Memories of Bojuma Farm

 Harry Bryan  2025

     I worked at Bojuma Farm in the summers of 1961 and 1962.   We lived about a mile from the farm and my Raleigh bicycle was my commuting vehicle.  My first job in the morning was to shift an electric fence to make a new part of a field available to the cows.  I must have been mostly still asleep as I rode my bike into the fence, becoming entangled in the wire.   I was instantly wide awake.   

     Pete Tripp had recently taken over the operation of the farm from his father Bordy.  Pete had gone to an agricultural school and brought with him new ideas on running a farm.  Bojuma’s equipment (baler, tractors etc.) was old and always in need of repair.  It is a testament to Pete’s abilities that he was able to keep the farm going as long as he did .  When he took over, the older system of bringing milking machines to the individual cows was replaced with a milking parlor.  From the parlor, the milk would flow to a bulk tank in the dairy.  Whitey Letourneau and later a man named Lorenzo ran the dairy.

     During that time, Bojuma had a retail milk business. Everyone we knew around the area had Bojuma Farm milk delivered to their door.  Pete also had a contract to supply half-pint bottles of milk to Westport schools.  The bottles were all washed by hand and then held over a steam jet to sterilize them.  I had my driver’s licence in my second year at the farm and drove the milk truck.   The steering was so loose and out of alignment that once the truck shook so bad that some of the bottles broke.

     I learned about hard, physical work while at the farm.  I also learned that hard work is made easy when everyone shares the burden.  I thoroughly enjoyed loading 60lb hay bales on a prickly hot day because I was working side by side and sharing any discomfort with Dick Hawes, Chip Gillespie, Jim Hassen (sp?), and Pete.  Pete was a powerful man, able to take a bale in each hand and swing them up to the top of the load.

      There were wonderful times when it did not seem like work.  I was paid seventy five cents an hour to wander the shores of Richmond Pond, surely one of the world’s more beautiful spots, looking in all the bushes for a new-born calf.  

      Bojuma Farm was heaven for young boys tunneling in the bales of the hayloft, later waging war on the English sparrows with BB guns, and later still learning to become an adult.  I have great respect for both Bordy and Pete for keeping the farm going as long as they could.