in that era. You know, they just never made it through through that time. Anyway, small example. So throughout this time, Agamart and Cabot formed. And so this was the Cabot was the first one to form the sorry, they merged. So Cabot formed first, then Agamart formed second, the two companies merged. So there was a butterfat era that was that was formed. And then there was a fluid milk era with Agamart. Those two formed. They're still rolling today. What were they? They were fluid, they changed, they adapted to technology, they adapted, they saw a need for each other. Yeah, let's move along. Some quick numbers here in the 70s, there's 4,000 dairy farms that are heard by out like we spoke of the milk diversion program. 2,000, there are down to 16,000 dairies, 100 cows was the average size cows were milked in 20,000. If you remember back in the 1920, the 1960 era, there were milk in there around 5,000 pounds of cow. Some more government, government funding here with the Northeast dairy compact. But that ended in 2001. In today's world, there's 600 dairy farms in Vermont, as we speak. The average farm size is 200 cows. The average pound of cow gives 25,000. So our last era is the technology era. That is where I am, or I am in this era, probably forced into it luckily, because it's going to make the farm be here in the future. Just going to be a few pictures here, but so I spoke of a farm on McKegroad to the left, and that's where the cows lie down. And obviously it's just been dilapidated for a few years, you know, in that section and that cement pad that's there is four feet long and there's a gutter that you shovel manure out of. Here's a very modern farm with stalls, sand bedding, two feet deep, and then alleys that tractors clean. So another, so that is one of my barns there. And then this is where the milk was housed through that door. And this same barn that's to the left and then like there's where our milk is housed. And this today is the key for all. And actually here's, and I don't remember the era, but it was during the beginning of that mechanical revolution. And I believe that's probably up. And do you remember Gary's it up in Westbrook Field, maybe with that photo was taken? Yeah, I think it is also. But they're bailing hay. This was two weeks ago us bailing hay in Williamstown, Vermont. So those bails are the normal square bails that you, we all know. These bails here weigh about a thousand pounds, eight feet long, four feet by four feet, and are trucked with heavy equipment. Nobody, nobody touched a bale, you know, compared to the left side, although to the left that is corn silage there. But anyway, move forward if you can, actually. And then there's a similar picture of corn silage there. And then this is on our farm one foggy morning. A pile of corn silage just being shaved and what's being shaved is what's going to be fed for that day. There's, there's, that's how feed is stored in a lot of these dairies today in Brookfield or anywhere throughout the state. And then there's a silo like how it used to be stored years ago. There's probably many of you seen the tractor and mixer. All the feed is put into that wagon behind the tractor and mixed up and fed. And that's where grain is stored. If you don't keep moving. Again, we're in the technology area. There's a large manure pit where all the, all the nutrients is stored for summer fertilizer. And that's about a three hundred and seventy five thousand dollar bolt that's floating in that manure pit. That's got a large motor on it, a pump, and it's agitating the entire pit. And there's tractors and trucks and, and spreaders transferring into the field. You can see a little yellow bubble on that tank and that there is a manure analysis. And right in front of that's a gray bubble and that is a flow meter. And that's all being recorded. The amount of nutrients that are getting put back on the land. That very similar apparatus that I just mentioned is also on the chopper. And so whatever's harvested is all recorded the nutrient value and feed. And so all that information is at our fingertips. And we learned from it, you know, on a year to year basis or month to month. You can skip forward here. Move to my notes. Yeah. So farming today is I happily can say, although there is some resistance, but probably when it first started happening, but consumers are driving these changes. The consumer wants a certain thing. So organic is a great, great example of what, what the consumer wanted at one time and some still do today. The consumer wants many things and the farms have to adapt to those changes. The next generation of employees a lot different than it was in my dad's era. It was a lot different than it was 10 years ago, 15 years ago to manage, to manage these people equipment upgrades, like I just showed in pictures. Like if you don't keep up with these technologies, we're going to be one of those farms in the weeds a generation from now. Cal Comfort, barn designs, monitoring, there's, there's hundreds of thousands of dollars spent annually on my farm and many farms that are doing these three things just to keep, just to keep the train rolling. Um, efficient routine. So everything that we do when new barns are built is there's more thought analysis put into what is that doing to cow traffic? What is that doing to equipment traffic? What is that doing? How is that impacting, um, um, entering the road, leaving the road? How is it going to impact, uh, on the road, like just numerous things so that it's efficient. And we, we try to make as small a footprint as we possibly can. And then another big thing is cow nutrition, um, where, you know, in my dad's era, you spoke about pounds of milk, a cow made in today's world. You speak of pounds of component a cow makes. So the jersey maybe is coming back a little bit that era, but, but the Holstein makes a lot of pounds of butter fat, a lot of pounds of protein, um, more souls than the jersey ever did. Um, and it's all because of the technology and keeping up with that technology throughout this whole timeframe of how cows, uh, how cows are fed. Another big thing that is helping in this whole era is the ability to predict the weather. And, uh, obviously what I just said is an oxymoron because it's not this, we could, I wouldn't be standing here if I could do that, but we're a hell of a lot closer than we were, uh, back in the previous generation to doing that. At least I thought I was until last night about nine o'clock when it rained two plus inches of rain. Oh my God, my phone did not show that. Uh, throughout, throughout this era, I have noticed that it takes balance. You can easily, easily, easily, and I've seen it many, many times on many farms. Vermont does not, uh, exclude itself from this or Brookfield for that matter is the balance. There's so much tech, so much technology out there, so much stuff in your face of you can, you can buy this and it's going to make you X and it might be, but you have to decide, is that right? Is that going to, is that actually going to happen on your farm? Because there's so many factors in place there. Um, and then, and then lastly in this section is sustainability. Um, we work very, very, very hard to be sustainable. It might not show, and you might not think of it in the daily, in the daily manner, but, uh, or you might not see it in a daily manner if you drive by, but we are working towards that. So the cows, the animal herself is sustainable. She's reproducing her, her next, uh, money maker more salt. She's reproducing more than, than they're dying off. So the cow is extremely sustainable. When we get, when a cow is, is time for her to go, um, for us for consumption to go to other various sources of food, our cow is as well ready for that next step. Um, so you take a calf on our farm, our calves are saw after compared to our competitors because we'll like say bull calf that goes on the market and goes to either to be ill or to beef immediately. We, we, we put a sprag farm ear tag in that calf's ear and we raise that calf, we keep it, we don't let it go right off and we raise it up. And so it's caught on within the Vermont and in New England, if you will, that, Hey, there's a sprag farm ear tag on that bull calf. I'm going to pay a little bit more like in the neighborhood of two to four times more. Um, so there, you know, so there's a sustainability in the animal sustainability in the land, like, like Perry spoke of no till dairy farming, um, is, is, is what we felt like was a step towards sustainability and being more profitable. Sustainability employees are we, we keep employees a really, really long time. Uh, we put a tremendous amount of investment in them and it, and it shows, and it's one of the biggest things that what's going to make it so that we're heat, the farm is here for the next generation. Um, and then we want to be sustainable and energy wise. Um, and so we're, we are continually talking and pursuing, um, solar, wind, other areas. Um, and so that's a little bit more of a tougher battle. Um, but we're continuing that process, uh, internally. Um, so in, in closing, I, I, I want to share a, share two more slides and one is a visit from a guy named George Leifert and, and I remember when that year was, Ashley, 1999. This is Ashley's grandfather at the time, uh, obviously still is. Um, but, but he, he, he's no longer with us here, but Ashley's, Ashley's dad and, and uncle and, and probably other people brought George over to the farm that day when we were building what you see here today. And, and, and I, and I remember I was over on the other side of the road from this fire and I was working in the shed and George came up and, and he was frail and he, he was in his last days of his life and he said to me, he's like, Keith, Keith, he said, this is crazy. So this farmer does not need to be this fancy or this complicated at all. And, and, and I was sick to my stomach. I was totally sick to my stomach and I'm like, oh my God, and what am I doing? You know, I just borrowed millions of dollars here and I'm, and I'm doing this like thing that George Leifert told me I just did not need to do. And, and so that next day I, I got up and we had a large cement pour that day and it was the largest cement pour that Carroll concrete had ever done. And so we poured cement all day and I, and I, and I wrote a check and paid, paid Carroll concrete that day. And it's only significant because several years later, like maybe 20 years later, we did another large cement pour and I got ready to write the check and I remember that day. I remember the day George Leifert came and saw me. And it dawned on me as I was writing this check that, you know, George was absolutely right. He was like spot on and he knew exactly what he was talking about that day. But what George didn't know, and I'm not, I'm not sure that I even knew it that day. I'm pretty sure I did not know it that day. I just was full of youth. But was it, George didn't know, was I was doing what I was doing for tomorrow. I was doing it so that we had a farm for tomorrow. And so next slide. With that being said, in 1945, there's 1200 people, 567 cows, 415 were Jersey like I spoke of, there were 70 farms, two people, one cow. 2020, 1200 people, 2500 cows, zero jerseys, two farms, two people, one cow, sorry, two cows, one. That's how we got from 1945 with 70 cows to 2023 with, sorry, 70 farms, 2023 with two, two dairy farms left in the state, a town of Brookfield. So anyway, questions. Yeah. Yeah. Ricky, or comments. Who had your hands up? Two questions. When was, you mentioned the land use tax, use tax. Can you tell us the significance of that, if any? And now farms are really reliant on fossil fuels. And people don't have enough to do a lot of them. So that's kind of a question mark in my mind. This is, you can see gray hair in my head here. So already I forgot the first question. What was the first question? Oh, the land tax, right? So it's significant because so if you own a lot of land and it's producing timber and or being cropped for dairy or other use, then there's a reduction in taxes. So ultimately, what that means, like a very good friend of my dad's and became a good friend of mine was Donnie Davis and Donnie Davis lives in Peach and Vermont. And he stood up every year at the town meeting. And he thanked the Peach and taxpayers for paying his land use portion of the taxes, because I mean, ultimately, it just gets passed on to the public. But so there's a reduction in land tax if it's being used for agriculture or forced uses. And then the second question I was going to interrupt, but I wasn't fully understanding. Yeah, so we do we do burn a lot of fossil fuels. So what is your is your just a concern about that? Or yeah, you know, the the the thoughts come to mind, you know, when I spoke of sustainability and like our desire to do something different with energy, and we haven't we haven't, you know, nailed that that yet. You know, some some places, the other forms of energy, the communities are resistant to, you know, wind is an example, solar isn't a great example. So there's a lot of hurdles to climb there. I mean, I live in a I can tell a whole story for an hour, but like we attempted already to do a solar and it was, you know, just it wasn't the community wasn't ready for. So with that being said, the other side of that is also if you want to play if you've got to just work with the tools that you're given. And so that's what we're doing. That's what we're doing. Hi, Keith. Thank you. This is very, very interesting. A quick question for you. What is the average lifespan of a cow, a dairy cow? And what are your thoughts on robotics and technologies like drones, things like that? Are you seeing that cropping up in Vermont? And what do you think of it? So I remember the robot lifespan of a cow. So lifespan of a cow. So from birth to to when she has her first baby is around two years or two years of time. And then on average, that cow will have between three and four babies. So that cow will have a baby every 12 months. So two, five, so five, between five and six years that that that that cow will remain on the farm and productive. So if you backed up several of those areas that the lifespan of that cow is probably double that. Yes, it's definitely longer than what it is now. And economics are driving all that. So it's it's just the, you know, the natural cycle of a cow and her she can be replaced with a younger one that's much more productive and and other and therefore more economical and therefore, you know, the farm is more sustainable. And then the other thing that will happen is so say if you hang on to that cow longer than she and she becomes less productive, she also is less productive on the sustainable and end of her train where she's less valuable in the beef market and and you're and you're gonna and or she becomes frailer and gets injured and she ends up in the compost pile, you know. So like, I mean, I know those are some real right in your face things there, but you know, that's just the reality of it. If you want to stay in this business and be here for the future. Robotics. Robotics. I think are a wonderful great thing. Like, obviously, technology is driving these next stages and that's a great example of it. So there's a couple things with robotics that they're still to this point. There's probably not on my hands and my toes, the amount of large robotic farms in the United States are probably less than what's on my hands and toes. Robotics hasn't been able to keep up speed wise on these larger dairies. At this stage, and five years ago, they were tremendous on a 50 hundred cow farm. I mean, they like they saved that era for another whole phase. It's coming eventually. But as it is for now, like, like when I built in 2000, a nice red barn that you saw and all that. And when George Leifert came to the farm and shared his concerns with me, I think there's two robots in the United States at that point. So I was in, you know, very early 2000 or 1990s. So yeah, they come a long ways and they're a great thing. It's really they're they're being forced into the large dairies now and they'll it'll happen over time here without being said very expensive to very like big shift to change over because you're essentially going from our firm, say 16 employees, you're probably going down to four. But so there's I mean, you know, there's a lot of money spent on labor every year. So that goes to little for nothing. And then and then the money goes to this massive investment in robots. You can't take a barn like mine and put robots in it. You especially these large dairies, you you wipe the slate clean and you start over. Great question. No question. You mentioned artificial insemination. In that process, do you have the ability to select the sex? And so we definitely do. And that's that's, you know, a great question or a great thing that that's just another example tied in with robots and all of that of a technology that if you didn't get on that bandwagon, you're not going to be here the next generation. So so in my dad's there, you you bred a cow, you know, they extracted semen from a bull and froze it and yada, yada, yada and packaged it and got it to the farm and you could artificially inseminate and that was made worlds improvements because you could put a better calf in that cow. So what's happening today with the sex semen is when it so yes, you can you can buy a semen that's going to 99.9% chance or maybe 90% chance to produce. Maybe it's more now. There's one guy back here that knows exactly. But anyway, very good chance you're going to have a heifer calf. And so what happened during that time was it kind of everybody was all great. We're just going to have heifer calves and we're going to grow. So these farms just like just grew like crazy, because you the bull calf never happened. You had heifer calves and barns are being built and all this sort of stuff. And then and then the same thing it drove, you know, buying the milk went way up and the milk price crashed and all that sort of stuff. And so it turned into what that turned into was as they ended up putting caps on farms can't grow anymore. They can only produce so much milk. So what the farm is doing now, they're still breeding to that that that sex calf. So they're getting their female calf. But if through genetic genomic testing and various other things, they're they're taking the best calf and they're making their herd better. So what you're going to see now is they're not, they're not regulating pounds of components are not regulating how much butter fat we can produce and how much protein we can produce. So we're going to keep that better calf, we're going to raise that better calf, we're going to, we're going to breed that better calf to a better, a better semen and a better calf even so. So we're going to make in the next generations more pounds of components, which makes the milk check bigger. So that's what's happening with these farms. You're not going to see them grow in size unless something significantly changes that I don't have the foresight to see. But this is clearly what's happening. It's been happening the last 10 is probably stretching it about seven to five years and ramping up. And there's probably some that we're doing in 10 that were a little more advanced that saw it, you know, before the rest of us did. Great question. Any other questions? I just like to say on behalf of all of us here, I think what Keith and Chelsea do, for instance, is art on the farm. A lot of effort goes into that and I go every, every time I can and I really enjoy it, I learn. So thank you Keith and Chelsea for what you do for the community and art on the farm. Thank you. Another question? Okay. Yeah, so competition from the goat industry. No, but I think it's like, you know, and I actually thought of it when I was making my hand notes that you know, that weren't up there and the diversification thing. I think it's a great thing, you know, it's just a matter of it taking hold and going, which it is maybe slower than what they wanted, right? You know, so there's Vermont Creamery, you know, which is owned by Land O'Lakes now up in Bury and still to this point, the majority of their milk comes out of Wisconsin. That gets me up in the morning. So like, you know, that's a really good question and I think, I think it's what I'm most excited about is, you know, answer it kind of broadly, but it really is this, this is, is I took over a wonderful farm that was extremely profitable and rich in the community and all that sort of stuff. And so early on in all those years, we wrote a mission statement and did all the things that a lot of, you know, the successful businesses do. And anyway, and one the key and that one of those items in that mission statement is for the farm to be here for the next generation. So I truly enjoyed putting this program together because I could, I learned so much on those early stages. And then when I got to the end stages of showing, so the answer to the question is just making the farm so it has the ability to be here for the next generation is honestly what I get up every day. So the building of whatever new project that we got going on, you know, I will pour myself into and that's what gets me and then you get sidetracked and next thing you know, you're in a tractor and having to help out do this or do that or that sort of stuff. But like, like, like the Saturday and the Sunday that things are quiet on the farm and I get up and, and I can, and I can focus and have a clear mind of what's going to play ahead for the week. And then, and then focus on that. So, yeah, those are the things. And then, you know, of course, I love to see my children do well in life. So, but yeah, on the farm, that's what it is. Well, that was some presentation. I learned an awful lot about dairy farming from that. And I really appreciate that. And I think everybody else did. I want to thank Keith for doing this and I want to thank Gary Lord as the president of the Historical Society. I want to thank Ashley Lincoln for her technical expertise and helping Keith put this together. Keith, as you all know, Ashley is with Gifford Health Care and we really appreciate that help. She's also a good friend. So, and everybody else and the members of the Historical Society Board and the Brookfield Community Partnership, everybody who helped out in setting this up. So thank you so much for coming tonight. And it would be really helpful if as we break up and have our small conversations as we usually do at the end of the event, you'd also help us to stack all the chairs. So thank you very much, folks.