Milking It: Billings Farm & Material Culture

Billings Farm & Museum calls itself the “Gateway to Vermont’s Rural History.” Set in picturesque Woodstock, Vermont, their site combines a restored 1890 Farm House, outdoor history museum, educational exhibits, and a working Jersey dairy farm; pretty much everyone can find something to enjoy. What I didn’t expect to find was a new perspective on my own childhood experience.

The exterior of Billings Farm’s Dairy and the surrounding pasture

Mechanical butter churns and milk separators inside the Billings Farm’s Creamery

I grew up in rural south-central Virginia, on a retired dairy farm. We had the barn, the milking parlor, huge milk storage tanks, and all the equipment to be a dairy farm, but no cows. I spent a lot of my childhood (and especially my teenage years) eagerly anticipating moving away from the country to the “big city.” While I loved history and museums, I didn’t fully understand that rural or agricultural items were just as important historical objects as the events and items I saw memorialized in textbooks and formal institutions.

Top: Exterior of the small milking parlor in front of the larger barn at my childhood home; Bottom Left: Tubing and milking equipment still left inside; Bottom Right: advertising signs on the exterior of the building displaying the brand name for the cooling machine

 

Fast-forward about twelve years and I am now a master’s student particularly focused on historic foodways, industrial agriculture, and vernacular buildings and objects. I do recognize the irony. So visiting Billings Farm & Museum on the Northern Field Study was both a trip down memory lane and a much-needed reminder of the value of studying the lives and labor patterns of the “less-than-rich-and-famous.” (While the Billings family was rather wealthy and lived in a separate mansion, their “model” farm was inhabited by a wide range of workers from differing economic levels and backgrounds. The 1890 farmhouse was lived in by the farm manager.)

Visiting the Billings Farm site also reminded me that we often don’t think of the tangential industries that spring up to support traditional agricultural products. While the milk from Billings Farm can be considered an object itself – manipulated and transformed into various commodities for profit – it also just needed someplace to go. From historic stoneware crocks to modern milking tanks, the creation of proper and effective storage containers was and still is an important business.

Inside their farm related museum exhibits, Billings Farm displays various ceramic milk pans, crocks and churns.

A modern milk tank inside Billings Farm’s working dairy – we had one that looked just like this growing up.

Similarly, cheese and butter making require much more than just “ye olde butter churn.” They also need a set of tools and machines to quicken and ease the labor process. Then comes the packaging, transportation, scientific investigation into nutrition and spoilage, and all the materials necessary for consumption. All of these industries were critical to Vermont’s rural history and can be engaged with at Billings Farm and Museum.

Another indoor museum installation displays the tools and process of cheese making.

The creation and transportation of milk bottles became another major industry alongside dairy farms.

Ice cream quickly became a popular treat and major commodity offshoot of the dairy industry.

This visit also forced me to consider some of the material realities of “farm life” and the value of the experiential museum setting. As we walked among the cows we not only saw the material objects of milk production but also experienced the soundscape of agricultural life and took in smells that most museum experiences traditionally lack. This provided a better spatial and temporal understanding of how milk began the long process to the supermarket shelf and our kitchen tables.

Walking through the dairy you can hear different machinery processing the milk.

It was a real multisensory experience!

And it also provided a surprising sense of nostalgia and pride for the farm I grew up on. I’ll definitely be taking a closer look at the old milk house next time I’m back home.

 

 

By Rachel Asbury, WPAMC Class of 2018