On Saturday afternoon after we got Larry back home, my neighbor took me up to a farm tour at the Scott Farm in Dummerston, VT. It has been a working farm since 1791.
The first thing we saw was this entrance and the astounding stone work.
The Farm at one time had a dairy (with a cork floor for the comfort of the cows), creamery, a sawmill to process timber from the Farm’s forested land, a poultry barn, hog barn, horse barn, a carpenter’s shop, mechanic’s workshop, pastures and hayfields, and 6 stone masons to build walls, foundations and drainage systems for the fields.
This is the detail of the central piece at the entrance.
The next thing to catch my eye was the slate on the cow barn. It was so very old. There’s been renovations done on many of the 23 buildings on the farm, but it doesn’t seem that much has been done to the enormous cow barn.
The front had been done but inside was packed with all kinds detritus, with a large refrigerator blocking the main doors.
This was the back side.
This side, which is the lower level, had these huge windows. Not something you would want where livestock lived.
But inside this is what faced those windows: The Stone Trust, a stone working school.
It’s the only year round stone working school in North America. The work done there is found all over the property.
The tour guide said that back in the hayday around the turn of the century, of the 26 workers on the property, 6 were Italian stone masons.
We didn’t go over and look at all the work. The guide had said there was to be a tour of the stone school in September, so we thought we might come back for that.
There was a small covered bridge leading to the stone projects on the other side of the pond.
There are apparently 3 dams on the stream creating ponds. This one is between the 1st and 2nd dams. These provided irrigation and water in the barns and house.
This was the one next to the covered bridge.
The tour had started by the farm stand and this, and the slates on the cow barn, were what we saw first. This is the barn yard.
The barn yard from below where the Stone Trust is.
Before we got to the barn yard, the guide talked about the farmhouse. The upper porch with the screen door no longer goes anywhere.
The farm is a for-profit business owned by The Landmark Trust. It has 571 acres. It was first settled in 1791. It had several owners until being bought by by Rufus Scott in 1845. The oldest buildings still on the farm date from then.
The Hollbrook family in 1903 bought Rudyard Kipling’s home, Naulakha, which adjoins the farm to the south. They bought the Scott Farm a few years later. Several parcels were added as farms adjoining the farm became available, ending up with the 571 acres of today.
I was delighted to see small awning windows on the house, plus the “witch” window under the eaves.
These are the old garages’ doors. This is Vermont, I couldn’t see how lattice would keep snow out…
The house is now used for housing for workers and the offices of the Scott Farm.
Next we got to tour the horse barn. It has been restored and was fascinating inside.
There were huge tilting mangers in the standing stalls. They tilted into the aisle for filling. On the upper floors there were barrels being stored in the lofts.
But this was the most fascinating aspect:
Just inside the upper level on the right was a U shaped structure, horse stairs. They were 10 - 12’ long on each leg, sloping, but not too steeply, down to the next sloping leg, until they reached the cellar. This was the leg from the cellar, and had a door to keep the horses from climbing out.
After the horse barn, we went into the barn yard by the Stone Trust and opposite that was the pig barn. This barn was used in the movie The Cider House Rules. We didn’t go into it.
Last was an enormous root cellar built by the stone masons. It’s not in use and was very overgrown.
On top of it I found the venting chimney for it. We were back by the farm stand so I went in to check it out and get something to drink.
It was more of a gift shop than farm stand, displaying lots of artists work.
The tour guide was doing his first ever tour and hadn’t really got the hang of speaking and touring. Lot of repetition of information, and far too much emphasis on The Landmark Trust and not enough about the farm itself.
The farm is primarily an orchard now, with about 6000 trees, mostly heirloom varieties. This is down from a much higher number of trees in past decades. As far as I could see, that was the primary farming done, and most of the buildings weren’t being used for their original purposes. Several, like the old sugar house, had been converted to rental properties to bring in income. Some were long term rentals.
But it was a beautiful old farm, and the influx of plenty of income around the turn of the century meant that the beautiful and skilled work done then had survived, both in stone and in wood.