The Wallace farm: A struggle and a wonder

The best part of Wallace’s job as a farmer is sharing stories about farm life with local children. Last year, a fourth-grade class from Thatcher Brook Primary School called the Wallace farm, “one of

In this second installment of a three-part series on farming in Waterbury, local writer David Goodman visits with Rosina Wallace, a fifth-generation farmer who is struggling to make ends meet and keep up her beloved family tradition. Although Wallace has to work hard to keep her farm intact, she approaches her days with a sense of passion and purpose that is inspirational.


A few miles up Blush Hill, just after the road turns to dirt and beyond a forlorn abandoned grain silo, a ramshackle collection of white houses and red barns appears on the left. Old asphalt shingles are peeling off the side of one of the barns; a strong wind seems as if it could strip off what remains. Mud and standing water sit in the farm yard. A moss-covered wooden porch lies cock-eyed against the house, making it look like something Pippy Longstocking might live in. The deeply weathered buildings look as if they’ve been there since ancient times.

The Wallace Farm has indeed been a witness to history in Waterbury. The farm was bought in 1866 by Sidney and Lavinia Wallace, who farmed here and, like many farm families, were largely self-sufficient. In the 1920s, the Wallaces had an orchard of pear, apple and peach trees. For many years, this was the last farmstead on the road, which at one time extended to Stowe.

As I splash through the mud toward the barn, a voice cuts the cool fall wind that whips down from the fields through the out buildings. “IT’S HOT!” comes the sharp warning as I approach an electric fence that is drawn across the farm yard. Rosina Wallace emerges from the red barn, wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, and a frayed bright pink t-shirt with “Vermont” emblazoned across the front. A fringe of salt-and-pepper curls peaks out from beneath the blue bandanna tied snugly over her hair. Suddenly, her hysterically barking border collie breaks free of Rosina’s grip and charges me. Instinctively, I step backwards, but the dog keeps barking and frothing.

“Bodhi, stop!” she scolds the pup. She looks up at me and flashes an elfish smile. “This is Bodhi, my assistant farmer. He’s such a pain.”

Rosina Wallace appears tireless. She reluctantly reveals that she is “60-something-or-other,” which I would never guess. Her hazel eyes twinkle, and she frequently breaks into a broad smile as she speaks. She has boundless energy, but she radiates a happy calm as she goes about her never-ending farm chores. The day is fixed around the need to milk her dozen cows every 12 hours. Her day usually ends at about 11 p.m., sometimes later.

Rosina is the fifth generation of the Wallace family to work the lands atop Blush Hill. She tells me that in the 1950s, Blush Hill consisted of five farms, the golf course, and the WDEV radio towers. Of the family farms, hers is the only survivor. Children from the other farms saw the challenges and changes that confronted their parents, and chose other professions. The aging farmers had little choice but to sell off their beloved pastures and live off the income. What were once humble family farms have been carved up and rechristened with grandiose new titles and big comfortable houses: Blush Hill Estates. Countryside. Pinnacle.

Rosina Wallace ushers me over to the large red barn that her great grandfather bought 142 years ago. As we stand outside admiring the rugged structure, she explains that her grandfather decided it would be easier to get the cows in if the barn were oriented differently, so he somehow moved the barn a quarter-turn. We both scratch our heads trying to figure out how 19th century farmers would have pulled off such a feat.

The Wallace family has held onto the farm through crisis and tragedy. Rosina says her great-grandfather would have lost the farm had it not been for her great-grandmother’s good business sense. A century ago, Rosina’s grandparents, James and Florence, had seven children in nine years. James Wallace died in the 1917 flu pandemic that killed millions of people around the world. All seven children also had the flu, so “the farmers next door came over and did the milking and chores. Grandfather died and my grandmother kept the farm going. She had five sons, and they were pretty big-size kids.” The children survived, and Rosina’s father Keith eventually took over the farm.

Keith Wallace was a charismatic figure in Waterbury. In 1948, he was elected state representative. It was the era of the farmer politician. Each morning and night, Rep. Wallace would milk his cows; in between, he would debate and determine matters of state. Two years later, Wallace lost a tough re-election fight. He went on to serve as president of the Vermont Farm Bureau for 21 years (the organization memorializes him with its annual Keith Wallace Award for service to Vermont agriculture). Wallace had a strong political streak. In the 1970s, he was elected to two terms as a state senator from Washington County, and in 1980, Wallace decided to once again run for state representative. That decision changed Rosina’s life.

Rosina loved growing up on the farm, but college expanded her horizons. She got a master’s in health education, and landed a job as a high school teacher at St. Johnsbury Academy. She worked there for 12 years, and coached many of the girl’s sports teams. But by the late 1970s, she became disenchanted with teaching. “Drugs had become very popular, and the students had no sense of responsibility,” she says. Now she had to break the news to her dad, who had always driven home the importance of a good education.

Keith Wallace was sitting on a stool milking the cows when Rosina walked in. She had been mustering up courage for days. “I have decided I don’t wanna teach anymore,” she announced. “I thought he was gonna explode,” she recalls. Instead, he looked up from his milking stool and replied, “Do you want to farm?”

“A feather coulda knocked me over,” says Rosina. “I didn’t expect that at all. He said he wanted to run for state rep, but he wanted to keep the farm going, and knew he couldn’t work that hard in his 70s. I knew in the back of my mind that with my master’s degree if farming didn’t work out, I could go back and teach. I said, ‘Yeah, I’d kinda like to.’ I never liked the idea that I would leave the farm. I’d always helped bale hay or cut wood on my breaks, then I’d always go back to school. But there was always part of me that didn’t want to leave the farm.”

That was 1980, and for the next 15 years, Rosina and her dad worked the family farm together. “To get to learn how to farm from my dad, and farm alongside him for 15 years was wonderful. My dad was a raconteur. He was entertaining. He could make us forget how hard we were working with his stories.”

Keith Wallace spent his last Christmas in his cow barn in 1995. It was a place he loved, and hoped he would “die there with his boots on.” He had been suffering with a bleeding ulcer. Rosina cared for him on the farm through the following spring. He died in June 1996, leaving the 226-acre farm to his daughter.

The fifth generation

I find Rosina in the cow barn with her younger brother, Kay. Wally, as she calls her brother, is in his mid-50s. He lives in the old white farmhouse while Rosina lives in a house built 25 years ago opposite the barn. Wally helps out in the barn. “He had other jobs, but he saw the toll it takes on me to be in here by myself,” explains Rosina. On this morning, Rosina is busy milking while Wally shovels manure and gives hay to the heifers.

The century-old barn only has room for about two dozen of their light brown Jersey cows. But Rosina has lost some animals and now only has about a dozen milkers—“not enough to survive,” she concedes. She points to a half-dozen calves munching hay contentedly in a corner stall. “I’m raising my own replacements,” she says, noting they will be milking in about two years. But for now, she says she must just hang on. “I’m shipping half as much milk as I need to survive.”

We walk and talk as she tends to a dizzying list of chores. As Wally rakes and shovels the barn, Rosina finishes milking, cleans the milking lines, and gets ready to bring the cows out to pasture. She motions me to follow her. “Wanna hike?” she says with a bright smile. Each day, she must walk around to re-position the electric fence that directs her cows to new pastures.

We set out walking under a mouse-coat grey sky. A raw breeze blows over the damp ground. She is wearing blue rubber muck boots—“they leak,” she rues, as we periodically sink into ankle deep mud. Her dog Bodhi runs alongside us and dashes out in to the field. “I can’t farm without a dog,” she explains, although she’s none too happy with the one she’s got. Her previous “assistant farmer,” Cheyenne, died this summer. “It slayed me,” she says of the passing of her trusty old border collie. She is now trying train this rambunctious pup to help herd animals instead of nip at mail carriers and neighbors.

Rosina moves at a swift clip as we climb higher over uneven ground. Views of the Worcester Range and Mt. Hunger unfold. A spectacular fall landscape appears like a patchwork quilt beneath us. She beams as she takes it all in. “Every day is different – whether it’s a little more green, red, or white – there is something different all the time.” Her eyes light up. “I especially love spring. I love seeing the green. I love seeing the birds come back. I like to leave a few thistles growing in the pasture because I like to see the goldfinches come and eat thistle seeds. I like coming from the barn hearing the snipes fly. My favorite thing to do is when I’m out in spring, turn off the tractor and hear the red winged blackbird, lynx and the barn swallows all sing at the same time. You just can’t get better stereo music than that!”

I ask her what it’s like to be a woman in the male-dominated farm community. “Women have been farming since before Christ. Somewhere along the way, we got into a thing where women were supposed to sit in the parlor sipping tea. That didn’t work, and it last long, did it? My mom grew up helping her dad farm. My mom’s oldest sister milked cows so my granddad could get up to Waterbury Center to start the wood stove at church.”

She concedes, “I don’t do my own roof repairs, mechanical or electrical work, pounding nails, or using a screwdriver. I’m a very poor mechanic. There may be some things I might pick up on about my herd that is better than a farmer who spends the day on a tractor and runs machinery all day. I dunno. I’m a poor farmer because there is a lot I can’t do for myself. I have to call for help. But I get paid the same.”

There is a network, invisible to the rest of us, that Rosina relies on for help running her farm. “I would hate to think I could keep farming if I didn’t have Dr. Steve [Woodard, a veterinarian] to call. And Charlie Sayah comes up and breeds my cows.” The network includes a number of retired farmers —she mentions Raphael Lowe, Robert Graves, and Charlie Hough — who jump at the opportunity to get their hands dirty and fix her tractors, hay her fields, and troubleshoot her farm equipment. “It takes a lot of people to be able to make something like this run smoothly. The neighborhood helps me!”

Camp Ag

Back at her house, I ask Rosina what is hardest about farming. “If you had asked me that two to three years ago, I woulda said the hardest part of farming is every…single…day,” she says, pausing between words for emphasis. “It’s tiring to maintain that schedule, and to some extent it’s boring to be in that same routine. And you just have to give up so much because you can’t go places because it’s milking time!

“Today, the hardest thing is just paying the bills. It’s a problem of me not having enough cows and milk.” The cost of “inputs” – the fertilizer, fuel, grain, power, and repairs needed to keep farms running – has skyrocketed, in many cases tripling. For Rosina, the problem is especially acute: two years ago, she switched from conventional dairy to producing organic milk. All her milk now goes to Stonyfield Farms, the organic yogurt maker in Manchester, N.H. But the cost of going organic has been steep: her grain costs shot up from about $700 per month to $2,000 per month. “I switched to organic because I thought the increase in the amount of money I would get for the milk would be what saves the farm. And it’s been just the opposite. It’s killed me.”

Rosina pauses. She becomes uncharacteristically pensive. “If I stop to think about the finances, I get scared. I just keep milking and working, and when the milk check comes, I figure out which bills to pay first to keep things going.” She is doing what she can to survive. She has given up health insurance. She works part-time at the Cabot Cheese Annex on Route 100. Compared to farming, she says, her part-time job “is where I relax!”

Rosina says it’s not just her livelihood at stake on the farm. It’s our connection to our food. “There is a nucleus of people of who go out and work and make food so people can survive. I am just one of the masses. But what happens to the rest of you when we’re gone? We need farms to feed the people.” She scoffs at the idea of buying food made in China—especially when sensational headlines reveal that some of that food turns out to be laced with industrial poison. She says the “buy local” movement is important to keeping farms like hers alive. “We all need each other to keep surviving.”

There is something else that keeps Rosina working: Camp Ag, her program to bring children to her farm. “If I don’t have my farm, I don’t have my kids program. And my kids program is why I keep going.”

“My concept with my Camp Ag program was that I grew up on the farm and I was so blessed, and I want every kid to experience this. So every summer since 1996, Rosina Wallace has hosted Fresh Air children from New York City. She has also thrown an annual picnic for Fresh Air children from around Vermont. And she hosts school groups who come to see how milk is made and how farmers live. Last year, Chris Costello’s fourth grade class at Thatcher Brook Primary School visited for a day, then voted Rosina’s farm one of the “seven wonders of Waterbury.” She was thrilled.

Back up on the hillside, Rosina considers her surroundings. Black clouds are boiling up over the horizon and a strong wind is blowing. A storm is coming, but she is unconcerned. Beneath her is a spectacular mountainscape and a carpet of foliage. It is a landscape that has sustained her family for generations. The future is unknown and uncertain. But Rosina is living fully in the present. She extends her arms, embracing the wind and the mountains. “This is just so gorgeous!” she bellows over the wind. She beams, joy dancing in her deep-set eyes. “Why would I want to do something else when I could be here?”

(0) comments

Welcome to the discussion.

Keep it clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexual language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don't threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person.
Be proactive. Use the "Report" link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.