Main Sections

Sharing Memories With The Foster Family

photo by Cheryl White Pictured above L to R: Luella, Howard and Ben Foster

Tuesday August 19, 2008

By Staff Writers

Sharing Memories with Howard Foster

By Mike Cameron

    Howard was born in Middlebury 89 years ago and has a remarkable memory of life on the farm as a boy and how farming has changed throughout his life.  “The Robert Frost homestead was my grandmother's homestead at one time,” Mr. Foster recalls as he sits in an easy chair fielding questions as quickly as they are asked, displaying wit, wisdom and a great sense of humor.

    “Yes I was born in Middlebury on Creek Road.  I've had people asked me if I lived here in Middlebury all my life and I tell them not yet,” he quips with a little smile.  

     Mr. Foster offers an interesting perspective of farming in Vermont and has lived through practically all of its most dramatic changes.  He can recall tractors without rubber tires and horses that were used for everything from working the fields to delivering the mail and the milk in those early days.  “One good thing about a horse is if you fall asleep at the reins he would still take you home.  If you fall asleep in a car you will probably end up against a tree.”  

    For a man who has endured three hospital stays in the three weeks prior to our visit he is a very engaging conversationalist.  Asked about the current state of Vermont dairying, Mr. Foster does not mince words.  Asked specifically about farmers selling their farms he says, “Don't blame em”.   Citing fuel costs, feed costs, and other fixed expenses that farmers have to endure, he noted that “the price of eggs have gone up a dollar on the grocery shelf.”  “We should have all invested in oil companies, years ago,” he said with a little grin.  Mr. Foster punctuated his comparative price analysis with a very strong kicker that put it all into perspective.  “You could buy a farm for six-thousand-dollars way back sixty years ago,” he explained.

    He spoke briefly about the advent and evolution of modern technology especially computers and cell phones.  Mr. Foster freely admits that it is not his cup of tea and yet he was very active over the years in the local school board, was an integral part of the town sewer commission, and served on several prominent state agricultural boards along with being a successful dairyman himself.  “In those early days, the original Middlebury Airport was located close to the barn and one of those big Ford tri-motor airplanes would swoop in and the cows would go right down on their knees,” he remembers.  

    On retirement Mr. Foster is philosophical, brief and to the point.  “They say when you retire you should move away and not see what happens next.  I stick my head in to take a look at my son's farm from time to time.  I did it my way and now they do it their way,” he told the Voice.

    He does not bemoan retirement or the aging process, reads the papers every day and enjoys watching The Price is Right and Wheel of Fortune on television along with the news.

    He and his wife Helen raised six children; Robert, Judy, James, Sharon, Dorothy and Joyce.  There are 13 grand children and 8 great grandchildren. The family continues to get bigger and bigger each and every holiday. He told me proudly.

Sharing Memories With Ben Foster

By Larry Johnson

    On one level, Ben Foster’s life could be summed up by a statement that he made early in the interview: “My mailing address has always been Middlebury.” Middlebury has been, and still is, the beneficiary of his focus, but his intelligence, I soon learned, transcends the local and ranges far and wide, especially where sustainable agriculture is concerned. Farming has been Ben’s passion and his vocation for most of his 91 years.

     Ben Foster was born on November 11, 1916, on Monroe Street in Middlebury. When he was only seven years old his father died, and his grandfather bought a farm on lower Foote Street in order to make a place for his mother Nina and Ben’s three younger siblings. Originally the farm had two cows, then thirteen. Today, the younger Fosters farm about 1700 acres and the cows number in the many hundreds.

     Farming has changed much during Ben’s life, and Ben and his two brothers, Howard and George, were in no small way responsible for bringing modern farming practices to Addison County. It was Ben, and some other local farmers such as Roy Potter, who were instrumental in creating the Addison County Artificial Breeders’ Association. Ben became its treasurer, and later became a director of the New York Artificial Breeders’ Cooperative, headquartered in Ithaca, New York. Ben became interested in and determined to implement, artificial breeding on the Foster farm after his Grandfather Chaffee was nearly killed when attacked by a bull.

     During his years on the board at NYABC, he was required to fly to Ithaca, once a month, in order to attend meetings. He usually hired Al Quesnel or one of the other pilots at the Middlebury State Airport to fly him to Ithaca. “I liked these outings very much,” Ben told me. “I would fly out in the morning and be home in the afternoon in time for dinner. And I got paid $42.00 for my trouble.”

     The Fosters were first in a number of other farming innovations. The brothers had the first 300 cow herd in the county, perhaps the state. Today a herd this size is nothing special, but in the mid-50s it was considered enormous. They have also been first in purchasing new, labor-saving farm equipment, such as the current self-propelled mowing machine that can travel at 12 miles an hour, leaving a sea of grass in its wake.

     “When I was growing up farms were very self-sufficient,” Ben told me. “Nearly every farm had an orchard, chickens, hogs and vegetables for the table and the market. I know that every farm on this street had an orchard.” Even back then the Foster Brothers were innovators. Long before balers had wheels and were towed behind tractors, the brothers would hire a baling contractor to come to their farm and bale hay. The baler was placed in the hay barn and loose hay was fed into it. One hundred pound bales, 15”x30” would come out the other end. Many of these hay bales were loaded on a freight train in Middlebury and sent to Boston, Hartford and other big cities where they were sold to horse owners.

     Ben told me that he and his brothers George and Howard had specialized duties on their farm as well as each one of them being responsible for general farm duties. Ben did much of the electrical and plumbing work and some of the bookkeeping. Perhaps the fact that he was good at math and science in school, had something to do with his interest in all things mechanical. Like his brothers and his sister Luella, Ben attended the little red school house on the corner of Rt.7 and Schoolhouse Road. Ben finished seventh grade at this school, attended eighth grade in Middlebury and then went on to graduate from Middlebury High School. He recalled that his math skills were so advanced that he was able to tutor a student at Middlebury College. Ben’s math teacher encouraged him to go on to college and study math, but Ben, like many Fosters before him, had only one vocation in mind: farming.

     In recent history, Ben’s ancestors hailed from Ripton, Vermont, where they cut 100 acres of forest and then tilled the side hills with horses. Today, the enormous effort that was involved in creating a life on a hardscrabble farm has been obliterated by trees. Nothing is left of that farm, or any of the flinty farms that dotted the Green Mountains during the 19th century, except a few cellar holes. In 1911 the Fosters moved down from the mountain and settled on Creek Road in Middlebury, and in 1920 they moved, once again, and this time to Foote Street. Ben remembers these early years well. It was a time when machinery was scarce and labor was cheap. It was also long before Rt. 7 had been paved. A trip to Rutland or Burlington was an ordeal not undertaken lightly. There was, however, a bus service from Burlington to Rutland and each 30-mile section of the route was contracted out to one individual. In other words, each contractor was responsible for his particular 30 miles. Sometimes, especially during the winter months, this created a host of problems. If the snow was too deep to buck through, the bus driver would hire men with snow shovels to walk in front of the bus and shovel a path. Progress could be slow. During the summer the road had to be maintained as well, and contractors were hired to keep the road in good repair. The road was scraped with horse drawn graders and one man, a Mr. Newton, was responsible for the section between Middlebury and Vergennes. It wasn’t until the late 30s that Rt.7 began being paved, and much of it was still gravel in the late 40s and early 50s.

     I asked Ben Foster his view of the current agricultural climate and what he believed the future held for farming in Vermont and, for that matter, the rest of the country. “We are going to have a lot of 1000 herd farms,” he told me, “and this is going to increase the cost of doing business. We once thought we could survive on $10.00 milk but today we need $20.00 milk to break even. Crops are hauled long distances and machinery is expensive---our mowing machine, for instance, cost $200,000. I think there is a place for well managed big farms and for small farms that can hire labor and exploit farmers’ markets and cooperatives. The medium size farms are going to have a tough time making it. One hundred cow farms are for sale all over the place. There are now fewer farms in Vermont than there were in Addison County just a few decades ago. I believe that Vermont has to get back to more self-sufficiency if we are going to keep the state the way it is.”

     Good advice from a man who has contributed much to his community over the past nine decades and who was a justice of the peace for 50 years, and has been involved in town and school affairs for most of his adult life. He and his wife Lois have something that is frequently rare and too often taken for granted: a social consciousness. When it manifests in an entire family, however, it is a gift to be used and greatly appreciated.

Sharing Memories With Luella Foster-Wolfreys

By Cheryl White

    Luella Foster-Wolfreys expressed an opinion to me that is, I believe, shared by many ex-pat Vermonters who come back to the Green Mountain State from time-to-time: “I love Vermont, especially the mountains. Vermont is truly my home,” she told me, “no matter where I may live. I am so fortunate to have experienced growing up here on a farm. I live in Massachusetts but my heart is always in Vermont.”

     Luella, like her brothers, Ben, George and Howard Foster, spent most of her youth growing up on the family farm on Foote Street, in the town of Middlebury. “I loved the farm,” she told me, “but I never did learn to milk a cow, so I helped mother in the house with the canning, bread baking, cooking and gardening.”  Luella also loved flower gardening and sewing clothes for her dolls. She also enjoyed skating on the pond with her brothers who often built a big bonfire to keep themselves warm.

     It was a close family, perhaps made more so by the fact that her father had died when she was very young. She was brought up by her mother Nina and her Grandfather and Grandmother Chaffee. Her mother didn’t remarry until all of her children were graduated from high school and then she married Samuel James of Weybridge. She remembers Mr. James very well. He was an old fashioned farmer who insisted on working his farm with horses, when many of his neighbors were using tractors.

     Primary education was just a walk away, down the road from the farm. The little red school house is still standing on the corner of Rt. 7 and School House Road.  There were eight grades in one room, Luella remembers, and she also remembers walking to school in the spring and fall and sometimes skiing to her lessons in the winter. One day, she recalls, she lost her boot in the mud and brother Howard had to carry her the rest of the way to school.

     A visit to her mother, who was at one point sick and in the hospital, had a positive impact on Luella’s life. During that transforming experience she decided to become a nurse. After high school she attended Mary Fletcher Hospital’s Nurses Training Program and graduated in 1942. At the same time that she was studying for licensure, she was helping to take care of her grandfather. She passed her exams and began working on the maternity floor at Porter Hospital in Middlebury.

     World War II was in full swing by this time and her friend Bea, a fellow nursing student at Mary Fletcher, had decided to join the army. So Luella left Porter Hospital and returned to Mary Fletcher to take over her friend’s duties. She worked in the pharmacy mixing penicillin and IVs and sterilizing for the emergency room. She and five other nurses lived in a house at the bottom of Fletcher Allen Hospital Road. “It was then that I learned how to drink coffee black,” she told me. “I needed it in order to stay awake.”

      After her friend Bea was mustered out of the army, she convinced Luella to move to Boston with her, where they both got jobs at the Boston’s Children’s Hospital. It was also in Boston where she met her future husband Bill, at a dance class that they were both attending. The couple were married a year later. Bill was in the Coast Guard, at about this time, and was stationed on a ship in the North Atlantic, helping to make the shipping lanes safe for transatlantic traffic to Europe.

     After his stint in the Coast Guard was over, Bill signed up for the Naval Reserve and was soon sent to Honolulu, Hawaii. “It was great duty and a wonderful experience,” Luella told me. “I even met a pen pal I had been corresponding with when I was a kid.”

     When she and Bill were first married, he told her that she was going to have to learn to drive and get a license. Otherwise they weren’t going to have any children; the ostensible reason being that he didn’t want to end up as a chauffer and school bus driver. So at age 28, Luella earned her driver’s license, and, more importantly, the couple eventually had four children: Billy, Susan, Bob and Jim.

Printer Friendly

Top

Advertisements

Search our Archives