LCF Farm History

The Name
Lewis Creek runs through the middle of Lewis Creek Farm, and the farm has over 4000 feet of frontage on the creek. However, it was not until 1981 that the farm became known as Lewis Creek Farm. It is worth noting that many of farms in this valley share similar frontage on Lewis Creek and so until 1981 the farm was known as “The Smith place”, as it was owned by Leroy and Ila Smith. It seems that was the convention. Back at the turn of the 20th century, it was probably known as the “Widow Sayles place"

The Land and the Soils

The Topsoil
The main asset of Lewis Creek Farm is its top notch, prime agricultural soils. The farm has about 50 acres of river bottom and river terrace soils. The foremost of these is a soil called “Hadley, fine sandy loam”. This soil was named for Hadley Massachusetts, and is one of the finest agricultural soils in the world. Soil names such as Hadley, refer to the top 40 inches of the soil profile, which makes up the most important and agriculturally functional portion of the soil.

Clay at 10 feet
The real secret of the soils in this portion of the Lewis Creek Valley is what lies below 40 inches. All of the Champlain valley was at one time a large sea, and the clay soils that pervade the Champlain Valley were laid down at the bottom of that sea, made up of the very fine water suspended particles that took the longest to settle out. This is true even of the soils at Lewis Creek. At about 10 feet below the surface of the soil, there is a layer of clay. This is the same clay that is at the surface in much of the rest of the Champlain Valley. Here at the base of the Green Mountains, however, all the sand that has been washed down off the mountains by Lewis Creek, has been laid down over the clay. The result is that rather than just being a deep well drained soil which could dry out, it has the clay layer at 10 feet which is deep enough to allow for good drainage, but shallow enough to keep the water from draining away completely. It acts rather like the dish under a flower pot: It catches the excess water and feeds it back into the soil from the bottom. It’s never wet and it’s never dry.

500 feet deep!
Below the clay layer is the really cool part. It has no agricultural significance, but still, it’s really cool. On the east and west sides of the valley, there is visible very steep rock faces coming down to the floor of the valley. As it turns out, those steep rock faces keep going, almost straight down… and down…. and down, as much as 500 feet. Between these rock walls the valley has been filled up, layer after layer of sand and silt and clay and gravel and silt and gravel and clay. Layer, after layer, after layer, over 500 feet deep, and at the very top, is a layer of clay and the Hadley fine sandy loam. Geology is so cool.

The Buildings

The House
The core of the house, at the back, was originally a simple cape built in 1784 by John Furguson. It was added to bit by bit over the years, and suffered at least one fire as evidenced by the burnt rafters in the oldest part or the house.

The front, 2 story, part of the house was built in the mid 1800s during the Sheep Boom. It reflects the farm wealth at that time which came from the sales of Vermont Marino Sheep as breeding stock to farmers in Australia.

The wrap-around front porch was a later addition to the house. You can see that it was added as an afterthought, as it overlaps and obscures the top of the window above the front door. The distinctive ornamental loops on the porch, point to it having been added at about the turn of the 20th century. In New England much of the ornamental scroll work is attributed to this period, as a result of the mass production of scroll saws.

When I bought the farm, most of the roofs were very old standing seam. Standing seam roofing has a reputation for lasting 100 years. We have had to replace the old standing seam over the years, and quite consistently we find cedar shake shingle in very bad disrepair under it. Approximately 100 years ago the farm was purchased by Edgar Smith (1913) from the estate of the widow Celia Sayles (The widow Sayles). It appears to me that the buildings fell into serious disrepair as Celia Sayles aged, and when it was purchased after her death by Edgar Smith, one of the first things he did was replace the roofing.

The Farmstand
The building which now serves as the farmstand was originally a Carriage Barn. There are many of these around Addison County, and they are characterized by a very broad span on the front section allowing room for a wagon and team to enter and even turn around. The back of the building had stalls for the horses. The stalls are characterized by heavy double planking and the inevitable “cribbing” or gnawing by the horses. We have made numerous changes to the building, but you can still see some of the gnawed boards from the horse stalls at the back by the produce washing counter.

The Front Shed of the Farmstand
When I originally bought the farm in 1981, the Farmstand or Carriage Barn was connected to the house by a long shed with a peaked roof that ran north/south. It was in very bad condition and when in about 1987 I looked to see what could be done to fix it up a bit, it was plain that the only thing you could do was tear it down and start all over again.
In 2001 on Town Meeting day, we had very heavy snow fall which left about 3 feet of snow. I went up on the roof of the connecting shed to shovel off the snow. While I was up there, the roof collapsed. Just a slow settling, and I rode it down. Kind of exciting! Fortunately the building was insured. With the insurance money we built the smaller front shed onto the Farmstand and replaced much of the rest of the lost space with a building at the back of the house, which is now used as the office.

The Red Barn The big Red Barn is built in a style known as a “Bank Barn”. The style was so named because one side of the barn was built into the hillside, or bank. This allows direct access to the hay mow (Hay mow = Hay loft and the word "mow" pronounced like 'how') by hay wagons, which was very convenient before hay bales, and electric hay elevators. Bank Barns became very popular in New England after 1850, so it seems likely that it was built in the mid 1800s.
Like many farms in Vermont, until the early 20th century, the main cash crop was sheep: Meat, wool and the real money maker: breeding stock. When the advent of the railroads made it possible to export milk to the major urban areas, the farm turned to dairy cows.
When I first arrived on the scene in 1981 the lower level of the barn was being used for dairy cows, and had in the mid 70s, been converted from tie stalls to free-stall.

Previous Owners

1913 to 1981 The Smiths
Edgar Smith bought the Farm from the estate of Celia Sayles in 1913. This was the beginning of the dairy era in Vermont, and the end of the sheep era. During Edgar’s life the farm, like much of Vermont, transitioned from sheep to cows. 1913 was the height of deforestation in Vermont. I never met Edgar, but I bought the farm from his son, Leroy. Leroy described the farm when he was a boy. There is an extremely steep hill at the back of the biggest field (remember the steep rock face that descends to the valley floor?), and Leroy said that as a boy, it was open land, used for pasturing sheep and cows. Parts of this hillside are sheer cliff and all of it averages a slope of 45 degrees. It seems incredible, and certainly not what we would call either profitable or responsible agriculture, but it sure explains how 95% of Vermont was open land for almost 100 years.
I don’t know how long Edgar owned the farm, but at some point Leroy took over the farm from his father. I suspect it was at some point in the 1940s. Leroy didn’t finish high school, but that was not too uncommon in these parts in those days. He married Ila Hill. Ila lived about a mile north in the house at the top of the hill that Ralph and Martha Cota live in now. Ila did finish high school attending the “old High school” on the green in Bristol. In those days it was considered a long way to go all the way to Bristol for school, and as a result, Ila boarded in Bristol so she could go to school, as a daily round trip commute of 22 miles was considered completely impractical.
Leroy didn’t much like milking cow, but that was the cash crop in those days, and you did what you needed to survive. Leroy did have a team of oxen, raised from a couple of bull calves from the dairy herd. I have photo of Leroy as a young man and his father, and the team of oxen. Leroy liked the oxen and used them to haul Maple sap in the sugarbush on the hill above the fields. I think Leroy liked almost everything but milking cows, He spoke fondly and enthusiastically of sugaring, and they diversified the farm into laying hens in the 50’s when that was the rage. I’m told he spent a lot of time with a bulldozer down in the Creek, straightening it out and taming it’s unruly ways.
When, at some point in the early 70’s the doctor said his back couldn’t take the bending over and rough work of dairy farming, he happily sold the cows and went to work as a carpenter. He rented the farm and barn to someone milking cows. They did that for a while, converting the barn to freestall and adding a milking parlor onto the back side of it. When we bought the farm in 1981 Leroy and Ila had, for the previous few years, been renting the fields to Henry Phillips whose home farm was over on the Prison Hollow road. This farm had been on the market for 3 years when we first saw it. It appears that they started renting out the fields when they decided to sell the farm, and at about the same time they cut off the big trees in the sugarbush for lumber.

1981 to the current era
In 1981Cecilia and I and another couple, Phil Gerard and Elizabeth St. John bought the farm together. The plan was that Cecilia and I would raise vegetables, and Phil and Elizabeth would milk cows. Each couple owned half of the farm, though no specific part. We would rotate the dairy use with the vegetable use. It was a cool plan, but it never came fully to fruition. After a couple of years Phil and Elizabeth broke up, sold their cows, and Cecilia and I bought out their share of the real estate.
In 1984 the farm became entirely vegetables, and Cecilia and I ran it together until 2004. I ran the production end of things in the fields and greenhouses as well as the wholesale marketing. Cecilia ran the retail part of the operation, both at the farm and at the Burlington Farmers’ Market. When our son Sam was born in 1988, Cecilia was able to continue running the retail portion of things, largely out of the house, as well as be a full time mom.