Going Out: for farm history
New Scotland was raised from farmers’ seeds


NEW SCOTLAND — After completing a series of exhibits on each of the town’s hamlets, the New Scotland Historical Society Museum has opened up "Working the Land," an exhibit on agriculture.
"Agriculture is why the town is here," said Marion Parmenter the museum committee chair, as she turned the inside corner of the Wyman Osterhout Community Center and entered the display area

She, along with other historical society volunteers, lead tours through the museum in New Salem every Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m. and by appointment. Parmenter pointed at artifacts, and pictures as she told the stories and dates that go along with them.

The exhibit follows 300 years of farming in New Scotland, starting with the earliest European settlers, Parmenter said, the self-sustaining pioneer, who set the roots of the first community, and concluding with the commercial producers of today.

The exhibit hits home for Parmenter who is the daughter of a previous New Scotland Diary farmer. Parmenter looked up at a framed poster-advertisement hanging on the wall dated 1914. It announced a huge auction to be held at William Trauax’s farm to sell all of his farming equipment and live-stock.

He was obviously going out of the farming business, Parmenter said.

The timing of the auction is puzzling looking back now as an historian, Parmenter said. Traux had just built a huge barn in 1912, she said, which gives the opposite impression of wanting to change careers.

Truax didn’t sell the land and house until 1920, she said, but did end up moving to Delmar, although his reasoning remains a mystery, she said.

Mrs. Parmenter’s father a Badgley, later owned Truax’s farm. Parmenter now lives in the old Traux farmhouse with her husband, Robert, the town historian.

When she came in front of a surge milking machine used prominently in the 1940’s, on display in the middle of the museum floor, Parmenter recalled the milking procedure from her childhood. She explained and gestured with her hands how the milk was taken in pails and then hung on a hook to be weighed. She said that’s how they used to keep track of how much milk was produced by each cow and it was recorded in a book.

Laws in the 1950’s made it hard for her father and other small dairy producers; cow manure, for example, had to be taken out of the barns continuously on conveyer belts, she said. These types of upgrades where just too expensive, Parmenter said.

Dairy was the most populous kind of farming in New Scotland, Parameter said, simply because it made the most money.

Indian Ladder Farms used to produce its own milk, as did Udell’s Dairy, Youmans, and Severson’s, which was where Salem Hills is now, Parmenter said listing a few. Some of the farms had their own dairies, for pasteurizing, while other small-time farmers sent the milk in cans to local dairies to be pasteurized, she said.

Laid out on a tiered shelf at the museum are a variety of glass milk bottles with the name of a dairy company or a New Scotland Farm on it.

Artifacts

What most stands out in this agricultural exhibit are all the artifacts. Two of the more eye-catching artifacts are wooden tools, made in the early 1800’s before metal products became readily available, Parmenter said. Hanging high up on the wall is a wooded-pronged pitchfork, and a grain shovel with the bucket completely dug out of wood.

Machines with cranks stand in corners, like a potato-slicer from the early 1990’s, which was used to chop up potatoes for feed.

Glass cases hold tools, like a sheep poke, and rat and rabbit traps.

The barn shed, in the backyard of the community center, houses the larger artifacts, including a chick brooder warmed by a coal stove, and a wooden egg incubator, heated by a kerosene lamp attachment.

Variety

The LaGrange brothers’ dairy farm provides a lot of the modern pictures of mass dairy-farming today. The Van Wie farm in Clarksville is another still vivacious dairy business.

There are two Century Farms in New Scotland, recognized by the state for being farmed by the same family for at least a century. Both are dairy farms: The LaGrange farm in Feura Bush, and The Slingerland farm on Delaware Turnpike in Unionville.

The Slingerland farm received its Century Farm certificate in 1969. It stopped dairy farming about 15 years ago, Mrs. Parmenter said, although hay is still on the property now, she added.

While dairy farms dominated New Scotland, there were also a couple of chicken farms, a few beef cattle farms, and some crop farms also, including wheat, corn, and oats, Parmenter said.

A major beef cattle farm is the Tommells on Stove Pipe Road, Parmenter said.

Hops was a cash crop in the 19th Century, in Clarksville, which farmers used to supplement their income, Parmenter said. The flower was hand-picked and dried to prevent bacterial action when brewing. One historic hops barn is still standing in Onesequethaw, she said.
Also part of the exhibit is a half-an-hour film made in Madison County called, "When Hop was King."

The historical society has planted hop and flax next to the gardens outside the museum, to show what the flowering crops looks like.

Besides farming, the exhibit also touches on crafts and trades that are needed in a farming society, including blacksmiths, and farriers, who professionally shoe horses.

Farriery was a major industry in the early 1890’s and farriers were still regularly coming onto farms in the 1940’s to shoe horses, Parmenter said. But once tractors were readily bought by farmers in the 1950’s, the farrier industry became slim, she said.

Residents have now until at least April to look at the antique tools, learn about New Scotland’s agricultural history and to play a ‘guess what this was used for game’ which the society put together with a number code and answers behind flaps. A few of the objects have stumped the historical society and the old Sears catalogues; the hope is that some old-time farmers will visit and be able to help supply some answers.