In the Valley of Dairy
February Six Word Photo Story Challenge: “Statues”
Maybe the river flows with milk…
Whately, Massachusetts is a small agricultural community located in the Connecticut River Valley, an area rife with family farms. In the late 1920s, a man named Lincoln Bond crafted this giant cement milk bottle on behalf of Quonquont, a local farm that focused primarily on dairy production at the time. To this day, the 17 foot tall statue serves as an ice cream dispensary on special town occasions (there’s a door in the back).
Quonquont is now a pick-your-own fruit and flower farm, with apples, peaches, blueberries, wildflowers and a small farm store. They also host weddings and maintain a few enthralling trail cams on their property, which they use to record and share videos of busy local wildlife. You can watch beavers building dams and bobcats traversing an old stone wall in the woodlands. I love it!
Even though Quonquont is no longer a dairy farm, there are still a few nearby. In addition to dairies, the valley is plentiful with potatoes, corn, collards, tobacco, pumpkins, and more. However, the Connecticut River does not actually run with milk — that all just comes from cows (and some goats, too).
If you’re into quaint New England stuff, Bruce Coulter’s story on covered bridges is one to read:
Thanks to Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles, for the prompt.