The Fourth Of July…

...Was washed out from Hurricane Arthur at the cottage in New Hampshire so we went to where the rain wasn’t, Vermont.

We went to Billings Farm and Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Park in Woodstock for a day trip. I never knew that there were any national parks in New England other than Acadia National Park in Maine; the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Park is a new federal park that opened in 1992. The National Park website says this about the park,

Nestled among the rolling hills and pastures of eastern-central Vermont, the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park is the only national park to tell the story of conservation history and the evolving nature of land stewardship in America. The boyhood home of George Perkins Marsh, one of America's first conservationists, and later the home of Frederick Billings, the property was given to the American people by its most recent owners, Laurance S. and Mary F. Rockefeller. The park was created by an Act of Congress and signed into law by President George Bush on August 26, 1992. Under law, the purposes of the park are as follows:

•     To interpret the history and evolution of conservation stewardship in America;
•     To recognize and interpret the contributions and birthplace of George Perkins Marsh, pioneering environmentalist, author of Man and Nature, statesman, lawyer, and linguist;
•     To recognize and interpret the contributions of Frederick Billings, conservationist, pioneer in reforestation and scientific farm management, lawyer, philanthropist, and railroad builder, who extended the principles of land management introduced by Marsh;
•     To preserve the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller mansion and its surrounding lands; and
•     To recognize the significant contributions of Julia Billings, Mary Billings French, Mary French Rockefeller, and Laurance Spelman Rockefeller in perpetuating the Marsh-Billings heritage.

[…]
The park seeks to put the idea of conservation stewardship into a modern context, interpreting the idea of place and the ways in which humans can balance natural resource conservation with the requirements of our twenty-first century world. The Conservation Study Institute, established by the National Park Service to enhance leadership in conservation and facilitate stewardship partnerships in local communities, is also located at the park.

The park is across the street from the Billings Farm (Yes, it is the same Billings that Billings Montana is named after), it a working farm from 1890s complete with livestock. Their website says…

Get to know our Jerseys, sheep, horses, oxen, and chickens through interactive programs and activities. Explore the barns and calf nursery and watch the afternoon milking of the herd. Visitors will experience a first-hand sampling of actual farm work, animals, and agricultural processes. The authentically restored 1890 Farm House, the center of the farm and forestry operation a century ago – features the farm manager's office, family living quarters – and creamery, where butter was produced for market. Interactive programs in the farmhouse for visitors and students interpret 19th century agricultural improvement, butter production, and domestic life. Engaging exhibits housed in 19th century barns depict the annual cycle of rural life and work, as well as the cultural values of Vermont farm families a century ago.

But I didn’t care about the livestock since when I was growing up we had farms all around us and in addition, we only had time for visiting the farmhouse before the tour of the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller mansion began.

This is the barn yard and fields where you can take a wagon tour around them…

We then toured the farmhouse where they made butter in the basement, the Farmcollector website described the process…

In the late 1800s, butter was the Billings farm's principal commodity. The farm produced about 5,000 pounds of it in peak years. Located in the walkout lower level of the farm manager's house, the creamery consists of two fairly small rooms. The first room, closest to the barn, is where milk was delivered and transferred into special separator cans that were then immersed in ice water-laden Cooley creamers. Once sufficient time had passed for the cream to rise, the cans were raised out of the ice water, and the skim milk was drained into a galvanized metal gutter that delivered it to the slop bucket.

The tanks against the right wall and along the back wall are the Cooley creamers. And the tank to the left is,

The cream was then transferred into a water-jacketed Vermont Machine Co. 50-gallon tempering vat, brought to a temperature of about 60 degrees and held for several hours. That caused a slight souring response that imparted a then-desirable tang to the butter. Once enough warm and partially sour cream had been collected (about 50 gallons) it was transferred to a Vermont Machine Co. No. 8 Davis swing butter churn suspended by wrought hooks from the ceiling. The churn was powered with a pitman connected through a line shaft eccentric to a small water engine driven by water piped from the farm's pond up on the hill.

The churn…

The water turbine…

We then went upstairs to the pallor; the farmhouse was one of the first houses in Woodstock to have gas thanks to Mr. Billings. Notice the hose coming off the overhead gas lamps and going to a gas lamp on the table, which was the equivalent of today’s table lamps.

This is the guest room where the grandmother stayed, notice the bootjack in the lower left next to the pair of women’s shoes.

We then walked over to the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller mansion carriage house where the tour of the mansion begins after about a ten minute discourse on the national park we headed out to the mansion. This is the front of the mansion…

Overlooking the farm and mountain across the river…

Pictures are not allowed inside the mansion. Once inside the walls are covered with “Hudson River School” paintings and it is one of the largest private collections of the Hudson River School. I am a big fan of the Hudson River style of painting and the Wadsworth Atheneum and the New Britain Museum of American Art have some of the largest public collections of the Hudson River School in the world. So I was stunned to find another collection of that style of painting. A complete description of the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park grounds can be found here.

After we left the house we walked over to see the gardens…

 

One of the things that they mentioned throughout the tour of the mansion was the book by George Perkins Marsh the first owner of the mansion titled “Man and Nature: Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action.” It was a book ahead of its time, Marsh writes about how man is effecting nature and altering the climate. In an 1847 speech he said,

Man cannot at his pleasure command the rain and the sunshine, the wind and frost and snow, yet it is certain that climate itself has in many instances been gradually changed and ameliorated or deteriorated by human action. 

He recognized back then what we now call global warming, he saw that what we were doing to the land causes climate change. I got his book for free in Kindle format from Amazon.