Waldo County, Maine Gen Web Site



“The Pastures”

Model Farm of Horace Chenery
 
Belmont, Maine
 
Compiled by Isabel Morse Maresh
from numerous newspaper items

 

Many articles have been written about “The Pastures”, owned by Horace Chenery in Belmont, Maine. The Town of Belmont, Waldo County, Maine, since it’s settlement in the early 1800’s, and incorporation as a Town in 1814, in what was then in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, had been a farming community. Throughout the history of the town, one generation after another resided on the farms, often several generations at a time in the old farm buildings.

Sometime around the turn of the Twentieth Century, Horace Chenery, a grandson of Governor William Crosby of Belfast, returned from Massachusetts, to the area of his roots. He was attracted to the farming community of Belmont. He set about to purchase one farm after another from the elder generations of farmers in Town. It was probably about this time that a migration to Massachusetts and the western United States was claiming the younger generation of the town. Some of the migration returned to Belmont after making their fortunes, but a great number of them never returned to the town that they had called home.
 

“The Pastures” was called a model dairy farm. In 1903, Mr. Horace Chenery bought the Lamb farm of 100 acres in Belmont, which bordered on Tilden Pond. He had a dream of building a large fancy dairy farm. He then purchased the Fred Farwell farm of 75 acres, the Crockett farm of 120 acres, the James Bicknell farm of 195 acres. These farms were in Belmont. He also purchased the 195-acre Elmbrook farm in Belfast. In 1907 he owned 685 acres, which included 235 acres of fields and orchards; 200 acres of pasture, and many acres of old-growth lumber. In 1907, he purchased a farm in Belmont from Mrs. Elizabeth Milliken and her daughter Mary Maud, of Belfast.

 

When Chenery purchased the Lamb farm, the farm included a comfortable farm house with an ell, and large connected barn. He modernized and improved the house. It was there that his farm superintendent, Walter E. Quimby, who was a graduate of the New Hampshire College of Agriculture resided with his family.

The barn on the Lamb farm measured 42 by 80 feet. It had a dressing room for the men, who were required to be clean, usually dressed in white uniforms. He had a laundry, where the uniforms were in abundance, and continually clean. The dressing rooms had hot and cold running water, toilets and other conveniences. No worker was allowed to go to the barn to milk the cows until he had thoroughly cleaned his hands with plenty of soap and hot water, and wearing a clean uniform. All of the rooms were heated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Lamb farm was the site of his dairy. Mr. Chenery had a herd of high class, pure-bred de-horned Jersey cows, one of the best herds in the State of Maine His bull, “Nonie‘s Tormentor“ of the American Polled Jersey Cattle Club was the only Polled Jersey Bull in New England registered in the Red Books. The bull was a sire for hornless Jersey cattle. The polled trait was so strong that about fifty per-cent were pure polls of the heifer calves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The herd were great butter producers. His pure-bred bull, ‘Dora’s Prince’ was from the Billings farm, in Woodstock, Vermont. Edward Burnett, a man who was highly educated about Jersey cattle, selected the cattle for the farm. Mr. Chenery spent most of his time, summer and winter on the Belmont farms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The main barn had closets, rooms for harnesses and grain. There were two silos which held 140 tons of corn silage. The cattle were fed rationed scientific feed, according to the appetite, capacity and quantity of milk given by each.

The main cow barn was 37 by 102 feet, which housed the young stock in the basement., which also included a manure pit, separated by a concrete wall. When it was impossible to spread the manure in the fields in the winter, the manure and liquids from the pit were mixed with the horse manure to make a compost. Everything on the farm was utilized with the most modern knowledge of the time. Mr. Chenery experimented with nitrates, solid and liquid manure, mixed with fertilizers, spread on his fields from manure spreaders and a large tank, very similar to street-watering carts, pulled by his horse teams.

In 1907, Chenery had Professor Arthur W. Gilbert, Assistant Professor of Agriculture at the University of Maine, present a free demonstration on Soil Management, for the benefit of the local farmers, who were encouraged to attend.

 

 

The creamery was enamel painted, and equipped with separator, churns, butter workers and modern machinery to make the high quality clean butter. The milk was never touched by men. From the time of the milking, the milk came to a tank, from there to the separator, to the storing vat, to the churn. The butter was refrigerated after being wrapped with paper, until delivered to the market. Mr. Chenery, in 1909, had cut and hauled six hundred tons of ice from Tilden Pond, which he used in his refrigeration. All of the milk was pasteurized.

The water system was from a 6-inch pipe from a 185-foot drilled well, through solid rock, with water of absolute purity, pumped into a 4,500 gallon tank, high in the air, piped from there to all of the farm buildings.

 

There was a 10-horsepower engine, set in a boiler room which measured 28 by 40 feet., where an 18-horsepower boiler, which heated the water for all of the cleaning and laundry purposes. The water which the cows drank was heated to about 70 degrees, to take the chill of the water. The farm had woodsheds, which housed the firewood cut by the workers which fueled the boilers.

The cattle barn was built with a series of windows, which allowed the cows to stand in sunshine the entire day. The inside of the barn was built so that there were no sharp corners where germs and bacteria might grow.

The farm did not include a large number of poultry, only enough for eggs for the chefs to use for cooking, and for chicken to butcher for the meals. A large piggery, housed pure-bred hogs, which had rooted up rocks, roots, and whatever else was in the ground, clearing an area. Acres of corn for the silage, and a crop of potatoes were planted.

Mr. Chenery had a stable, housing at one time over fifty pure-bred horses for farm work, riding, as well as record-setting racing horses. At the annual Belmont Town Fair, held in October, Chenery entered his teams in competition horse pulling. He umpired the baseball game with W. H. Quimby, with a team of the men from “The Pastures” against the Morrill Ball team. The Morrill team won.

 

 

Toward Tilden Pond, Chenery had a kennel of several breeds of dogs, including pure-bred Irish setters, beagles and English Fox hounds. In 1910, Mr. Orff was in charge of the kennel. They showed some of the dogs at a dog show in Boston, Mass.
 

He also had a colony of wild ducks, and drakes, which had been trained as decoys. Their wings had been clipped so that they could not fly. He had had built a muck pond with a wire fence and hiding places for their nests. A reporter in 1907 reported that Chenery had a duck set on twenty-one eggs, hatching out eighteen ducklings. Shortly before the reporter had arrived a mink had gotten away with thirty of the ducklings.

 

 

 

Mr. Chenery had set out about 1000 apple trees on the Bicknell farm, planted about fifty feet apart. The recommended space was forty feet, but Chenery felt that fifty feet gave more room for trimming, mowing and cultivation. The Bicknell farm produced 120 tons of hay, which was a lot of hay at that time.

Chenery had his men build about one mile of stone drain, of small and medium-sized easy-to-handle rocks. He believed that stone walls caused weeds and brush to grow, and that the stone drains were much better for the land. One of the older workers on the rock drains was Moses Morse, an elderly neighbor, who with his son, John, worked on the farm at various times. Mr. Chenery owned a steam sawmill in the Town of Belmont, employing several local men.

Mr. Chenery was a liberal entertainer. He had cabin cottages at Tilden Pond, where he hosted many Sunday School picnics and entertained distinguished guests.

In 1910, Horace Chenery made a proposition to the Town of Belmont which attracted considerable attention. As a large taxpayer, owning the largest farm in the vicinity, on which were valuable buildings, he proposed that he pay his taxes for ten years in advance, to expend two-thirds of the amount on the roads in Belmont for the coming year. The work was to be done under competent supervision. He asked to have an article inserted in the warrant to be voted on at the Spring town meeting. Mr. Chenery was so serious about the matter that he had been in conference with the State Road Commissioner Sargent as to how the work could best be conducted.

That same year, 1910, the writer for the town column for Belmont reported that “the roads in South Belmont are very bad. The road from Morse’s Mills to the Lincolnville line is a disgrace to any town. Nothing has been done on that road for some time. People who are obliged to travel will soon have to go in air ships.”

 

 

Horace Chenery’s model dairy farm, “The Pastures” was a show place in the vicinity and one of the best equipped in the State of Maine. It was reported that Horace Chenery spent a great deal of money in the Town of Belmont. It was said that he had in his employment about sixty men at one time, giving the local people a good employment at a good pay. It is not known when the work at “The Pastures” came to an end. It has been told that he lost his fortune with bad investments, possibly during the dark days of the so-called Depression of the United States.

 


 

 

 

 

Wonderfully written by Isabel Morse Maresh  Comments are welcome.  22 Jan 07
 


© 2006-2012 All rights reserved Isabel Morse Maresh
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