Catamount (LCSH)
Cows (LCSH)
Rifles (LCSH)
Farm life--Vermont (LCSH)
Sound Recording Content Interview: dog attacks on cattle, calf. Rifles and shotguns. Coydogs. Panther, catamount. Fishercats.
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)
Dreams (LCSH)
Energy policy (LCSH)
Farm management (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.
O’Donnell, Helen (Interviewee)
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)
Depressions--1929--Vermont (LCSH)
Income distribution (LCSH)
Maple sugar industry--Vermont. (LCSH)
Maple syrup (LCSH)
Taxation (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.'
Hunting (LCSH)
Labor unions--Vermont (LCSH)
Logging (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.
Real Property (LCSH)
Social change--Vermont (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.
AU2010-3149 -- Wild Sound Kenneth and Helen
Maple sugar industry--Vermont (LCSH)
Maple syrup industry--Vermont. (LCSH)
Sound Recording Content Interview: Government regulation. Maple sugaring. Changes in the timing of the maple sugaring season--it ends earlier than it used to. Used to run until May, now it runs until April. Describes carrying full sap buckets and working in sugar woods in the snow. Kenneth debates whether or not he will be healthy enough to sugar this year. Describes the health condition of his long-time sugaring partner, Arthur. Discuss pricing of syrup--$9-$10 dollars a gallon. Talk about propery and income taxes. Social security and the impact of land ownership on the ability to receive social security. Propery taxes.
Audio recordings copyright Richard Brick.
AU2010-3150 -- Wild Sound O'Donnell Farm
Sound Recording Content Interview: Discusses marriage, age. Prices and increasing costs. Taxes and schooling. Class issues in Vermont--divide between farmers and white collar workers. Describes how he paid off farm in 1940s and vowed never to mortgage it again. Richard asks about whether or not Kenneth has ever thought about what he might do differently if he could live his life again. Kenneth reflects on this topic. 'Usually you work hard all your life and if get to where you can take it a little bit easy, something will turn up to happen so you can't.' Discusses his life and work philosphy. Talks about the Great Depression and the impact it had on farmers in the region.
Dogs (LCSH)
Horses (LCSH)
Sound Recording Content Interview: Discusses his pension and taxes. Talks about the increasing cost of schools and his opinions about contemporary schooling. They discuss attachment to the land and the history of Kenneth's farm and his family. 'I took over in '29 and I've been here off and on ever since. I put four years in the service, and outside of that that I was here most all my life.' 'I bought it in '29 and I had one good year, and then the Depression took over and I pretty near lost it then. And I stared after the Depression, I started building it up, and along comes Uncle Sam and says, 'I need you' so I went in for 4 years in the service and came back, and I been here ever since.' Talk about buring his horses on his land when they die, 'They earned their keep.' Discusses his perspectives on fate, destiny and divine intervention in relation to his World War II experiences. Discuss dreams.
Aging (LCSH)
Maple syrup industry--Vermont (LCSH)
Swine (LCSH)
Sound Recording Content Interview: Side A: Aging. The need to stay busy when retired. His pension. His reasons for still keeping livestock. 'It's something to do.' Shares opinions of local shop keepers. Side B: Kenneth and Helen discuss maple sugaring. Kenneth tells a story about when he was 3 years old and fell through the ice on the farm pond (2:59-4:00). Kenneth reflects on aging and memory, and tells a nuber of stories from his early childhood 1911-12. Kenneth tells the story of the first car he saw in 1911 (4:24-5:10), story of the family moving back to VT to NH. Talks about book keeping on the farm. 'Well, they say an honest man don't get nowhere, and I think it's true. But if you was brought up honest it's kinda hard to be anything else.' Talks about social change and taxation. Church and religion: 'But my folks never went to church much too much. We could have gone if we wanted to, but we had more things we'd rather do than go to church' (11:10-12:40). Logging: tells stories about his father working in the woods. Talks about how his father used axes rather then a cross-cut saw. Describes his father's skill with an axe. Talks about using different kinds of tools (12:55-18:05). Talks about his father and discipline. Being hit with his father's belt, his mother hitting hi. (18:08-19:56). Free time with his brother. 'We used to do everything. We had homemade snowshoes. We traveled all over these hills on wooden snow shoes made out of pine boards. And then we had skis, even homemade skis. And we had snow jumpers. Take a tree it's got a crook in it and shave it down until about an inch thick. And then put a 4X4 on to that and then a seat on to it, and you ride down these hills--really go places' (20:00-21:08)
1 sound tape reel (Scotch RB-7 polyester) : analog ; 7 1/2 ips, full track, mono. ; 7 in., 1/4 in. tape, 1 mil.
AU2010-3078 -- Camera Roll 31 / Sound Roll 31
Sound Recording Content Ambient: Pig slaughter and butchering. Knife sharpening, gun shot, water, metal pails, hair scraping. Interview: Economics of raising pigs. Details of butchering.
AU2010-3081 -- Camera Roll 52 / Sound Roll 52
AU2010-3086 -- 'Dupe' Camera Roll 53 / Sound Roll 53
AU2010-3087 -- 'Dupe' Camera Roll 54 / Sound Roll 54
AU2010-3088 -- Camera Roll 60 / Sound Roll 60
AU2010-3089 -- Camera Roll 61 / Sound Roll 61
Sound Recording Content Ambient: birds, wind, cow, Kenneth herding cow, water, horses, sugar arch opening, sugar arch closing.
AU2010-3090 -- Camera Roll 62 / Sound Roll 62
AU2010-3091 -- Camera Roll 70 / Sound Roll 79
AU2010-3100 -- Camera Roll 86 / Sound Roll 86
Sound Recording Content Interview: Richard asks Kenneth to tell him about his favorite season, Kenneth talks about Spring. 'The world weren't so fast, people didn't have to have everything, and everybody was practically happy. Geared it down to where people could live. Everything is too fast now.' 'Of course there's a lot of things you wouldn't want to turn back--there's lights and refrigeration and that--you wouldn't want to turn that back. It would be a hard thing now. The weather has changed so much, you couldn't freeze a beef up and have it keep all winter. Because one day it's 20 below, and next day it's 20 above. Then you get some warmer than that, up above freezing. And if you've got any beef hung up, same way as we used to hang them up, they'd all thaw out and spoil. We used to hang a beef in the shed along in November, that beef wouldn't thaw out until Spring.' Discusses the impact of mechanization on farming. Discusses people buying things on credit.