Farm management (LCSH)
Logging (LCSH)
Real Property (LCSH)
Social change--Vermont (LCSH)
Taxation (LCSH)
Vermont--Economic conditions (LCSH)
Vermont--Social conditions (LCSH)
Sound Recording Content Interview: Kenneth discusses economics, property and taxation. Compares taxation in the 1920s to taxation in the 1970s. Describes what farmers used to do to pay taxes. Kenneth and Richard discuss real estate development in Vermont. Roads, crime, traffic. Discuss farming. How Kenneth's father learned to farm. Describes his father working in woods at nine after his father (Kenneth's grandfather) died. Tells story of his grandfather's death in a logging accident. Describes loggers riding the tops of spruce trees to ground. Talk about firewood and lumber.
Brick, Richard (Interviewer)
O’Donnell, Kenneth (Interviewee)
Richard Brick/Last Stand Farmer Collection -- VFC2003-0007. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
Audio recording copyright Richard Brick.
1 sound tape reel (Scotch 3M 208 polyester) : analog ; 7 1/2 ips, full track, mono. ; 7 in., 1/4 in. tape, 1 1/2 mil.
digital audio file (MP3)
sound recording
Chelsea (inhabited place)
Vermont (state)
Depressions--1929--Vermont (LCSH)
Hay--harvesting (LCSH)
Farm life--Vermont (LCSH)
Sound Recording Content Interview: Kenneth describes haying the the challenges of haying depending on weather. Frustrations of his garden, potatoes in particular. Discusses brush and trees growing in, clearing land. 'They say the bugs and the trees gonna rule the world. And I think they are. You take your place up there--if you move right off and didn't see it for five years, you wouldn't know it.' Discuss selling property. Discusses Great Depression. 'But just as sure as God made the little apples, they're not going to have any farmers here. All they're going to have is a bunch of brush, and they're going to depend on the Western farmers to feed them. And somebody's going hungry.' 'You can jump into a car--you can jump into your truck out here--and I can take you, and I can show you 10,000 acres that could be growing crops, but it ain't growing nothing--only weeds and bushes. Good land, too. And most of your farmers down in the valley--on your bottom land--they ain't raising anything to eat outside of milk. They're just dairy farmers, most of them. There ain't any reason why they can't raise plenty of stuff to eat. The land is the best here in Vermont. A little hard work, and you almost always get a season, get a crop here in Vermont. So people going to be hungry if they keep on.' Discusses his frustrations with foreign interests and the export of jobs abroad. Discusses self sufficency.
Hunting (LCSH)
Labor unions--Vermont (LCSH)
Water-supply (LCSH)
Wool industry--Vermont (LCSH)
Sound Recording Content Interview: Kenneth and Helen O'Donnell. Discuss deer hunting, tells several good deer hunting stories. Household water supply from wells and springs. Logging firewood and pulp. Wool industry in Vermont. Labor unions. Cotton industry in Vermont. Discusses use of animal parts by Polish neighbor, how firewood is gathered in Italy during World War Two. Discusses rural architecture in Italy. Italian craftsmanship--supervising Italian POWs to make a desk for a colonel out of cartrdige boxes.
O’Donnell, Helen (Interviewee)
Income distribution (LCSH)
Maple sugar industry--Vermont. (LCSH)
Maple syrup (LCSH)
Food habits--Vermont (LCSH)
Sound Recording Content Interview: Kenneth dicusses hard times, state jobs and economic problems. Discusses the impact of the Great Depression on his generation. Frugality. Describes how he helped people during the Great Depression and how his farm got the name 'Haven of Rest.' People would come to stay with him and work on the farm. 'We all had the same thing: nothing.' Discusses sugaring, ratios of sap to syrup, better and worse weather for sugaring. 'I've seen sap go from Fancy down to A, and A down to B, and then you'll get a good snowstorm--heavy snowstorm--and you come back to A again. I've seen the color come back. Just a big snowstorm brought the color back.' Discuss grade C syrup and it's use in chewing tobacco and other products. Discusses sap beer (14:42)--'They used to use the last end to make a sap beer. The old fellas that used to sugar always used to make a keg of sap beer at the last end. And they'd use the black stuff, the last end of sugaring. Well if I was going to make sap beer I'd want to make it out of the first, and really have something....Oh boy, it's great stuff if it's made right. Boil 5 barrels of sap down to one, then put your hops and your yeast. And if you--if it ain't quite sweet enough for you, you put in some more syrup or sugar, and then leave it set and then she'll start to work, and that will work out through the bung for about a week. Then bung it right up tight and let it set by a couple of weeks. And a water glass makes you walk on your toes. It's really good stuff.' 'Yup, the old fellows always used to have that barrel of sap beer, you know, from the last end.' 'We never made it--except but one year, my dad made some sap beer. And boy that was sap beer. Tasted just like Moxie. Oh boy, that was a beautiful taste. But you got a waterglass down and pretty soon you knew you had something in there besdies Moxie. Boy that was--kick up an awful fuss.' 'Now I don't imagine there's hardly anybody that makes it now. Probably they don't care anything about it.'
Cows (LCSH)
Dogs (LCSH)
Livestock (LCSH)
Sound Recording Content Interview: Kenneth discusses livestock and challenges of raisng livestock. Discusses problems with animals after birth, differences between individual animals. Dog attacks on livestock and deer. Gardens. Flowers. Presence of stones in Vermont soil. Stone boats. 'I belive stone grow too. Because you can pick a piece in damn good shape and the next time you plow it you'll find pretty near damn as many right on it. But they say they don't, but I believe they do.' 'And then they tell the story according to the Bible, 'he without sin throw the first rock.' Well Vermonters must be damn sinful because they never picked no rocks. You'll find rocks everywhere you go in Vermont. Ledges and rocks.'
Courtship (LCSH)
Families (LCSH)
Marraige (LCSH)
Sexual division of labor (LCSH)
Slaughtering and slaughter-houses (LCSH)
Sound Recording Content Interview: Helen discusses the division of labor on the farm. Talks about her feelings about animal slaughter, taxes and land and hers and Kenneth's different degrees of attachment to the farm. Kenneth discribes his correpsondence with Helen and neighbors durng World War Two, his courtship with Helen, and life on the farm before he and Helen married and televisions he's owned. Discusses children and his fondness for them. Marriage and children. His experiences during Wrold War II in Italy sharing his PX with local children.
Opton, Suzanne (Interviewer)
Dreams (LCSH)
Energy policy (LCSH)
Television broadcasting--Social aspects (LCSH)
Sound Recording Content Interview: Helen discusses a late night telephone call they recieved and her suspicions as to who made it--a local man who is in the hospital in Boston. Richard explains his fear of late night phone calls. Kenneth discusses his feelings about retirement, farm economics. Energy crisis and economics of energy. Richard and Kenneth discuss the TV news. Richard discusses filming Kenneth and Helen watching the news. Goes over a list of other things he'd like to film Kenneth doing, including sugaring, cordwood collecting. Richard, Kenneth and Helen discuss watching television. Talk about generators. They discuss Kenneth's dreams.
Horse Racing (LCSH)
Turtles (LCSH)
Sound Recording Content Interview: Kenneth discusses cars he's owned, neighbors who trapped a large mud turtle, turtle fishing in Italy, and the South Family and North Family Shaker communtites. His father worked for the the North Family Shakers as barn boss. Describes a lake side community at Mascoma Lake where the owner moved the cottages across the frozen lake and resold them. Describes racing horses on ice. Helen discusses a freezer they purchased, and a fire in Williamstown (VT?).
Mascoma Lake (lake)
Gasoline--Prices--United States (LCSH)
Rural electrification (LCSH)
Sound Recording Content Interview: Kenneth discusses cultural change, gasoline and oil prices, cars and electrification. Kenneth expresses that the change he most appreciates is electricity, and tells a story about electrification in the neighborhood.
Vandalism (LCSH)
Sound Recording Content Interview: Kenneth discusses farm life, vandalism and the content of his dreams.
Sound Recording Conten Interview: Helen O'Donnell describes her courtship and marraige to Kenneth. She discusses Kenneth, his habits and their relationship.
Brick, Richard (Recordist)
Country life (LCSH)
Sound Recording Content Interview: Kenneth describes relationships between neighbors regarding right of way, property, water and electricity. Maple syrup, sugar on snow. Tapping beech and birch trees as a source of utility water. Discusses tapping pines for turpentine. Discusses logging in the south, pay inequity between black and white workers. Logging saws. They discuss the Watergate scandal and the future of American politics.
Sound Recording Content Interview: Discusses pickup trucks, cars, automotive repairs, number of gasoline stations in Chelsea in the past. Taxes. Houses and the condition of houses and barns. Chimney fires. Reusing old bricks to build chimmeys. Family reunion.
Catamount (LCSH)
Rifles (LCSH)
Sound Recording Content Interview: dog attacks on cattle, calf. Rifles and shotguns. Coydogs. Panther, catamount. Fishercats.
Snow (LCSH)
Sound Recording Content Interview: Kenneth discusses using cornmeal to plug holes in a sap tank, and discovering someone used cornmeal to plug a hole in a Model T Ford radiator he used to own. Discusses food traditions. Discusses winter weather, snowstorms, horses, and tractors.
Sound Recording Content Interview: land use and ownership, right of way, placing electric and telephone lines across property, taxes, farm loans
Agriculture--Economic aspects (LCSH)
Swine (LCSH)
Sound Recording Content Interview: Raising livestock, livestock disease and illness, economics of rasing pigs, livestock processing
Sound Recording Content Ambient: Kenneth in barn showing calf. Interview: Sightings of panthers (aka cougar or catamount), lynx, coydogs, weasles, shotguns, deer hunting, posting, weather, Thanksgiving, game consumption--racoon, skunk.
Horses (LCSH)
Skis and skiing (LCSH)
Sledding (LCSH)
Sound Recording Content Interview: Kenneth and Helen discuss cooking, his health, mechanical problems with tractors, automobiles, winter weather, death, Christmas, Vermont ski industry, traverse sleds, skiing, snow plowing. Proverb: 'Green Christmas, fat graveyards.'
Sound Recording Content Interview: Kenneth discusses maple sugaring, banks, loans, roads, snow plowing.
Chelsea (inhabited place) Vermont (state)