 About
us
 We
started farming here in 1966. Hard to believe its been that
long! Things were much different
back then. For one thing, we had cows. At first there were twelve.
Folks provided their own gallon jars - we sealed them with wax paper and a
lid. In the 1970's we were bottling and
selling our own milk from a little store called Carleton's Milk
Barn. It was one of the few places folks could buy fresh, un-pasteurized,
whole-milk (the kind where the cream rises to the top)! We sold milk
to a place in the Pike Place
Market, to Puget
Consumer Co-op and others.
In 1975, we closed the store and began selling our milk to Darigold, a
local milk processor. Every other day the big milk truck would come
by and pick up our milk. This was a big step, but it gave us more time
to concentrate on the cows, and it allowed us to build the red barns you
see today. Our herd grew to nearly 200 cows.
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Angie at age 10 raking grass
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Dairy farming was not easy. Everyday
there was a lot of work to do. We grew crops like grass and corn,
fed cows and calves, cleaned barns and milked twice a day. But we stuck to it as
a family. Everyone had their part. We were (and still are) one of the few farms in our
community.
Tony at age 13 chopping grass.
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| As a small farm, it became increasingly
difficult to make ends meet, and in 1985 we sold our cows and closed down the dairy
business Greener pastures came several years later, when we converted the stall barn to horse
stables. At first it was slow, but we added arenas and outdoor
paddocks, and now our stables have allowed us to stay on the farm. |
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In 1988, Mary began selling pumpkins and sweet corn in a small
roadside stand. This enterprise has also grown, and today, we have a whole
barn full of good things to eat. Ironically, the produce barn was the old
hay barn for the diary farm when we first started out. Today we farm 60
acres, most of which is sold through our barn.
Our kids, Shawn, Darren, Tony and Angie, have grown and taken "city"
jobs. But each fall they return with their families to help with the farm. In some ways it's like old times, but
in many ways it's all new again.
Reid & Mary
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