Anne Burke knows just where her next meal's coming from
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Anne Burke prepares to bring in her cows at milking time. Jeb Wallace-Brodeur |
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By SUSAN ALLEN TIMES ARGUS EDITOR - Published: May 11, 2009
BERLIN – It seems as though a developer calls or knocks almost daily with the offer of a big check and some grand vision for Anne Burke's Harvest Hill Farm.
"They've all got good ideas of what it ought to be," Burke said last week, seated on the front porch of the farmhouse, waiting for her Ayrshires to come down off the hill for the evening milking.
"I kick 'em off the doorstep every day," she laughed.
Burke said they seem to ask, "What's the matter with you dumb farmers? Don't you know where a dollar comes from?"
"I know where my dinner comes from," is her reply.
When Ray and Anne Burke bought a few acres in 1963 and began building what is now an 80-acre farm, Berlin resembled a crossroads. The lot just below the old farmhouse was
a field where Anne's cows grazed.
Last week, from the porch, we looked out at that same lot — now home to the Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce — and out over the Central Vermont Medical Center, several automobile dealerships, the Berlin Mall and more.
This is large development by Vermont standards — all of it making the Burke's farm a land of opportunity in the eyes of some. But not hers. "They aren't the same ideas," she said of her vision of the farm and the development offers that come her way.
Anne Burke grew up on a farm in New Hampshire. When she and Ray moved to Vermont with their young children and bought the land in Berlin, he took a job with the state and she decided to try a little farming. They bought one cow and a tractor, and she took on the chore of haying.
"Dad said, 'Are you sure you know how to run it?'" Anne chuckled, recalling Ray's worry about his tiny wife on the tractor. "I said, 'Oh, yeah, dad … I know how.'"
One worried neighbor called another that afternoon, she said, saying, "There's some little girl out there with a big tractor and she's going to get killed."
Anne Burke cut the field in one day.
"I said, 'dad, if I had a baler, I'd bale it,'" Anne recalled. So a baler was purchased, along with more cows, and Anne began raising veal calves for sale. Along the way, she carefully studied genetics and began building an award winning registered herd. Recently, two of her calves sold for $4,000 each.
In addition, she sells manure, wreaths (the city of Montpelier uses her wreaths during the holidays), fresh eggs and maple syrup.
"Wherever there's a nickel, we're on it," she said, her face yet again screwed up into a big smile.
"We're diversified. So many of the big farms, they're not," she said, noting that those farms take a beating when the price of milk is as low as it is now.
"They owe everybody; we don't," Burke adds. "We don't buy anything until we can pay for it, and if we can't pay for it, we don't buy it."
She's also a dowser, a gift she believes runs in families and has been handed down to her young granddaughter, Becky.
"My grandfather was a dowser. He was walking around with a stick all day" looking for water, Burke said. "You either have the power or you don't."
For her, the pull of the underground water on the stick was strong from the first day she tried at around age 7. But for husband Ray, she quipped, "He could stand with his feet in the water and his stick still wouldn't go down."
Years ago, I used to talk to Ray regularly in his job as a dispatcher for the Agency of Transportation. As an Associated Press reporter at the time, arriving at work at 6 a.m. in a snowstorm, my first task of the day was to call Ray Burke and ask what roads around the state were closed.
Although blind, he knew Vermont roadways backwards and forwards, and would go on the local radio stations with similar reports of weather hazards for the morning commute.
Once retired and suddenly back on the farm with Anne, "I had to find something he can do and not mess anything up," she said. He's a good milker, she added.
What will the land look like in 10 or 20 years, I ask. Her three children, their spouses and the Burke's grandchildren all help around the farm (they live within shouting distance).
"My great-granddaughter Emily is a cow-lady, too," she said, confident the land will stay in the family and in farming. And of grandson Jessie, "If you've got to stack bales of hay, just call 1-800-Jessie. He'll do it."
Her advice to other women beginning to farm or taking over a family farm is clear.
"Prove to the rest of the world that you can do a good job. Never mind if you're a woman or a man, we've all got to prove it."
"Keep a good standing in the town. We always pay our bills. They know we're not fly by night."
"Keep up the stock well."
To learn more about Anne Burke:
Burke and granddaughter Becky are on the cover and featured in Peter Miller's book "Vermont Farm Women." Miller established the Vermont Farm Women's Fund from a percentage of book sales.
The Vermont Farm Women photo exhibit is part of a three-floor show at Studio Place Arts in Barre through June 6.
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