About Vermont, high school seniors are about to graduate. For many of them, this was the first year that the pandemic didn’t greatly affect their school years.
We wanted to get a sense of what it was like to go back to “normal” and to find out what really matters to teenagers about venturing out into the world. So we asked some students at Harwood Union High School to record what they found significant in their senior years and worked with them to produce a collection we’ll be publishing all week.
Next installment: In the baseball world with Harwood Union HS senior Xavier Brookens, who ‘just fell in love the sport’
Addey Lilley is an 18-year-old from Waterbury. She interviewed her grandfather, Douglas Lilley, about his dairy farm in East Calais.
We suggest listening to this story if you can! We’ve also provided a transcript below.
Addey Lilley: So you said that you don’t know the year you started farming. But what — do you remember, like, those early years? Like how old were you?
A painting shows a man posing for a portrait. He’s wearing a brown cowboy hat and blue denim shirt, with a paisley tie.
Addey Lilley
Douglas Lilley: Probably 25, 21. I wanted to milk cows. So I built a barn. My brother and family helped me on weekends. And I’d work on it by myself during the week. And then I went out and bought 25 registered Holsteins. 25. Nice ones, they were. That’s how I got started, I guess. It was in my genes. You know, my grandfather was a farmer. My dad was a farmer. So I would be a farmer. Or just something that was there, you know.
What would you say was the hardest part about farming?
Chores every day, seven days a week, no time off. That was the hardest. You know, family would have Christmas off somewhere, you know. Everybody would go to Christmas and I always leave, come back and milk. Or a birthday. You couldn’t go — you’d have to come home and milk.
What would you say your favorite part about living in East Calais is?
The farm I’m on is probably one of the nicest farms in town. It is the nicest farm in town, as far as the land. Flat. You know, you go over back, you know, when you spread cow manure in that field?
Yeah.
That big field is so flat. And the one over there is all flat. Most of them are around here and everywhere, up and down and full of rocks. That was the best piece of farmland in the area of Calais and probably maybe East Montpelier. It is. But it’s very hard to keep it up these days. My taxes are almost $22,000 a year. So it’s hard to survive today. By milking you know, we had to give up milking cows. I mean, you know, I couldn’t do it anymore. My body’s all worn out. Both arms, my legs, my knees, my hips. Getting up, climbing down tractors, jumping off. Going up the pit and going out and driving cows down. Every single day. Every single day this ain’t just when you feel like it. It could be snowing, it could be 30 below, you still have to go.
“We had to give up milking cows. I mean, you know, I couldn’t do it anymore. My body’s all worn out. Both arms, my legs, my knees, my hips. Getting up, climbing down tractors, jumping off. Going up the pit and going out and driving cows down. Every single day.”
Douglas Lilley
Would you say that dairy farming is kind of like a dying art in Vermont?
Yeah, unless you’re big. You gotta be bigger. You have to milk, you know, 1,500 – 2,000 cows, you can’t be milking 40 cows like I did.
Yeah, there’s no room, like, for small local farmers.
When I was a kid, there’s 50 farms in that area. When I was a kid. And I was the last farm to go out of business in this town. And there’s no farms in that area at all. And when they’re gone, they’re gone. They can’t come back. And all these nice farms. You know, the out-of-staters and other people have just built houses there. Houses after houses, you know.
That’s kind of a shame because, you know, dairy farmers have been the backbone of Vermont.
They are. They’re the backbone of Calais. And I go to Town Meeting, people don’t care anymore, you know?
So as you know, I’m in the process of applying to colleges right now. And one of the supplementals that I wrote for my school is about the farm and coming to visit you on the farm. So, before we end, I wanted to read to you the supplemental that I wrote.
“Being a product of the agricultural community has defined how I view the world, giving me perspective and values that I wouldn’t have gained otherwise. The raw beauty of nature and the hard work of local farmers, my family’s history runs through everything I do.”
Addey Lilley
“I get dressed quickly and hop in my dad’s truck to take the hour drive to my grandpa’s farm in East Calais. Ever since I can remember I spent weeks at a time at my family’s dairy farm. Haying fields, milking cows, and collecting chicken eggs were some of the many tasks I eagerly enjoyed taking part in. Unlike anything else in my life, it was labor-intensive work.
Ould – worked in support of Vermont Open from 2019 through 2023 as a news reporter and co-host of the day-to-day news podcasting, The Occurrence.
