Community Almanac

STEP INTO THE SHEPARD HOUSEHOLD AND YOU’RE STEPPING INTO HISTORY. Omniscient, it leaks through the floorboards, spilling out and over the farmstead to the pool in the green valley below. If you listen closely, you can almost hear the late Robert Young—whose namesake appears on the road sign—bending down to place a weathered hand on the kitchen table: “Though shall not eat like the pigs, wilt though?” he booms. Like a stain, history runs its inky hands over the landscape. Water from the original well still runs to the second floor. The old barn behind the house may be in the throes of repair, but its foundations have been there for over a hundred years, and a buffalo skin rug lies folded in a corner. Listen close enough, and you’ll realize each floorboard, stone, and fencepost has an unwritten story. Larry Shepard is a deliberate man. His blue eyes bear the mark of knowing and as he speaks, and he climbs over words as he would a stonewall, with a staid, practiced efficiency. Neither hasty nor assuming, he shuffles through the faded photos before him with a familiarity that's comforting, conjuring up those people — "these guys" as he calls them — who once lived here. "He was a big man of understating the thing," he says, gesturing to a photo of his late grandfather. "And…?" coaxes his wife Sue, nudging him. "My grandfather loved to eat apples. As a kid in the old days, you'd get a barrel of apples, and, well, his mother wouldn't let him eat a good apple — you know that was for company — he had to get one that was kind of soft, and eat those first, because otherwise the apples would all spoil in the barrel. So Robert was always eating spongy apples. As an adult, his kids never went without a fresh apple.” "He had dreams of being a railroad engineer, but his dad died when he was 15 so he had to come home and run the family farm. Even though he loved it here, his dreams were definitely deferred. But he did his duty and he came back home and took over the farm and ran it up until into his late 60s, early 70s. "You know it's interesting. Their own kids couldn't wait to get out. My mother's generation, her older brother, my grandparents had sent him off to UVM to be an Ag major and come back here, and he said, 'Well this is the last place I'd ever want to farm.' “If he was going to farm he wasn't going to do it here, where it was hard, and rocky, and side-hill. I mean it's beautiful to look at, but it's a tough place to make a living you know, real rocky." Growing up in Middlebury, Vermont, Larry would often visit his grandparents on Mountain View Farm. His early memories of farming are of distaste, however. Rarely indoors and not to his liking, Larry would help his cousins with weeding, tending the animals, and picking raspberries. But as he grew up, his connection to the ground he worked deepened, instilling within him a new respect for the farm and its history. While at UVM studying Agriculture, he met his wife, Sue. Shortly after they were married in the mid '70s, his grandmother died. The house needed a tenant, "so we just sort of stepped in and have been here ever since." Moving back to the sidehill farm and his roots, Larry became a fifth generation farmer. “I often look out at that field which I know my ancestors mowed by hand. They had such a small amount of free time, their days were so full — if we were alive a hundred years ago the men would be working on a horse harness in the evening, or carding wool or whatever.” “It's powerful," Larry muses, pausing. “It locks you in.” “I can see that happening to my son….Sitting here at 56 I can see that tendency in him to try and make it better…or to be driven by desire for it to make money. Somewhere you've got to reach a happy medium where you can enjoy your life and not be just tied to the work. I think all farmers have to deal with that." Working at Martin's Hardware and Building Supply in Bristol, Larry still tends to the farm. But now he’s joined by his two sons, Nate and Mike, who bring a certain youthful excitement and creativity to their work. Mike and his partner Erin are beginning a system of crop rotation and are raising pigs. Much to his surprise, Larry's eldest son Nate returned home five years ago after college in the city and traveling abroad to build his own home on the property. The house is powered entirely by alternative energy, and made of wood cut from their land. But like his father and grandfather before him, nothing compared to Vermont when it came to settling down. "Little did we know all these years later he'd have a house right near where his famous calf roundup was," chuckles Larry. Maybe it’s no surprise at all. Larry and Sue’s daughter, on the other hand, works overseas in France, but maybe one day she too will be inclined to return home to Mountain View Farm. Sue enjoys her sons’ company, but has never pressured them to return home. In fact, sometimes she seems surprised that they’ve settled on the family land. She takes great pride in the work her family does., and was thrilled when her son Nate chose to return home. “You know when you build it yourself you invest yourself into it, it’s meaningful in a way that’s not like finding a house to buy and you move into it ready made — it’s like investing yourself in a much different way. I don’t know how else to explain it but I think it was another generation and it seemed like those roots, or those ancestors were really calling to him. He wanted to get his feet on the ground and in the ground and get kind of settled here.” Sue is a life long learner, interested in gardening, traveling, and local life in Vermont. Originally from the suburbs of New York, life in the city seems a distant memory. She too is rooted to the land at Mountain View Farm. These days, history continues to work over the landscape, kneading the furrows and ridges to reflect present, as well as past, generations. Things are changing. Last year up on the ridge, Sue found an oak sapling — unheard of at these altitudes. Nate installed solar panels on his house recently. Larry gets a grin on his face whenever he talks about rebuilding the family barn. "I'm a native Vermonter, and have lived in Vermont all my life to this point so far," Larry declares matter-of-factly. "And as Sue would tell 'ya, it's a hard thing to get me out of Vermont, actually. I'm pretty rooted here.” "Quite," murmurs Sue, eyes smiling. This story was written by Middlebury College Students Max Kanter, Lindsay Patterson and Aylie Baker in the Fall of 2008.