Bojuma Farm by Sandy Lawton

One June afternoon at the age of seven in 1955, my mother and I were picking daffodils at the end of our east laneway. Our house was located at 47 Howland Road across from the Acoaxet Chapel. In the distance

we heard a tractor coming up the Cross road and turning onto Howland Road. As the tractor approached us it slowed down and came to a stop. My mother said hello to the man driving the tractor and asked how he was doing and what a beautiful June day it was. The man driving the tractor was Pete Tripp, the son of Borden Tripp, the owner of Bojuma farm. Pete said he was headed to the Truesdale property at the end of Brayton’s Point road to pick up hay bales he had baled that morning. Pete asked my mother if it would be okay for me to ride with him on the tractor. Mother said that would be fun for me and off we went on the tractor along side which there was Pete’s dog named Rex, who run everywhere with Pete. The tractor was a John Deere Model A and was designed so that I could stand in front of the seated driver and hold onto the vertical steering wheel. Quite a thrill for a seven year old boy to stand in front of the driver this way and help steer this big tractor. The John Deere’s in those days were two cylinder tractors and made a popping noise thus they earned the nickname of Johnny Poppers!

Well, about a mile down Brayton Point Road we came to the Truesdale property which was a large piece of land, I am guessing about 50 to 70 acres of which about 30 to 40 acres were tillable land. This beautiful land bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the south, Quicksand Pond to the west and a view of Richmond Pond to the east. Perhaps one of the most beautiful views on the east coast of the United States!

When we arrived at the field where the hay bales were, Pete told me to stay on the tractor where I was standing behind the steering wheel. He put the tractor in first gear with a very low throttle and showed me how to push the clutch forward. The clutch was a 3/4” vertical rod hand clutch and was very easy to engage by moving it forward and to disengage it, bringing it back. This enabled me to operate the clutch and steer the tractor at a very slow speed while Pete was on the ground loading the hay bales onto the trailer we were towing. This was such a thrilling thing for me at the age of seven to be driving this big tractor with a big flatbed trailer behind me all by myself! I could not believe it! It was such fun and from that day forward I had so enjoyed driving the old John Deere tractors that in the later years of my life I owned several of these Johnny Poppers as a hobby.

Well, Pete left me off at the end of our laneway on his way back to Bojuma Farm and said that he was going back to the Truesdale property in the morning to pick up more hay and would pick me up again at the end of our laneway if I wanted to come with him. I was thrilled and those two days were the beginning of my love for farming. From that point on I spent most everyday in the summers and frequently after school spending time on the farm with Pete and the workers, learning all the aspects of dairy farming. I did this until I went away to Kent’s Hill Prep school up near Augusta, Maine in 1963.

That fall when I came home for a holiday, my Dad told me that Bojuma Farm was closing the dairy and selling all their cows and equipment. As we drove by Bojuma Farm, I saw all the farm equipment out in the middle of the field getting ready to be sold. It brought tears to my eyes to think that Bojuma Farm was going to be no more.

I had learned so much about animals and farm equipment and the hard work farmers had to endure in order to make a living. Looking back I have always considered myself very fortunate to have experienced farm life first hand and not to mention the close relationship I had with Pete Tripp and his wife Mary(Heaton) Tripp.

Bojuma Farm had approximately 60 Holstein cows which were milked by conventional milking machines. That meant every bucket of milk had to be carried to the far end of the barn where it was dumped into a cooling trough. The cooling trough was adjacent to the dairy processing room where the milk was piped into a cooling tank, then pasteurized and placed into glass Bojuma Farm milk bottles in preparation for delivery in the Bojuma Farm milk truck to local Harbor residents , Westport Schools and various other locations. This Bojuma milk truck has been sitting behind Ledger Deschene’s home located on Old Harbor road ever since the farm closed and is still there as far as I know. The dairy operation was run by Whitey Latourneau, who lived on the River road up towards Adamsville and the farm was operated by Alex Tripp, no relationship to Borden Tripp. While Alex Tripp was running the farm, Borden Tripp’s son Pete Tripp, was attending The University of Massachusetts Agricultural School and Pete worked summers and part time on the farm until he graduated from the agricultural school. Once graduated, Pete took over the management of Bojuma Farm. The milking operation changed considerably at this point in time. A milking parlor was built behind the existing dairy room. The parlor had six milking stations with three stations on each side. This meant that the milking machines pumped the milk directly into the dairy room. The old milking area in the barn was made in to a holding area for the cows where they then entered the new milking parlor six at a time for milking. This change made milking a much more efficient operation.

The farm had always had two silos for storing corn and hay silage. Once the milking parlor was built the two silos were taken down and a silage pit was created to the west of the barn. The silage trailers, of which there were three, would have chain link fencing laid on the trailer bed and firmly secured to the trailer bed at the end of the trailer. The trailer was then taken to the corn field where it was loaded. Once the loaded trailer returned to the barn yard, the trailer was backed up to the silage pit, the back doors of the trailer were opened and the chain link fencing laying under the silage had a chain attached to it in the front of the trailer. This chain was then attached to a tractor on the opposite side of the silage pit and it proceeded to pull the loaded silage into the pit. Quite an easy way to unload a silage trailer as opposed to loading the old silos with an elevator from silage trailers. Much less time consuming,not to mention much less labor.

One day comes to my mind at the Truesdale farm on Brayton Point road, when chopping corn with the silage trailer traveling along side the chopper as it was being loaded, a fireman working that day was driving the tractor pulling the silage trailer. The corn field was on the side of a hill and as the chopper and the silage trailer were heading down the hill there was a large rock which the fireman drove over. As he was driving over the rock, the trailer having more silage in the back of it then in the front of it and the trailer hitch being designed on a hinged principle, the trailer front rode up into the air and come down on the tractor seat. Needless to say the fireman driving the tractor was shocked as he was standing at the tractor steering wheel with a silage wagon sitting on his tractor seat. From that day forward, I never saw that fireman again!

Another odd accident occurred on the Cross Road when a part time worker was driving a tractor up the Cross Road hill and when the driver had to down shift the tractor to get more power, he did not downshift properly and the tractor proceeded to roll backwards off the road into a brook. I don’t remember ever seeing him again either!

The full time workers at Bojuma Farm were Jim Hasson and Walter, who’s last name I don’t remember, but Walter later worked with Dan and Freeman Meader, who operated their family dairy farm abutting Bojuma Farm just to the north. Dickie Hawes also worked at Bojuma Farm.

During planting, haying and harvesting season the work force was supplemented with part time help. I remember that firemen frequently filled the part time positions as well as Westport Harbor boys when not in school such as Dougie Fields, Billy Sheehan, Harry Bryan and David Thompson. An interesting character was Jason, who lived on River Road and he converted a Model A Ford into a tractor and would haul hay and silage trailers from the fields to the barn for Bojuma Farm. Jason kept everyone’s spirits up with his sense of humor and his enthusiasm.

Borden’s dad had bought the farm on Cross road when Borden was 14 years old. Years later after Borden graduated from Harvard University and was working in New York City, Borden decided it was time to go farming. He bought the farm on River road which he named Bojuma Farm and his dad’s farm, which Borden now lived on, created a considerably large acreage for dairy farming. Bojuma Farm also extended across River road down to the Westport River.

The name Bojuma Farm was created by using the first two letters in his name, Borden, his sister’s names, Judy and Mary.

During the spring and fall, the heifers, of which there were approximately 30 head, would be driven by workers as a herd from Bojuma Farm on the River Road, up the Cross road, continuing on Howland road to Brayton Point road. About a half mile down Brayton road, the heifer herd would be driven on what was called in the old days, Bootleggers Lane. My mother as a child used to to hear trucks driving at night from Brayton’s Point up Boothleggers, which came out on Mullins Hill road, up to Adamsville, RI, where the Prohibition liquor was stored and distributed to various locations. Well, back to the heifers. Bootleggers Lane at the time was owned by Norman Thompson, which was about 150 acres, extending down to Quicksand pond and was where the heifers spent the summers. During this herding process from Bojuma Farm to the Thompson property, the auto traffic was held up and was a sight to see. Thirty cows being herded down the road. The Rhode Island, Massachusetts state line ran thru the middle of Norman’s property, which today is known as Pequa Honk.

Bojuma Farm equipment consisted of a John Deere Model A 1942 tractor with loader, John Deere Model B 1939 tractor, Allis Chalmers 1954 tractor, Cocksutt

1958 tractor,John Deere B 1952 tractor, a New Holland hay bailer with Wisconsin air cooled engine with left hand canvas pickup head. Single head corn chopper powered by a Continental 4 cylinder engine. Bog harrow. Finishing harrow. 3 hay trailers, with sides added for silage. John Deere sickle bar hay cutter, in ground gas pump. Manure spreader.

Bojuma farm will always be ingrained into my memory! I learned so much about farm life and the hard work it took to run a farm. It truly was an experience of a lifetime for me for which I will always be grateful.