"Tales told by my grandparents"

If you don't think fact is stranger—and funnier—than fiction, just ask author Rusty Clark DeVoid. The author of a new book about life in old Vermont, titled "Horse Tales and Hoof Prints", DeVoid presents a colorful collection of true stories with just a few bordering on the fantastic. The book is published by Distinction Press of Waitsfield. It's a treasure book that recounts what it was like to live in Vermont starting in the 1920s through the World War II years. "Many of the events in my book actually happened," according to DeVoid. "Most were related to me by my father and his father. The stories were passed on as bona fide experiences in their lives and their neighbors' lives." As DeVoid's grandparents stories illustrate, farming has always played a major part in the lives of Vermonters. As a child and teen, DeVoid spent hours listening to his grandparents storytelling skills. At the time, the young, future author took the stories as gospel truth. And so, these stories were retold by DeVoid to his family and friends. In the telling, a tradition of rugged, self-sufficient rural New England storytelling was kept alive. As far back as the late 1700s, Vermonters were already self-sufficient on farms hewn out of the rocky northern wilderness. Farmers in those days lived simply and survived of the land they husbanded, meaning they ate nearly all of the food produced on their own farms. Horses, and to a lesser extent oxen, played a major role as the "tractors" of pre-Industrial Age farming here. When sheep were introduced as Vermont livestock just before the outbreak of the War of 1812, the animals became an exportable source of income. In fact, Merino sheep exported from Vermont helped transform the farm economy of the distant continent of Australia. And in the era of sheep farming in Vermont, forested slopes were clearcut for firewood and to make way for animal grazing. If you gaze at faded photographs of the Vermont rural landscape between the 1860s and 1880s, the place looks an awful lot like some of the vistas of eastern Wyoming. There wasn't much difference between rural east and rural west in those days. Prior to the Civil War, Vermont farmers began concentrating more on dedicated dairy operations. And when the refrigerated railroad car was introduced in 1910, milk could be shipped greater distances from the farm and co-op dairies. Thanks to the railroads, people living in Boston and New York City were drinking fresh milk from farms located more than 100 miles away. But even with technological advancements in transporting dairy, and other farm goods to market, many Vermont farmers relied on their horses for basic labor chores. In fact, not every farmer had a motor tractor to rely upon even through the Great Depression years. With the publication of his new book, the 66-year-old DeVoid, who lives in Hinesburg with his wife Joyce, has brought to life the down-to-earth, and sometimes eccentric, lives of a cast of rural and town characters that would delight anyone interested in life before televisions, computers, and mobile telephones. The DeVoids are both native Vermonters. Rusty worked on a farm in Hinesburg during his youth. He and Joyce first met while students at Champlain Valley Union High School. The couple were fortunate enough to have been able to acquire and rescue Joyce's family farm situated on Hinesburg's Hayden Hill. The up-country farm was in Joyce's family for several generations. Today, it is a private museum showcasing a way of life that many of us today only know from old photographs or movies. The couple restored their 1882 Hinesburg farmhouse into a place of simple rural beauty. It is decorated with various heirlooms, of value only to the owners, along with other period things such as Joyce's grandmother's ice box—even classic, old hand tools from around the farm can be seen on display. Best of all is the DeVoids' massive cast-iron kitchen stove; it is the centerpiece of the home. "We spend a lot of time in the kitchen. It's quiet there. We don't have television anywhere in the house," DeVoid said proudly. "After Red Skelton went off the air, I don't know anyone else on T.V. But I'll say that we do have a telephone and the Internet." DeVoid feels today's world moves too quickly for us to notice the natural environment around us or to take measure of the simple, yet important things of living. DeVoid, who appears to enjoy the same simple lifestyle of many of the people recounted in "Horse Tales...", is proud of the fact that much of today's world doesn't filter through the fortress of his idyllic homestead. "There's really nothing we need," he said. "We have a garden; we grow and can our own vegetables. This is how our parents, and their parents, lived. Today's society lunges forward, hungry for progress. But I believe it is necessary to stop occasionally and look around. Consider the past—where have we been, where are we going?" DeVoid started writing "Horse Tales..." in 2009. He wanted to write down all the stories his father, Floyd DeVoid, told him about life growing up on a farm in Jeffersonville, Vt. It took DeVoid a year to assemble all the stories, with various names, taken from note and memory down through the years. While he didn't have many family photos to use in the book, one monochrome image—showing his great grandfather farming in Jeffersonville in 1949—graces the cover of the book. No matter, the DeVoid family's life in farming is symbolic of so many other Vermont farming families from the Great Depression and World War II eras. According to a trio of VHS—Vermont Historical Society—writers, Jeff Potash, Gene Sessions, and Michael Sherman, agriculture in the state suffered enormously during the 1930s. "Income from the sale of fluid milk, Vermont's most important agricultural product, dropped more than half from 1929 to 1933, in some places to 2.67 cents per quart—far less than the cost to the farmer for feed and equipment," the writers write in an history report about the struggles of Vermont farmers during the Depression. "The decline in demand for agricultural products that farmers had used to supplement their incomes, such as potatoes and lumber, further reduced agricultural workers' purchasing power to its lowest level since 1877. Many farmers sold out—more than 1,500 farms went out of business in the decade after the Great Crash of 1929, putting much of the land out of cultivation, and by 1930 the proportion of unimproved farmland had risen to 60 percent... What allowed many Vermonters to survive... were the skills and tradition of self-reliance, combined with cooperation, barter, and sharing resources." Rusty DeVoid's stories provide the local color behind these facts. If you want to see what life was like as recounted in DeVoid's book, you can examine the many on-the-farm photographs taken by accomplished visual artists working for the U.S. Works Progress Administration, and wandering through Vermont, during the Great Depression—Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, Roy Frederic Heinrich, Lewis Wickes Hine, among other celebrated talents (we reproduce a few in our 'North Country Living' printed magazine version of this story). "I regret not learning more about my family's roots," DeVoid admits. "But the stories I collected are like the songs of a troubadour in the Middle Ages. They were told at meeting places, at county fairs, and social gatherings. DeVoid is so excited by the stories, he wishes more people will read them and tell stories of their own. "The stories carried excitement and flavor about people who wrestled to survive and prosper on Vermont farms," he said. Aside from the mainstay livestock of most Vermont farmers of the years DeVoid recounts—the cow—horses were an inseparable part of these hardscrabble folks. Only today have the number of horses in Vermont come anywhere near the equine levels of the past. However, horses in Vermont now are no longer a necessity, but an expensive hobby, a luxury requiring a considerable income to properly feed, shelter, and graze—but not so 80 to 100 years ago. "Muscles, sweat, and a strong back were vital tools for survival back then," DeVoid said. "Horses fit right in as obedient members of the family. They were a dedicated, loyal power source that helped shape not only Vermont, but the entire nation." All of DeVoid's stories, told to him by his father, include horses—on the farm and in town. "Many a tankard has been tipped to a worthy animal and their stories deserve telling," he said. DeVoid's lead story, "Town Constable" presents the hyperbolic account of a Vermont town where Sally is the unofficial town constable. Sally, of course, is a horse. Without giving away the plot, suffice it to say, this DeVoid story should be joyfully enshrined alongside the best rural and frontier tales penned by Mark Twain and O'Henry. In "The Best Town Meeting Ever", DeVoid's grandmother Cora of Underhill takes center stage in a story concerning a horse named Molly. "Molly was my grandparents' horse," DeVoid said. "She didn't need a pulling collar because the carriage she pulled only weighed about half the horse." In a story that dates to 1929, the year of the stock market crash, DeVoid tells the story of a Vermont man who mortgages his house to make a trip to Chicago. A skeptical fellow, who has never left the state wonders why. "Nothing but cement, brick and macadam," he warns the would-be big city traveler. "Ain't no trees anywhere. No grass either. I don't know how people breathe. And there's a hotel on every corner, and a restaurant in between. Seems like they're all busy, too." For all the quaint, nostalgic details in DeVoid's first book, there is a clear longing for the past in these tales. And wether true or sweetened with fiction over the years in the telling, they connect to a past that exists in memories, old photos, and the imagination. Farming was never an easy life, but the Vermonters who made their living by it have a story to tell, and DeVoid helps them tell the story. There are also lessons to learn here—people to trust and not trust, but always the steady connection between people, their animals and the land. With a little humor and pathos added to spice up the tales, DeVoid's book is a delight to read and pass along to friends. Check It Out: "Horse tales and Hoof Prints" is $13.95 and is available at many booksellers in Vermont. It can also be ordered online, through Distinction Press at www.distinctionpress.com.

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