Interviewer - Absolutely. What we're doing is, you know, at the Barrett-Byam house, we have the country store.

Walter Lewis - No, I'm not acquainted.

Right, right. I know where the house is. Yeah, the house next door used to be a two-car garage.

And in there they put a country store. Oh, I didn't know. So I was in there about six months ago.

I'm vice president of the society now. And they had a nice display of chunks of ginger ale. And then where they would normally have the milk and stuff, they had a couple of bottles with no names on them.

And I said, coming from a town like Chelmsford, how can we have no display of anything in the dairies or no knowledge of any of these dairies? When we had the meeting, we realized that the era of dairy farming in Chelmsford is past. And if we don't get down some of the history right now, it's going to be gone.

Nobody's even going to know what was going on. So I thought I'd go around and talk to different people who had farms and this kind of stuff, try and get a knowledge of what went on and this kind of thing. And then we can have a display showing what Chelmsford was like.

Because when I was a kid, everywhere you looked, there was a dairy farm in Chelmsford. And there are none today. And so while people are around that can tell us about it, you know, we wanted to talk to them.

So maybe if I could just ask you some questions and you can answer them. When did you start dairy farming in Chelmsford? I was a latecomer.

1940. 1942? And was this your farm right out here?

Yeah. How many acres were in the farm when you had it? Well, about 30.

30 acres. And you said on the phone you had about 80 head at one time? Yes.

But I used land from about 10 different people. Okay. So you also leased land.

Yeah. So you had 30 acres of your own. And at the height, how many more acres would you say that you leased?

Oh, 50. So at one time you had about 80 acres and about 80 head of cattle. Cows, I guess you'd call them.

Now, the name of your farm was Sunny Meadow, right? Right. Now, I've seen bottles with your logo on it.

It looks like almost a windmill type of thing. Yeah. Now, when you bought this land, was it a dairy farm when you bought it?

No, it had been a farm, but the Laphams, Edgar Lapham, got the farm. His ancestors got it from a grant from the king. So Lapham's ancestors...

Lapham.

They held this all the time up until you bought it?

Yeah.

And it was from right through the family as a grant from the king? Yeah. So had it ever been used as a dairy farm up until that point?

Well, they used it as a dairy farm. They had apple tree, they had fruit. So it was just all kinds of different things.

Yeah. Now, what did you do before you were a farmer? I was also a farmer.

So you came... I was brought up on the farm. In Chelmsford or...

No, Andover. Andover, right. So you were a dairy farmer and then you moved to Chelmsford and...

No, I was never a dairy farmer before.

Why don't you tell him your history?

Yeah.

He's a big talker, so...

I like that.

That's good. So your family came from Andover?

Yes. I was one of ten. Ten kids.

Lived down near the corporation that you have an interest in. I lived. What is that?

Well, you make contributions every year. IRS. And so you came from a big family that lived on a farm?

Yes. Yeah, okay. It was mostly... It was a part-time farm and then later we were in vegetable production and had a roadside stand there. All right. So how did you ever think to become a dairy farmer?

You just were a farmer and you decided that you wanted to...

No.

I went to the Essex County Agricultural School in Danvers. Four years. And then I went to the University of Massachusetts and I majored in poultry and farm management.

No kidding. You majored in poultry? Yes.

Did you ever have chickens and stuff on you?

Yes, I did.

Okay. And then I went to the University of Connecticut and got a master's degree in cultural economics. Wow.

After that. Great. And then I went to work there.

I worked up in the University of New Hampshire a couple of years and I always wanted to farm. Have your own place, right? Yeah.

See what you could put all your learning to use.

Yeah.

How long did you actually have a dairy farm? Well, from... Chicken and stuff.

From 1942 till we had a fire in 1969. Now, is that when that barn over there on Garrison Road burned down? No.

No. That was another farm that we bought, an additional farm to this one. Okay.

And you actually had a fire right here? Yes. Did you have a big wooden barn?

Yes. And it burned down? Yeah.

And that put you out of business? Well, yeah. I mean, at that point, you just decided...

Well, then I went... For two years, I had cows in partnership with a man from Concord. Meanwhile, I developed a retail business.

Now, when you say developed a retail business, that means you had your own bottling place and this kind of stuff where you actually... So when you went out of the, let's say, the cow business, you still stayed in the retail? Yes.

Where you bought milk off other people?

Well, I bought it from this man who I was in partnership with a couple of years, and then we broke up the partnership, and I continued to buy the milk from him.

Right.

Until 1976. So you were like a distributor after a while.

Yeah.

People brought their milk to you? Okay. Now, there's no dairy farms left in Chelsea.

What do you think happened to them? Was it just the value of the land that did everybody in?

Yeah.

Or the work? It was a variety of things. The value of the land.

Yeah. You all know it's a dairy farm where the bank is. There still is a silo right in...

You mean where Emerson's was? Emerson. They had a farm for a generation.

Oh, yeah.

I've advertised this on Channel 43. And so when I called up Channel 43 to advertise it, the guy who was taking the message said, what do you mean there used to be a lot of farms? I said, well, when I went to McFarlin School when I was little, I said the nun used to take us in the yard and cross Chelsea Street and take us through a cow pasture over to St. Mary's Church. He said, when was this? I said, the 50s. He goes, you've got to be kidding me.

I said, in the 50s, the whole center was a cow farm. Yeah. So it's really changed.

Right down to where the hotel is. Now, I see that, you know, dairy farms throughout the whole New England are hurting. I beg your pardon?

Dairy farms throughout all New England are hurting. Like, in other words, it's hard to make a living as a dairy farmer. Aside from the value of the land, do you think that has an aspect of Chelmsford farms?

It just was too hard a way to make a living? Well, no. I think the development is what pushed them out.

Right. In my own case, I didn't feel that I wanted to invest in new buildings, which would have to be state-of-the-art. Right. And with not much land.

Right.

And traditionally, and it's true, the dairy milk is produced on large farms now where they have large resources.

Right.

And we just don't have the resources here, the land resources. Right. The technology is for, use a lot of land, a lot of cows.

And it's possible with the milking machine and some of those things. Well, I visited a farm up in northern Norfolk, Vermont, my vacation there just, and one man was milking.

800 cows.

One man? No, no, wait a minute. He was milking 240 cows.

Still, that's a significant number. And they were milking, he was taking care of the machines for 20, milking 24 cows, bring them in. And milking those 24, and then another 24.

Wow. And they're milking them cows three times a day. Wow.

Now in this town, were there organizations for cow farmers? I mean, was there any? No, no town organization.

So you didn't have a group? It was the Farm Bureau, Middlesex County Farm Bureau. That's where you people met and talked about what was going on in this kind of thing?

Did you advertise your farm at all? Like in other words, I see, like Chelmsford Ginger Ale, we have all kinds of signs and stuff like that. Did people advertise?

A woman saw my thing on Channel 43 and sent me a Newsweekly from 1958 that had suburban farms advertising. Did you advertise Sunny Meadows at all in any way? No.

About the only thing is, I got a calendar. We used to give out calendars. So you gave out calendars.

But as far as advertising the paper, no. No. I developed the business, knock on doors.

Now you had milkmen and stuff like that going around? Yeah, I had four trucks on the road. That said suburban dairy and the people went around?

Matter of fact, suburban dairy for many years processed my milk. So they processed it and you put it in your bottle? Yeah.

And you just delivered it? Yeah. Okay.

That's what I was going to ask you about. So you did your processing, so first they did yours, and then you did it? Yeah.

So if I ask you some farms, could you just tell me what comes to your head who owned it or where they might have been in town? Like for instance, suburban dairy, where was that? Well, that suburban dairy was not a farm.

They had no cows? No. That's the difference between a dairy and a farm?

For a few months, for about a year after they started, yes. Where was that located? In Richardson Road, North Chelmsford.

North Chelmsford, Richardson Road. Right where the next to where the town... Barn is?

Town... The gravel and all that stuff? Yeah.

Okay, have you ever heard of W.E. Adams? Adams? Well, Adams I guess was before my time.

Okay. How about S. Emanuel and Company?

That's where I'm getting these names from bottles. How about John Jarek? Before my time.

How about Reardon Farm? Before my time. Sunshine Dairy?

In Chelmsford? No. How about Chee and Brothers?

Yes. Now is that up on Pioneer Road? Yeah, that's where Ralph Parley...

Did the Sheehan's have a big farm up there? Huh? Did they have a big farm?

No, not a big one, no. How about Boulder Farm? R.E. Davis, Boulder Farm. Zaher brought that up. Oh, yeah. The Zahers.

Yeah.

As I said, I was the last one to start new production. How about Galbraith and Winters? No.

Golden Cove Dairy? Golden Cove Dairy did not have a farm, that was their name. So it was just a processing?

Yeah. Okay. And what was the difference between...

I noticed that there's some bottles with Suburban and some have Suburban Burbeck. Is that a merger or...? Suburban Burbeck? Yeah, I've got a bottle that says Suburban Burbeck, Chelmsford.

Do you think it was just a merger type of situation? I don't remember that Suburban ever bought out Burbeck, but if it was on a bottle, they must have at the end. Yeah.

How about Alcorn right down the road? Alcorn? Yeah.

Well, he never had... He wasn't in cows. Did he have a dairy?

He produced their milk and... See, Burbeck was a big buyer of milk in this area. They had a ton and a half truck.

Yeah. And it ran around here every morning into Westford and into Chelmsford. And Mr. Calder lived across the street. He had two cows and he produced the milk. No kidding. He'd give it to them too?

Yeah. Now, Alcorn, did he have a big farm? No, not awfully large.

He probably... He came along late too. Okay.

And well to Alcorn. Because that's a big barn that's still down there. Yes.

Well, it isn't as big as it was. So it must have been one before. He must have bought it off a dairy farm.

Yes.

He bought it off his brother. Oh, is that right? Who bought it as an old place and fixed it up.

Oh. And his name was Ted. Ted Alcorn?

But his father was headed to small dairy over on Hunt Road. He came down here from Nova Scotia and there were two daughters. One of them, I think one's dead, and one's still living right up in Botany Road.

She's a teacher. Oh, yeah? And then there was Walter and there was Ted.

And Ted bought this farm down here and it was run down. And he fixed up the buildings and renovated the lands.

The lands, yeah.

And he raised heifers. And then he sold it to his brother, Walter, who had been worked on large farms around the state. And he married an Irish girl who came over, got a job in a house in one of these places.

No kidding. And married. She was a very nice person.

And then they later adopted two children from Ireland, two boys. And one of them is a writer and lives alone. No kidding.

Today, yeah. Now, we talked about Emerson's in the center. Yeah.

Now, I see all kinds of books on Emerson and everything. Was that always a farm? Emerson's farm?

Yeah.

They did a big house with a bank where, I guess... With a bank, yeah. And across the street was the Emerson house.

Right. The one right on the corner. The big white one.

Academy and North Road. So that always was a big cow farm right there, as far as you know. Yeah. Yeah.

Now, of course, big. You understand, they were milking cows by hand.

Yeah.

And if a man had six or eight cows, that's about all they wanted to milk. Yeah. Of course, if he had some kids or hired men...

I remember, I think the guy's name was Ernie. He used to walk down the street from there. He had these big boots on.

Oh, yeah.

He used to come through the center. The other thing is I tell people that, you know, the biggest thing that happened in this town in the 50s was when Emerson's barn burned down. Remember that?

All those cows were burnt. Yeah. Yeah, that was a big barn there that burnt down.

Well, you see what happened then. Ted was an auctioneer. His father was an auctioneer.

Ted took it up. And he had some cows. But he never had too many.

But then his son came home from college. Brad. And not Brad, but his brother, who went to Pelham afterwards.

Well, then Ted got remarried. And the brother figured, hey, with a new young wife, where am I going to land in this? So he got out, and he went up to Pelham.

And he started a quite a large farm up there. But he had a fire up there. And so then he went selling all kinds of gases, you know, oxygen and all that stuff.

Fire seems to be a big problem for... Well, it's always... With the hay and stuff, combustion?

Because you said your big barn burnt down here, and then you had one over in Garrison. Yeah, the one over in Garrison. Well, they were both...

That one might have been an accident over there. You see, we had it full of hay. And you might say the hay was almost dripping out onto the street.

The grass was in front of it, and it was dry. And in the fall, it was dead and dry. Yeah.

And someone could have, you know, even thrown a cigarette. Sure. That's how that...

And I was careless about having the door closed. Yeah. I didn't keep it closed and close to the road.

Now, when you lost your barn here, did you lose cattle, too? No, because it started in the afternoon about 4 o'clock. What started it, the beginning?

The lot we don't talk about. Okay. It's the only thing that's...

An accident. No, it isn't. Yeah.

But we just don't talk about it. Okay. How about Thayer's farm?

How about Turnpike River? Well, Thayer, he had some cattle after World War II, I think it was, for a while. And Pearson had some, too.

They were brother-in-law.

Brother-in-law.

And they had cows for a very short time. Yeah. I can remember that.

That was one of my paper routes, Turnpike Road, and he used to stop me and help him milk them sometimes. How about Koulas? Well, Charlie Koulas had them for a long while.

Now, his barn has just collapsed. Yeah. Is that just because he...

I mean, I'm probably going to go talk to him, but he stopped doing cows and stuff, and it's just because the value of the land just doesn't care about the barns? I don't know. He had one, two, three, four barns that just fell down.

Just collapsed. One up on Littleton, one up the street. I guess that one burned.

Yeah. And two collapsed on the place. The first one, he had chickens on it, and he left the litter in there, and it rotted off the beans all around.

And he just let it collapse. Just like, you know, he just left everything. I don't know why people do that, but they do it.

Yeah. I'm probably going to go talk to him.

What happened to him? Of course, he had... Then he... When the barn got so bad, he went up in the chicken house.

Now, Koulas did chickens after... Well, he had poultry too. And poultry, chicken house wasn't a very good barn, and that eventually rotted out.

And Charlie isn't the kind of fellow who keeps things up.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know. Now, did he have a big dairy? Well, yeah.

He had quite a bit of land over there, right? Oh, he's got quite a bit, yeah. Still, yeah, yeah, yeah.

How about Ketrumpas up on Mill Road?

Yes, Ketrumpas.

Ketrumpas? Yeah. When I was a kid, they had a pretty decent size.

Yes, yeah. Yeah. How about Sears in East Chelmsford?

Well, that was one of the last ones to go.

Sears, right, yeah.

Yeah. And she was a very good cow person, very good about taking care of them. Did they have a good size farm?

Well... I guess everything's relative for Chelmsford. Yeah, yeah.

Well, they had probably 15, 18 cows, something like that. It's amazing how, as you said, as you get into the electronic age and stuff, you were telling me a guy's doing 250 by himself. I mean, we talked 30, 40, 50 cows was a big farm before.

Oh, yeah. You had electric milking. How about Dawson's Farm on North Road?

Well, yeah, they had a bunch of cows. Yeah, they had a pretty good size. They had two barns, right?

I can remember two on the road there. Yeah, yeah. And, of course, the important thing there was the woman that lived with old Dawson, and I forgot her name now, but she was a very nice person, and she was a terrible hard worker.

Yeah.

She was the one that kept the cows going.

Yeah.

She was a... had elbow trouble. Yeah.

Down at the... What was the name of that place where they'd get torn down? Owl's Nest, was it?

No, not exactly.

I forgot what it was.

It was something. You know where it was, right?

Yeah, sure.

On North Road there, yeah. Yeah. The Lion's Den.

Yeah, the Lion's Den.

It was the Lion's Den.

How about Avila? Yeah, Avila produced milk, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty big.

Where the high school is now. Yeah. And, of course, there's Zahers.

Yeah, Zahers bought out R.E. Davis. Oh, yeah. That's what I'm talking about.

How about Roberts? You know where Roberts Field is now?

Yeah, Roberts came along later.

There used to be a big barn there, didn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah. Roberts came along, one of the latter ones. Roberts had two sons, and one was interested in the farm there.

But it wasn't in it too long.

Yeah.

If there was something that 100 years from today, right, people come to the Barrett Byam house, and they're interested in what was here, what would you want them to remember about this town and cows? Well, the fact that, you see, this evolution, to go way back, what had happened, when we lived in Andover, for example, we had two or three cows and my father milk. We filled some bottles.

So you knew a little bit about cows anyway because you had a few.

Oh, yeah. We filled the bottles, and then we hung it in a milk carrier down the well. And some of our neighbors would come, and they'd pull the... So you used the well as a refrigerator?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Wow.

It would cool the milk. And we'd catch hell if we didn't get the milk down so it got right up around the neck, see?

Yeah.

Otherwise it would spoil.

Right.

And some of the neighbors would come down. We might be eating the evening meal, and they'd, Oh, there's a marriage. I'm getting the milk.

Pull it up.

I never heard of it.

And walk down the street. And we had, and the doctor, our doctor was paid with milk. We delivered milk down in the center of Andover.

And that was one way that the doctors got paid. You gave him milk and he was kind of a body system. Yeah, yeah, he was.

And he had a nice car and everything. I'll give you a little history. And Dr. Lane, you know, he had quite a nice office on Lock Street there in Andover. And he had a nice car, and he took care of our family, a big bunch of kids. When the dog broke his leg, he set the dog's leg. And he gave me a tonsillectomy right in my own home.

Wow. And as I told Diane, he told me ahead of time, I made arrangements myself as a kid. About 15, I was working, 25 cents an hour at a local poultry farm.

He said, well, I kept having trouble with tonsillitis. So I called him and went to see him myself. We took care of ourselves a lot, the kids.

Not that I had caring parents. I don't mean we didn't. So anyway, I said, how much it cost?

He said, well, don't worry about that. We'll come back. But he says, you've got to have $10 for the anesthetist.

And $10 right now would cost you a couple hundred. I don't know how much they get. They get a lot of money.

So another doctor came in and put you to sleep in your house? Well, he wasn't a doctor. An anesthetist.

So it was funny, you know. So I had the $10, and I was in bed ready for him. I put the $10 under the pillow, and he came, and he said, have you got the money for that?

And I said, yeah, I lift up the pillow and show him the $10. Then he put you to sleep. Then he put me to sleep.

But the first thing when I woke up, I looked under the pillow, and that $10 is gone. Well, $10 is a lot of money, you know. I think I was getting a quarter now.

Sure, it is a lot of money. Yeah. So I was surprised.

Well, anyway, I go on. It's a little worse than theory. Oh, but then I went away to college, see, later. And my brother called me. We were talking. We didn't call.

But one day he called. He said, you know, Dr. Lane died. Oh, I said, he did.

And I said, well, that's too bad. He says, you know, a funny thing. He says, there was no doctors at his funeral.

And I said, oh, that's funny. Well, he says, you know why, don't you, Walter? He took care of the people up at Phillips Academy that needed to have abortions.

Oh, really?

Wow. That's why you could have a nice cop. Yeah. Come up and kind of Robin Hood, you know.

Right, absolutely. Taking care of the whole Lewis family with ten kids. Yeah.

With that many kids and everything, you must have been very ambitious to go to college. Yeah. I mean, back in those days.

I was the only one.

Yeah.

I went with my family. Yeah. You just wanted to go? You just were interested in it? I got in school. I went to agricultural school.

And we were judging cattle. And I was on the team. And I liked the judging. And so we had some other fellows. So we had a team that was very good working together. So our instructor took us all around.

And we talked about lots of things on the trips. And I said, well, here's this instructor's gone. I'm going way up to New Hampshire.

And all around, here's a nice car, which was just an ordinary Chevy. But I didn't have a car at home.

Right.

So I got the inspiration. I said, gee, you know, I just got the part. So you went out to UMass Amherst? Yeah. That's where my daughter goes now. It was originally an agriculture type place? Well, it was agricultural school. Still has quite an agricultural economy. It had academic things. But I wasn't too well prepared. So I, because it was a vocational school. Yeah.

So I asked a neighbor who was a dairy farmer's son who had gone to, I guess, to Harvard and was teaching in Boston Latin, commuting back and forth. And he lived right next to my brother. I knew him well.

So I asked him if he taught him in English and math. So after I got through school, got through working the dairy poultry farm, I'd go up in the evening. No kidding.

And he taught me. You had the determination to do that.

Well, I guess I did.

To get off the dairy thing for a second. I raised chickens as a hobby.

Yeah.

Oh, you still do? I do. Yeah, I do.

I have all different types. I like to put together a dozen, 12 different colors. I have green, blue, and I have corners.

And I just bought a chicken recently up in Keene, New Hampshire. It's called a Moran. It's from France.

It lays a very dark, dark egg. Dark brown? Yeah, real dark brown.

Maybe the color of that mahogany. Now, what color is the chicken? The chicken almost looks like a Barred Rock, an ugly Barred Rock.

It's not a good looking bird. I don't like it at all. But I just joined the National Historic Poultry Association.

They just brought in Frank Perdue. Just was named in the Hall of Honor or whatever it is. But their whole purpose is to preserve.

I collect, aside from chunks of ginger ale and things I collect, I also collect poultry memorabilia. And when I go into antique stores, they say, if they're bugging me a little, they'll go, what can I get for you? What can I get for you?

I say, chicken memorabilia. I have a lot of, you know, the old eggways and the waterers and things like that I collect.

You should talk to Walter's son. You may know him. Richard Lewis?

I've seen him at like yard sales and stuff like that going on. But I like, I always had chicken since I was a kid. And I always, I still have it.

You must know about Spizzarentum.

Excuse me?

Spizzarentum.

Did you ever hear of Spizzarentum? No. Well, Andy Christie.

At one time, we had a breed called New Hampshire. It was up in New Hampshire. And your reds.

They're almost like Rhode Island reds. And Andy Christie was a breeder of them. He was around Exeter area.

And there were others. And there were competitions. So Andy Christie said that his chickens had Spizzarentum.

And so someone says, well, what does that mean? Well, he says, I'll tell you. I only breed, for breeding purpose, I only use the chickens that have, that had Spizzarentum.

So what is it? Well, he says, yeah, when the chicken hatches, you hold it up. And it's got enough spunk to kick like the heck.

It's got Spizzarentum. So that's where it stuck with you. Yeah.

Yeah. So I have a lot of fun.

And the ones that didn't kick?

Huh?

And the ones that didn't kick?

Well, they were just used, raised and sold for meat or something. Yeah.

And the kicking ones were used for breeding.

Yeah.

Breeding.

Now, talking about Frank Perdue, he, this is about my age, I guess. Probably, yeah. Yeah.

And back in 1950, this isn't about dairy, of course, if you don't mind talking. No, this just happens to be an interest of my own. Yeah.

Let's see, when was this? A&P Food Stores, huh? Yeah.

1948. 48. Now, why did you get, what did you get that for?

For this first prize in the chicken of... What did you, what did they do to bring the chicken in? In this school, I had a brother-in-law who was a teacher there.

And he was interested in producing a superior chicken. So he developed a breed called White Americans. And they had very dark eggs.

And so, in order to get a better-breasted chicken like we have today, the A&P, of course, was big in the food business back then. They offered these prizes. And they set up prizes for the whole country.

Maybe it was just here and other people did it. But anyway, we had this contest here. And you raised the chickens.

Someone checked on them to make sure the first contest was not good. Because people were dishonest. So in order to be honest, someone had to come.

They had the county agent come. And watch the whole thing? No, and check the chickens that you were going to put in so that they weren't two weeks old when you entered them.

You raised the chickens for 12 weeks. And then they took them to a place and dressed them and displayed them. At that time, chickens were sold with the guts in and the feet and head on.

And they're iced in a box, 12 in a box, I think it was, 24 or whatever it was. Anyway, you raised your chickens. And we won the contest with these birds.

What was the white American was the one? The White Americans, yeah. What color feathers were they?

White. No kidding? They looked like a white leghorn when they laid dark eggs?

Well, no, they weren't like a white leghorn, but that's a very thin bird. Yeah, yeah. And they were something that my brother-in-law developed by crossing the Oh, geez.

I tried to develop my own chicken about five years ago. I was breeding them for about four or five years. I was just going for beauty.

Yeah. And a raccoon, I think, rooster. Oh.

Unbelievable. Unbelievable. You know, you can be set back, you know. Because you know that with fires and stuff. Well, anyway. You were saying about evolution of the dairy.

You said, I asked you if there was something. Oh, well, to start out with, that's how a lot of people got their milk. And other people would, the last of the, before they had bottling plants, men would produce his milk and put it in a big jug on a wagon or a truck and with a spigot.

And he'd deliver it with a dipper. And Fred Harrington in Andover was the last one that did that. He actually went around with a big truck and a dipper?

Yeah. And spooned it out into? Yeah.

And in fact, he never cooled the milk. He would milk the milk in the evening. And he'd go in the late evening and people would have their dishes.

Instead of putting bottles in the back step, they'd give some receptacle that he could dump the milk in. So they'd take it with a dipper and go and dump it in there. And he sold it a little cheaper because it was that way.

What year would you say that was going on? Well, that was when I was a kid. And so that would be, I was born in 13.

I may be three now. So probably in the 20s. Yeah, early 20s.

And he was the last one. And he went through the mill district of Andover. There still were factories there, flax mill and a few factories there.

And he, when I think about it, he was the dirtiest person in person. And his place was dirty. But you see, milk delivered at night and it was all gone.

And the next day, in fact, the first year I was married, I got fresh milk every day from a neighbor. And I used to put it in, we used to put it down in the basement. We went there in the fall and we'd use it that night.

The next morning, then we'd get other fresh milk. Well, anyway, then of course they started bottling raw milk. And the population was increasing.

Back in the early times, 95% of the people were half farmers anyway. Right. And the clergyman was often the leading farmer because he had the best education and got the best laws.

Yes.

Quite frequently he had the best things. And all the way down the line, someone had to, well, even up till after World War II, George Waite said, you knew George a little? Yeah.

Yeah. He worked for the grain, for whoever owned the grain people. Agway?

Where is now, anyway. Where is now, yeah.

And they used to have one day a week, they'd go over to Graniteville and Forge Village with delivering bags of grain to individual households.

So they actually had a route that they would deliver?

A route around there. Where did you buy your grain? Right there?

Or did you buy it in the center? No. I bought mine mostly from two co-ops, the Farm Bureau and the old Eastern States.

Edwin Warren was the agent in it there. You know, Franklin Warren's father. You know Franklin Warren, the dog catcher?

Yeah, right. Yeah, his father. Down on Boston Road.

Yeah.

Awful nice person. Yeah, they're nice people. Now, there are some, they, like the Emersons, go way back to the original people here.

Did they have dairy? Yes, they had a dairy there. And he was a graduate in the 1920s, I think, or 1922 from the University of Massachusetts.

His father was fairly well-to-do lumber man and so on. Now, was Waite's farm always a dirt farm? Or was it ever a dairy farm?

No. Well, George Waite's father had cows.

Oh, did he?

Yes. Oh, yeah. I would say when I came here, there must have been somewhere between 20 and 30 people who were producing some milk.

Making a living doing it. Yeah. Yeah.

Quite frequently, you know, someone small like Charlie Calder, he had stopped working. He was a man almost my age and he had a couple of cows. That Doug Calder's father?

I went to school with a kid named Doug Calder. Doug Calder. Yeah.

See, when I was a kid over there... Doug Calder's grandfather. Oh, it was his grandfather?

Yeah. When I was a kid at McFarlin School, I can remember a lot of the kids wouldn't drink the bottled milk that came in from the kitchen there because it was pasteurized and stuff and they didn't like the taste of it. Yeah.

They said it was lousy milk. Yeah. You know, they brought their own from home that wasn't...

Pasteurized. Pasteurized. Homogenized.

Well, when I first started, I sold raw milk. Yeah. And, well, now, right up here at the corner, you know where Locust Road comes on to High Street?

Yeah. That house that's kind of sit there? The big old one?

Yeah. There's a lamp in the front that kind of blinds you when you drive by? Oh, no, not on the way up.

Okay. But when you go, that's on Robin Hill Road. But you take a left, take a left on Locust Road, and you come out on the High Street.

So you take a right? No. You're talking Byams?

No, no, the opposite. It's not going from Byams, but going the other way. All right.

And if you go the other way, you hit High Street. Oh, you're going to the right. To the left, I mean.

Okay, what road am I coming on? Robin Hill Road? No.

If you're going up Robin Hill Road... Yeah. And take Locust Road to the left.

And you take it to the end, and you hit High Street. Yeah. And there's a house sitting right there.

Yeah, I don't... You don't know. I can't visualize it.

Well, anyway, there's still quite a little land connected with it. And that was one of the old families. And he had a little root of raw milk.

Yeah.

And Warren Wright, you remember Warren Wright? Warren Wright, he was... When I came here, he was running quite a farm right here on Robin Hill Road.

And he had a root. Yeah. He would deliver that milk after he got through.

And he was a one-armed fella, and his brother-in-law was on the farm there. And he had a root around South Chelmsford there, raw milk. Still, when I was here...

In fact, we bought milk for a little while from him. That was in... That was in 1942 or something like that.

So you're saying you just... Well, to get the history... Things have just evolved now.

Yeah.

Now, you see, then the pasteurization came in. And after a while, they said you couldn't sell any more raw milk unless the customer came to the farm for it. Yeah.

It was a dying thing anyway. I went out of it because... You sold raw milk at one point?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah? Yeah. And then I...

Well, someone got sick somewhere, and they burned their own milk. I said, what the heck? If I'm going to be in the business, I got to go pasteurize.

Yeah.

And so I took my milk over to Jesus over in East Chelmsford, Emmanuel. They had a little farm over near where the... Tony's Garage area?

What? Where Tony's Garage... Yeah, over a little further.

Yeah. And... on Brick Kiln Road Road.

And so he processed my milk for quite a while. So you'd bring it over there and get it processed and take it back? Yeah.

That was before I went to Suburban. But he didn't have a homogenizer. But then homogenization came in.

Right.

So the only difference is the cream would go to the top. Yeah. So he didn't want to homogenize, so I bought some for a few customers from Speedwell Farms.

They had a branch. They're way up in the top in Vermont. Last couple of weeks ago, we went through Speedwell Farms.

Well, where was it around here when you bought it? Well, they had... they shipped the milk down here all pasteurized, and they had a place in...

around where... somewhere near where the Lowell connector hits the... comes to...

Comes to Gorm Street right there?

Yeah. Somewhere around that area. I can't place just where it was there.

And so I'd go get some there. But then the demand was there. So finally I said to him, I'm...

then Talty developed a route. And he had a... quite a good route.

I don't know where he had his milk processed. Lowell Dairy, I think. And he had a nice Dodge truck and had a whole load of milk.

And he was... was going to be called into the Army, into service. So Boumil, Andy Boumil, bought his route.

And that's what Boumil started for that. And his father had a herd of... of guns and cattle over there on Richardson Road.

Yeah.

And he had his milk processed in the Lowell Dairy. But it wasn't too long before he took one of the buildings there and put in a plant. And when he did, I had a chance to go there.

And, of course, the fellow in East Jetson was disappointed. But, you know, I left him.

Yeah.

Because... Business, sure, yeah. And, well, I told him, I said, I think you've got to have marginalized milk.

Sure. I'm going to build a business. And so that's evolution.

And then on the marketing, you see, we have the federal and state milk orders, federal order particularly, whereby milk is classified into two classes, Class I and Class II. Class I is what they call fluid milk. Class II is milk that goes into cheese, butter, and so forth, and other products.

So two different prices. So the surplus in the plant goes somewhere to be made into powdered milk or something. And so there was so much problems that they developed this audit system whereby the producer got paid partly.

He had to share in the Class I market. It's still that way. People don't understand, but it's still that way.

And cooling it in the watering trough, you know, where the watering trough is for the horse and the cows. You know, it's cool water just running in. Went from that to put it in a chest that was electric, oh, it was ice, and from ice to electric.

And then from each time you got a better quality milk. And then they inspected the barns. You had to be, they outlawed wet hand milking.

And that's when you got your milk on your hands, so you just slipped on the teats. That was a good way of doing it?

Oh, yeah.

You could milk easier that way. No kidding. But it was illegal to do it, because it was like washing your hands in the milk.

Yeah, right. And if they had advertised for milkers, they'd advertise for dry hand milking. No kidding.

And then after World War II, the milking machines came in, like, and so then that made it possible for a man to handle more cows. Right. And I milked my hand for about two weeks, and I just...

Yeah, against the machines.

And anyway, so now in this place up in New Hampshire, they put the milking machine on, and when it's done, it automatically comes off. The thing comes right off the teat? Yeah, the teat comes off.

No kidding.

I don't know the mechanism of it. Yeah. And that just goes right down a tube now, right?

Yeah, right into it, and it's cooled immediately. Yeah. And then the transportation is faster.

Now, they used to handle all the milk, and Glenny's, when my father used to make a couple of 8-quart cans, he'd put it up beside the street, and they'd pick it up, and then when the truck came in the back, they'd throw a couple cans off a snowbank or a lawn or wherever it was. Now, you tell me, were Glenny's in law? No, Glenny's wasn't in law, and not Pandora.

Not Pandora. But that was when I was a kid. Besides, sometimes we went into big production.

We had the retail customers, but we'd also have a chance to sell some to Glenny. We'd do a little better. Yeah.

So anyway, then got into the bulk handling, where you had a bulk tank, you see. So there's always the evolutionist, and so now they are going to ultra-pasteurization, which is high for an extended period.

Yeah. You can get a shelf life.

We went to Aruba. We went to get some milk. Oh, there's some milk there.

Yeah, they have some that isn't even refrigerated now, right? It's vacuum packed or something?

Yeah.

It's piled up with the ginger ale and the rest of the stuff in a package. Yeah. In Aruba.

It's a hot country. Do you have an opinion on that new hormone they're giving cows? Yes, I don't think that can matter with that.

You think it's okay? Just more evolution, right? Yeah, just one.

More milk, fewer cows. Probably wears out the cows faster. I don't know.

I don't know whether... What's a cow's life expectancy like for production? Oh, in milking?

Well, mine was... We had about a 20% turnover, about five years. So a cow's good milking life was five years?

Yeah, about. Yeah, yeah. It depends on how good you were.

Yeah. If you got blemish, you got mastitis, or cows got their teats stuck on, or had crippled or something. Usually, if you had to... I know many years I'd count up how many I'd sold, and it'd be about...

It'd be about 20%. Depending on... So it's hard to say this is the way it was done, see?

Yeah. Because it was an evolution. Right.

Like everything else is evolving. Yeah. Whether it's your glasses or your shoes or your automobile or what, it's evolving all the time.

And the only thing that stays the same is death and taxes. Was it a good life? Did you like it?

Yes. I mean, you hear things about... I stuck with it.

You hear things about farmers have to be on call seven times a day a week and no vacations or visitors.

Yeah.

Well, that's true, of course. But as far as the day is concerned, if someone starts to go to Boston today, what time do they start? What time do they get back?

So modern day, it probably wasn't much longer than the modern day.

Yeah.

But you enjoyed it. Yeah. I guess I was too dumb to enjoy it.

I thought I liked farming. I tried other things. Yeah.

I tried other things. Well, you were a builder. Well, that was after I got 65 years of age.

So you tried something else and became a builder. Well, I got into that because, see, when the barn burned down, I went into this fellow for two years. And then the opportunity came along for me to be director of animal health for the state of Massachusetts.

No kidding. And so I didn't like the idea, but I said, you know, I guess I'll go in, I'll see how it works in bureaucracy. So I went in on the 22nd floor of 100.

Down in Boston? 100 Cambridge Street for six years. Wow.

But meanwhile, I had the milk business. Now, what kind of job, what was that job for? What did you do?

Well, we were in charge of any law in regards to large animals. The Division of Animal Health administered, wrote the rules and regulations, and the biggest thing was TB testing of cows. You just did most of the paperwork.

You didn't actually go into the field, did you? Well, I did to supervise the, I was kind of an intermediary between the, Boston and the farmers, because I was an official in the Farm Bureau and Extension Service and stuff. And so that's how I happened to get the job.

Not that I was looking for it, but I'm glad I had that six years experience because I understand better how bureaucratic things work and how some people work like cows and some people don't do anything, and you kick them in the ass, and they'll tell you to go to the devil, you know? They either have some connections or they're on tenure or something. So it's pretty hard.

And so I understand it. But when I got in there, I still had the milk business, but it was going downhill, and I didn't, I should have come home Saturday and Sunday and worked that way. Instead, I bought houses.

And I bought two a year for six years and did the dirty work on revamping them. And I liked it. I didn't get rich, but I made some money.

But on one house right near Chelmsford, I never checked to see how much land there was. Come to find out there was plenty of land for five more lots. Yeah.

So I said, good. I sold the house, and then I owned a lot for nothing. And so my brother, my son was in the business, and my son-in-law, and I had built a couple of houses, a couple of buildings, and I knew something about land.

So I knew I was going to get through. As I got to be 65, you could stay to 70 if you wanted to. But I was gaining weight, and I thought it was time to get back to the land.

And I liked that, tearing them apart because, and fixing them because it'd be, it'd be always run-down houses, and the neighbors would be very happy. If they had any trouble, any neighbors. Yes.

They'd like to see someone fix the place up. If you had a junky house next to you, I'm glad to have it. That's right.

So I kind of worked into it, and I got a plan made for the, one of my old milk customers got to be an engineer and make the plans, and I put in a foundation. Got it too close to the road. And then my daughter, who used to work for me, on the farm where we always worked, I got to where I was even paying her 50 cents an hour.

And she got married, and after seven years, her husband wanted someone else rather than her, so she came home with her two kids. She didn't know, well, we'll start building houses, why don't we build them together? So we did.

So she said, well, she says, so how are we going? I says, 50-50. You got a little money from your settlement, I got a little credit, we'll do it.

And so she says, well, people aren't going to pay attention to me. She was only a young woman. I said, well, you're going to write the checks, and you'll find out that whoever writes the checks gets some attention.

So that's the way it was. So then you just divested yourself of the cattle business? Well, the cattle went after the fire.

Yeah. And then I sold out the equipment. It was going down.

Because here's another thing that affects it. Supermarkets? Yeah.

And quality was going up, and the women are going to work. They weren't there to take in the milk. Yeah, those little boxes that sit there all day, right?

Yeah.

You see? Yeah. And it was ten.

And then Cumberland Farms came along and made a special, cheap milk. Right. Before, stores used to charge more for the milk than we would get delivered.

Yeah. It was a nuisance store. Yeah.

They had to get the bottles back, deposit and all that, and they actually would charge more. So it made you look good on the delivery list. Yeah, but that changed.

Actually, Cumberland was the one that did it. Right. It's funny how they've gone under pretty well, Cumberland Farms.

Well, they've been taken over by the Japanese, and they're a bunch of bums anyway. Yeah. And I found out they had a lot of cows, and when I went in the Division of Animal Health, they were very hard to get.

Cumberland Farms? Oh, yeah. They had no intention of following the rules.

Yeah. And they get caught watering their milk down? No, I don't know about the watering the milk, but in connection with the disease.

Yeah. And testing, you have to test the cows once a year for TB, and they wouldn't cooperate. They're very tough.

But anyway, they sped up that thing. It was coming anyway.

Yeah.

They sped it up. And so it was difficult for us to keep up the volume. Another thing, wages went up, see, and we couldn't have a...

Well, I remember when a milkman in Andover got $25 a week, and that was good pay. You know, and he was one of the... But the quality of men that you could get then compared to later.

Right, yeah. And meet the customers and get new customers and take care of the money and so forth. So anyway, it was a dying business.

And I guess actually I was sick of it, and I let it go. So you were just... You were in the very end of the business more or less.

Yeah, of that... Right.

Of the whole delivery.

Right, yeah. Yeah. So I got into the saddle.

Now we have different things going on on the farm. Beautiful view, huh? It's nice just to sit here and look over your property.

That's great. These crops here, we have some Cambodians that are farming. I've seen them out there, yeah.

Does Jones have any in here?

Yeah, Jones has that over there. Jones over there.

You have Cambodians here? Polly runs some of my land. For our strawberries. Are these the Cambodians that take it over to... I see the Westford flea market there on Sunday. They got a lot of nice vegetables and stuff over there.

No, they don't.

What do they do with this?

They haul it to Boston. They haul it to Boston? Yeah.

No kidding? Yeah. They get about a buck a pound each time.

Okay, good. He had a bunch of eggplant there this morning. They like them small.

Yeah.

He had a bunch, and he says that's all a pound. That's fine. Oh, sure.

That's good. And then he takes in... He may take...

He has a van that might take in 50 or 60 crates and leave a bunch at some restaurant, but that restaurant may be selling them to another Chinese or Southeast investor. Yeah. They have...

A little mock-up, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a very nice view, beautiful view. So we're kind of proud of those people. I also like all the horses you can see down there.

Yeah, we've got the stable there. My wife comes from southern New Jersey, and I went down there to visit her parents, and there was a farm down there that had about maybe 100 horses. And I said to her, you know what I want to do today?

She said, what? I said, I want to go sit out in that pasture for at least half a day and just watch the horses. She said, are you serious?

I said, I'm serious. Because when I was a kid, my parents lived on Turnpike Road, first house there. Oh, yeah?

Remember Bedell's farm there? Walter Bedell? Yeah.

Used to develop ponies? Yeah. When I was a kid, I'd just go sit in the field all day and watch the ponies.

That was a trend that was ill-conceived. Bedell thought that ponies would be in demand. You mean the Shetlands?

Yeah. The demand went down. Yeah.

So he, that was a trend. He moved out to, he moved somewhere. Boyle Center somewhere.

Yeah. He got a bigger farm up there. He was an engineer.

He was a train engineer. He didn't do what I was living for. Yeah.

But he wanted to work, I think. Yeah. He had a lot.

He had 50 ponies there. And I think he was under the impression that they would get to be valuable, but they didn't. Yeah, no.

That's another thing. We were in charge of licensing stables and stable instructors, pet shops. We were licensing the cattle diseases and hog cholera.

This has been an interesting job, seeing as you were doing business and you had an education. Had a lot of, well, 30 veterinarians. We had about five full-time.

Yeah. And then we had, part-time was around the state. Yeah.

But it was interesting. My daughter is in animal husbandry or something out there. Did you ask her?

Yeah. Maybe something like chicken experiments have rubbed off on her. I don't know.

Well, it was nice talking to you.

Yeah.

I got some information that I didn't have before.

Yeah.

Hopefully. There's quite a lot of what you want to, dairy is fine, but poultry was important here. In Chelmsford?

Oh, yeah. Really? When I came here, there were about 30 people, at least 30.

Well, I knew I used to hang around with St. Germain. Yeah. And his father had a little root and did eggs and stuff too, right?

Yeah. Yeah. It's funny, I live on Pine Hill Road.

Yeah. Now, whoever, I never would have thought of as a kid when I'd go to St. Germain's house, we'd run through the woods and stuff. I live there now, in the woods behind his house, you know?

Yeah.

Which St. Germain was that?

John St. Germain is the one I used to hang around with, but he had brothers, older brothers. Yeah, well, I knew the St. Germains very well. Yeah, yeah.

Was that one of the St. Germains that was? Yeah.

Their family still there? Tom St. Germain?

Tom's daughter.

But I knew her, Tom, and a whole bunch of them, and Anna. Sue St. Germain? Yeah, I had her in school.

She was a nice kid. Yeah, they had a big chicken. They had a big, a lot of poultry.

Three, their big barn was like four floors. Well, they kind of come in on the end of it. Yeah, and then, like, next to the Rainbow was Randall's slaughtering house.

It was Randall's farm. It was right after the Rainbow. Yeah, yeah.

We used to bring our chickens down. Well, when I was a kid, you know the grain store in the center? Yeah. They used to give you 10 chickens free at Easter. So we'd all go down and get 10, so it would take, like, 50 home, raise them up, and take them down to Randall's and have them slaughtered. But chickens was, poultry was big here, huh?

Oh, yes. Yeah, when I came here, it was about as big as dairy. No kidding.

Well, the Emanuel's and... They're still at it, right? They don't raise the chickens, do they?

They've actually done the same, as you were talking about evolution, has happened to them.

Oh, yeah.

Right? Like, he told me, I talked to, because I'm, him and I talk poultry when I eat at the 110 Diner. He told me what happened there was the big boys from the Midwest moved in on his area and everything, and they thought they could just go wipe them out, just forget it.

But what they didn't realize was he had all the roots, and he knew all the people. Yeah. And what they finally did was use him as the middleman.

In other words, now they just, he gets the eggs and he still delivers them to his roots and stuff. Well, poultry is another thing that, you see, the efficiency has changed. Due to what?

Well, the old farm was a broody chicken. The mother had some eggs, and she hatched out a dozen chickens. Well, that was fine.

And, of course, they wouldn't lay eggs only in the spring. Oh, yeah. In my chicken memorabilia, I've got things like chemicals to put the eggs in.

Yeah. Water glass. They used to put them in molasses a lot.

The colonists used to have big jibes of molasses. Oh, I never heard of molasses, but they put them in water glass. It would stop the air from getting in there, you know, and they would have eggs all year in the winter.

I never heard of molasses. Molasses, yeah. They used to drop it down in molasses.

Well, by the time I knew about it, they'd buy them and put them in water, what they call water glass. With a chemical. Yeah.

I've got this big bottle that says so much per gallon of water, and it'd keep your eggs. The price of eggs is like that, you see, because for quite a few reasons. But they bred the broodiness out of chickens.

Yeah. I still have some broody hens right now. I have four of them.

I'm kicking them off the nest every time I go to get my eggs. Yeah, well, you haven't got developed strength.

All the eggs crosses in every year.

Yeah. And they increased the, what they call the clutch size. That's how many they laid one a day for so many days.

Oh, yeah.

Some of the good ones would lay at least 365 days. Another thing is the early maturity, and there was a lot of genetic work done on poultry. Yeah.

Now, at the same time, disease was important. This state here got clean of BWD. That's bacillary white diarrhea.

They got rid of that early. That was a big problem. So that that breeder could sell chickens that were clean.

And so a lot of these people went in and had little hatcheries, see? Yeah. And there was one right here in South Jemson.

I went to Agway. I read in the Globe in 1988 that they can produce a chicken egg. Did you read about that fish oil?

It's supposed to be good for your heart. Yeah. They can produce an egg if you give them the proper food, a fish meal and stuff, that is really, really good for your heart.

So I cut the article out. I'm buying my grain at Agway, and I said to them, would you send this along to the people who make your grain? What do they think about it?

I never heard anything. You think if the ability there, see, I almost saw it come, you know, you were saying the evolution goes to big farms and everything. Well, the other way you can get an egg that's really good for you is to have them eating bugs and grass and range.

You know how they came off the range and down in the little den? So I thought, well, maybe someday, you know, like my eggs I think are pretty healthy because I have a half acre of land just where my chickens roam around them. So maybe my eggs are healthy.

I probably could sell them for $2 a dozen, but how would you build from that? You know what I mean? I'm going to get myself in a jam.

Well, they tried to market eggs that were, had better, but the people couldn't. Yeah, egg lands best, right, they get farmed. Yeah, they couldn't.

Yeah, right, they couldn't make those claims. They couldn't make the claims. They couldn't substantiate.

Yeah, yeah. Well, anyway, you see, you had the breeding, then the disease, you see, when you've got BWD, and then coccidiosis, and then they discovered vitamins. They used to let the, have the chickens in colony houses and get them out, and they said, it's something about getting them out on the dirt in the sunshine.

Well, really, it was the sunshine, vitamin D. And then, of course, they find out, then the cod liver oil. Yeah.

Remember when that, gee, cod liver oil, everybody was taking cod liver oil. And so gradually, then they had another disease more lately, and I forgot the name of it, but you would lose 10 to 30 percent.

There was some type of flu.

They'd go light. Indian flu, they'd wipe them right out. Well, but this would, the bird would go light and die.

You'd have, of the laying flock, you start with 100, you end up with about 70 in a year, and you had a lot of dead chickens. So they found out how to handle that disease. So then along comes some feed experts down in Connecticut, and they found out vitamins and so on, how they could produce a chicken quickly.

Do you know how many weeks old your average chicken is that you buy in the supermarket? Seventeen weeks old. It's not very old, huh?

Four or five months, let's say. Seventeen weeks is not too old. Yeah, right.

And that's four-and-a-half-pound chicken. Yeah, yeah. It used to be 24 weeks when I started. Remember carbs in Littleton when they were doing the research out there? Well, when I used to hatch eggs in school, I used to go out to carbs and get them. Well, I made the mistake once of taking a few of them home, and I had a rooster that was like this big and couldn't walk.

So I called up carbs and I said to them, you know, what happened? Why is this rooster? And they said, what are you doing?

I said, well, I got it out of my backyard with my other hands and stuff. He goes, that rooster is not supposed to live over 16 weeks. He said, we didn't program those legs to be able to carry anything over 16 weeks.

After 16 weeks, his body gets so big, they genetically had them so the legs were not, you know, as you said, they're producing a chicken that gets real nice, real quick. You don't want to keep them going. I had to bring them down to Humane Society.

He couldn't walk. Yeah, yeah. So, you see, they couldn't mass produce them.

Now, I went to a duck farm up in Canada. They're raising ducks. But they have everything.

Ducks are all in sight. They, how many weeks was it for them? Less.

You just keep ducks in a house in cages and not even out? Yeah. Yeah.

I was telling us on Sunday how they stapled the ribs down on the floor so the ducks couldn't move around.

Really? I don't know.

I don't know.

Who was telling us?

On Sunday they were telling us. I don't know.

I don't know about that. That's not a practical thing and not a humane thing. So I don't know what's about that.

But, you see, and who is the beneficiary? The consumers. Sure, yeah.

You see, now the same thing happened in fruit and vegetables. Now, we had commission men here in town. Belville, the grandfather of the boys that run these asphalt plants.

Their father was a commission man. Now, what do you mean commission man? He would pick up a few strawberries from you and a few from me and a few, a couple boxes of corn, go to Lowell and go around to the markets, which were independently owned at that time, and sell and come back and give us a proceed and minus his commission.

Right, yeah. Now, Ralph House's father, you know Ralph House. Yeah.

His father was a commission man. And then there was another one down, lived down on Littleton Road. I never heard that phrase before, commission man.

Yeah.

Ralph House.

And they would pick up this product. But strawberries is one of the things. Probably 40 people or more in this town had some strawberries that went through a commission man.

No kidding. But Ralph probably raised more at one farm with one manager and very little help but a heck of a lot of machinery than all the 40 farms here, you see. Yeah, he really did.

And these commission men, they'd also raise some raspberries and apples and pears and beans and different things, you see. And that all has gone into mass production. Yeah.

Now, you take, in Westford, there was a lot of farms, dairy farms there too. But in the end, the only one that was left was Fletcher. But Fletcher was producing as much milk as all those little ones were producing, you know.

But there is a chance.

Interviewer - OK, well, thanks a lot for telling me all this information.