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Farming

Description

Interviewees discuss dairy farming; milk, cheese, and butter production; hops growing; transportation; farm technology; the distribution of goods; family; and community. Many of the recordings include reflections on the transformations in farming within the last seventy-five years. In particular, many interviewees discuss the transition from small farming to large-scale production. The materials in this collection paint a vivid portrait of farm life and provide a reminder that agriculture has played a key role in New York State history.

View all of the items in the Farming Collection


Homer Osterhoudt is a lifelong resident of New York’s Otsego County and the Cooperstown area. Born January 17, 1918 in Oneonta, Mr. Osterhoudt grew up primarily in Phoenix Mills on his father’s farm until moving into Cooperstown with his wife…

Douglass Mount Deer is the minister for the First Baptist Church in Cooperstown, New York. He was born in August 9, 1951, in Southington, Connecticut, to Gordon Spencer Deer and Phyllis Shepherd Deer. Mr. Deer and his family moved several times…

Robert Banta was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1923. After living the better part of his childhood in the City—particularly Garden City, on Long Island—he and his family moved upstate when his father bought a farm in the midst of the Great…

Ernie Chase is a lifetime resident of the Cooperstown area. He was born at the Thanksgiving Home in Cooperstown in 1919 and has lived here since then. Having lived and worked around Otsego Lake for his whole life, Mr. Chase has been a witness to…

Shirley Banta lived her life in small-town New York. Yet she attended college in the 1940's, a rarity for women at the time, and later became a teacher. Consequently, much of Shirley's oral history revolves around her schooling. Living in Upstate New…