By Linda Ibbitson Hurd
Special to The Express
My Grandfather Cyril, better known as “Spud,” and his two brothers owned a local cranberry bog in the 1960s. Grampa and my grandmother Edrice also worked for the National Cranberry Association in Hanson that eventually was renamed Ocean Spray. Grampa worked the press and Gram screened the berries. The berries were picked by hand back then, scooped and put in wooden boxes where they stayed dry and protected until they were taken to Ocean Spray to be made into juice and sauce. Grampa stored the boxes of berries in the loft of his barn which was across the street from their house and diagonally across from ours.  
My friend Donna, who was 12 and a year younger than me, lived next door with her aunt and uncle and their four sons. One Friday after school, I asked my mom if Donna could come to supper and stay overnight. She said it was okay if it was okay with Ann, Donna’s aunt, which it was. It was a warm November afternoon and Donna and I went for a walk in the pine grove off of Elm street. On the way back we passed by my Grampa’s barn and walked into the barn yard to visit Mike the ram who was a big white sheep with no horns. He was gentle and let the smaller kids ride on him.  
I opened the barn door so Mike could go in. The smell of hay greeted us and brought back memories. I remembered Grampa putting me on a three-legged stool when I was about five. He put his big hands over my little ones and we milked one of the cows. He turned our hands to one side where the barn cats were waiting for a taste and we squirted milk into their mouths. They were so cute and funny that we laughed. Donna brought me back to the present when she said, “Let’s go up to the loft.” We climbed the stairs and saw wooden boxes full of cranberries stacked on both sides of the loft. We looked at each other. “I got this side, you take that side!” I said and so it began. I saw something move as I ran to the other side of the loft. Mike was perched on top of a pile of hay watching us. 
Through shouts and squeals of laughter we threw handfuls of berries at each other. There were berries strewn all over both sides of the loft and the floor below. I saw the sun setting through the window and knew it was getting close to supper time. I told Donna we better get going or we’d be late. It was getting dark when we left the barn and walked down the street the short distance to my house. Mom greeted us with a big smile and the aroma of spaghetti sauce filled the kitchen, making me very hungry. Donna and I washed up and set the table for mom. 
When we were almost finished eating, the phone rang. There was a wall phone in the kitchen near the dining room and Dad got up to answer it. He didn’t say much, just listened, ending with, “Yup, I agree.” He sat down at the table, looking across at mom, then at me and Donna while my siblings looked on.
The phoNe call
“That was Grampa on the phone,”, he stated, giving us a harsh look. My heart sank and my stomach churned; Donna hung her head. “It seems when Grampa got home tonight he noticed the barn lights were on and his neighbor came out to tell him he heard a lot of noise in the barn this afternoon. Do you know why he’s upset?” Donna and I nodded in unison. “Grampa is meeting you both over there in five minutes, good luck.” 
Donna grabbed my hand and was shaking and crying as we walked over. I was trying to calm her down even though I was scared myself. Grampa didn’t raise his voice but was very stern, telling us every single berry that wasn’t damaged needed to go back in the boxes and to make sure there was no hay on any of them. He explained how important the berries were to people who made their living growing and selling them and what trouble he would be in and how much it would cost him if the berries were damaged and couldn’t be delivered. He told us how important it was that this get done tonight because they were being taken to Ocean Spray tomorrow morning to be processed. He also told us that each berry cost a penny and whatever we didn’t get back in the boxes, we would owe him. Before he left, he said he’d see us in the morning at eight o’clock at the barn and to be on time. We counted the berries that were ruined, and we owed Grampa a total of 92 cents. We both took money out of our piggy banks to pay him. We finally got to bed that night at midnight. 
We were at the barn on time the next morning and Grampa was outside waiting for us. He was a slender man, and a bit of light red hair was still visible through the strands of white and grey. He commended us for a job that he said was done even better than the mess we had made, which made us blush. He was looking at me and there was a twinkle in his blue eyes and a smile he was trying to hold back.
“You are a true Ibbitson”, he said, “now you both take your money and put it back where it came from; I think you’ve learned your lesson well.” With that, his brothers, Hollis and Edwin, who were my grand uncles, drove up in their trucks. After greetings and goodbyes Donna and I each went home to our own houses, we were exhausted. 
Thanksgiving was less than two weeks away and we were going next door to my grandparents that year. I was still feeling bad and ashamed at what I had done and so was Donna, even after we had apologized. I was also thinking about all I had found out about my grandparents that I hadn’t known. I knew they both worked but didn’t realize it was in the same place or that Grampa was part owner of a cranberry bog. I was also still perplexed about what Grampa said to me about being a true Ibbitson. 
When Thanksgiving Day finally came, we could smell the turkey before we entered the house. Once inside, the mood was festive, and we all sat at the big round table with enough leaves in it to accommodate all of us. Grace had been said and we all dug into the delicious meal. Every year that I can remember, my four uncles, my dad and Grampa would start telling stories. That year it was about things they did growing up. The stories were funny, entertaining, some a bit daring and some tender and it dawned on me, I was just like them and that’s what Grampa meant. A very nice feeling encompassed me. I felt safe, accepted, loved and very thankful for my family. 
 

WHITMAN – When John Hornstra’s family bought a portion of the former Peaceful Meadows property at auction last year, it was really a return to his roots.
The late Peaceful Meadows owner William Hogg was a mentor of Hornstra, who owns Hornstra Farms in Norwell and Whitman.
“I used to come over here, and thought this was such a neat operation, because they had the ice cream store, and the dairy and the cows, and I modeled the Norwell Farm [after Peaceful Meadows], he said Monday, Nov. 11. “It was kind of my goal to have this and that’s why I built the Norwell Store.”
Another reason he wanted to save the space was that the site of the original Hornstra farm in Hingham is now a condominium complex, developed in 1980.
“That was the heartbreak of my life, seeing that land developed and knowing there would never be cows there again,” Hornstra said. “The people in Hingham, complained about the flies, and the smell, spreading manure – the whole thing.”
As he spoke, a quartet of Holstein heifers – three red and white, and a black and white named Dill – had crowded into the front right corner of their small pasture at Hornstra Farms’ new Whitman property and were beginning to request breakfast – loudly.
The red-and-white Holsteins were named Alabama and Raindrop, with a third having lost the yellow-plastic ear tag that listed its name and birthdate.
“OK, where is he?” they seemed to say.
Hornstra had been running a bit late that morning. He had to check on one of his herd that had somehow been injured and had trouble getting up.
They watched carefully as Hornstra drove up his truck, which carried some corn silage, and the sweet smell got their attention. But they wanted grain. That much was clear as soon as he filled their feed trough to overflowing – and they just looked at it, until he added a scoop or two of grain on top.
“They’ve eaten all the grass off the field … and I hate to move them out, because people enjoy them so much,” Hornstra said, as he fed the heifers – young cows who have not yet had their first calf. “The red ones are pretty, but I was going to have red [Holsteins] in Norwell and black ones in Whitman, because they always had the black and white ones. I kind of like to keep tradition going.”
Hornstra said his aim is for people to enjoy the place that had also been coveted by a tree-removal company and several other developers as a business location.
“I feel like we’ve kind of lost our roots,” he said. “I love this business, and my son does, too, and he’s only 25 years old, but hopefully we can make something special here so people will enjoy it for years to come.”
Whitman trademark
Even after Peaceful Meadows parted with its herd of cows, one of the giant fiberglass cattle’s head sculptures the former stand had installed in later years, was a black and white one. In the lawn area between fences, where those fiberglas sculptures once were, Hornstra envisions a picnic area but is a little concerned about the safety of this cows, in doing so.
“We couldn’t let people around them,” he said. “I really am concerned about how people treat animals, now.”
Whitman has already had one close encounter with farming in late summer and the sweet-tinged smell of manure from silage-fed cows, being spread on the farm fields, wafted through the downtown area.
“They didn’t know what it was,” he said with a chuckle. But on a day-to-day basis, the farm has a containment facility that holds the manure to control the odor, and the stuff is trucked off site.
Nearby is the main barn, gutted, waiting, as the farm sorts through bids for a new floor and more comfortable stalls for the cows, as opposed to the rows of stanchions used before. A new roof had already been put on the building.
It’s a work in progress, he said as Johnny Cash could be heard singing “I Walk the Line” on a worker’s radio as they worked on a smaller barn.
“We’ve got a lot to do,” he said, including installing those new stalls.
“They’re called comfort stalls,” Hornstra said. “They’re wider and they have cushions on the bottom for the cows to lay on, but, hopefully, the cows will be out a good portion of the time.”
He said he doesn’t like to keep his cows inside if they can be outdoors, enjoying the fresh air.
“They do love to be outside,” he said. “That’s where they belong. Sometimes, in the winter it can be so cold out, you have to keep them in to raise the temperature of the barn so the pipes don’t freeze.”
But the goal is for being able to milk a few cows at the barn by next fall. Changing times at another New England Farm – Arethusa Farm in Lichfield. Conn. – has offered a break for Hornstra, who was going there Wednesday, Nov. 13.
Arethusa’s owners are changing the business model post-COVID, and the cost of running it’s showcase dairy barn was too high to justify keeping if running, according to published reports. When Arethusa sold 110 cows to other dairy farms in 2020, leaving the farm with a herd of about 350, and that opportunity Hornsta spoke of: all the milking equipment is still in that luxury barn, and the owner has told Hornstra that he wants him to have that equipment at a reasonable price.
Horsntra is also contemplating adding a couple upright silos for the corn grass silage, but for now both the silage and round bales of hay are wrapped in sturdy white plastic to preserve and ferment it for feed.
Feeding a nation
“We’re all trying to feed the country here, and people look at us as a little, tiny dairy farm, but over 5,000 people drink our milk,” he said. “It’s a weekly thing. Our milk is more expensive than the grocery store, but there are a lot of reasons why.”
He pointed to the process of pasteurizing the farm’s milk is comparable to the extra production steps that make micro-brew beer more expensive than Budweiser.
“The way we pasteurize our milk, at a lower temperature, for a longer period of time, gives our milk a real unique flavor, and people recognize that,” Hornstra said. “The Federal Market Administrator governs the price of milk, depending on the Chicago Cheese Market and that shouldn’t have very much to do with the price of milk, but it does.”
By milking cows on site in Whitman, however, Hornstra said he’ll be able to make 100-percent of his requirements, between the milk and dairy product delivery sales, the shops at both farms and the ice cream stands. Right now, his cows produce 30 percent of the required milk per week.
By milking cows on-site there will be no reason to have to buy milk on the market for their products.
“It’ll all be coming from our cows, and that’s kind of like where we want it to go,” he said. “What I’m [also] afraid of, is I might become not important enough to buy milk.”
Coop companies like Fair Life, owned by Coca-Cola, has opened a huge processing plant in upstate New York, calling on farmers all over the Northeast to supply them with milk. Most of New England milk goes to Garelik and AgriMark, which produces Cabot Farms who generally buys milk from farms in Vermont.
“I’m a little concerned that our ability to buy quality, local milk might be limited,” he said. “So I’d like to be able to milk more cows.”
He had always wanted to be a farmer to do just that and had “low-key lobbied” the Loring Farm owners in Norwell for some 22 years via Christmas card, finally reaching an agreement with him.
Other plans for the property include renovation of another, smaller barn as a space for local 4-H kids to work on their dairy animal projects in conjunction with the Plymouth County Extension Service.
“I want people to enjoy this place,” he said.
The Peaceful Meadows site had been offered to Hornstra two or three years before the land was sold at auction.
“The price they wanted for it, we couldn’t make that,” he said. “So, unfortunately, we had to buy it at auction.”