BRATTLEBORO-Read Miller operates Dwight Miller and Son Orchard on Miller Road in East Dummerston. The farm goes back eight generations to 1792 — Millers all the way.
Read studied at the Stockbridge School of Agriculture at the University of Massachusetts, where he had the good fortune to meet his future wife, Malah. Together, they have three children and now one grandson, and they continue to work the farm with their son Will, another generation.
Many of you are aware of the devastating fire this summer that took the Millers’ packing house, which is the farm’s main operations building. Their loss has brought them tremendous community support.
Full disclosure: My husband and I lived on Miller Road for 17 years, next door to Read and Malah and next to his aunt — the sister of his father, Dwight — Eleanor Miller Sherberg. (Now, “next door” on Miller Road is an acre or two, at least, right?) So we saw a lot of Read and Malah going down the road to one thing or another. Those were really good years.
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Wendy O’Connell: So, Read, you grew up on the farm. Not only did you grow up on the farm, but as I said, going back generations and generations of that land, that piece of land.
Read Miller: I was very, very fortunate to be born into that opportunity. And for me, that’s what I have always identified our farm as — an opportunity. It was an opportunity to learn, to watch, to build, to take in things.
And part of what is really important to me is to be able to return that opportunity to my children. I have an obligation to carry on, to give forth the same thing that I was given, which is that opportunity.
W.O.: And you and your three sisters all worked on the farm?
R.M.: Everybody has worked there. My kids have worked there. My siblings have, my parents both, my cousins have worked there. Most of them, they’ve either helped build, or they’ve done various farming projects.
I’ve heard these stories from a cousin that I never knew who was in his 70s or so: “I helped your dad,” “I helped your grandfather,” “I knew your grandfather.”
W.O.: I always thought of you and your father, Dwight, as being philosophers of sorts. I think you have to be philosophic a bit to be in the farming business, for one thing. I’m going to leave this open for you.
R.M.: When I was a little kid, I asked my grandfather, “What’s retirement?” And he looked at me and he said, “Read, ‘retirement’ is a young man’s word.” And now that I’m my age and most of my youth is gone, I can feel what he meant in the sense that I am not retiring.
When we talk about those sorts of things, it’s what a younger person would think of. Now that I’m approaching slowing down, am slowing down, I’m going to do what I want as I can. But I will be here always.
W.O.: I don’t think farmers ever really retire.
R.M.: But I chose it. And that’s one thing that is really important for me — and for those who are immediate to me — to understand when things get unpleasant, difficult, unexpected.
I chose to be here. I am constantly reminding myself that this is a choice that I made. I choose to not do other things. I wanted to do this. I still want to do this, and that’s the platform that I approach what I’m doing now. I want to rebuild this.
My first priority, Wendy, is I have a family. The first thing we need to do is to make sure that this family is together and that we’re not putting undue pressure onto each other, that we’re not having false expectations, and that we all respect and appreciate what is coming to our plate that needs to be addressed, and not to set our expectations above what can be done. It is about how we as family come together and move forward.
And the other thing that I know is at my age is that it’s not my turn. It is. Not. My. Turn.
The building [that was destroyed in the fire] was my property. The insurance policy is [on] my property. There are certain things that I have to do because there are certain large responsibilities in regards to the fire that are on my shoulders and no one else’s. But as we look forward, past the things that have to be done — because they have to be done — it’s not my turn, and the kids will be — are — involved in this.
W.O.: And that’s Will and Ruth and Martha and your grandson.
R.M.: And extended family. It’s not just three kids. There’s three marriages there. I mentioned needing to listen [to] everyone tell their story. In order for them to hear me, then I need to listen to what they want, too.
W.O.: What’s amazing to me is how many family farms there are in the area, how many people who’ve been working the land for a long time, like the Darrows and Lilac Ridge, the Robb Farm, Gaines Farm, Walker Farm.
These are all families, and I can see where — obviously — it’s more than a job. It’s your life.
R.M.: It is. We’ve had catastrophes in the past. We’ve had crop losses, we’ve had a whole lot of other things. We’ve lost family members.
But when you have gone through a catastrophe — whether it’s financial, whether it’s emotional — and you have been able to come through again, to [rebuild] knowing that that pain can be moved through and around, it’s easier to go through problems like what we have now. Because we have done this.
I’m not going to suggest that catastrophes are any way removed or softened. But when you feel in your heart that this is another problem that we can address, it’s easier to approach it that way. You feel like there is another side. That might be different, but there is another side.
W.O.: I was thinking about that kind of thing in terms of just simply the weather, right?
R.M.: My family are weather junkies, and the weather is new, because of our climate change, etc. I grew up in a family that had been doing things outside of the box weather-wise forever. You know, we were [growing] peaches and strawberries back before Civil War.
And so when I listened to my father, we were watching the weather as it related in wintertime to peaches.
The nicest gift that I ever gave to my father was when I was in high school: I gave him a recording thermometer. And it was his religion. You know — “Did you change the paper?” “I’m going on vacation — could you look after the thermometer?”
Something as simple as “what was the high and low of Feb. 25?” doesn’t mean much to most, but we can pull those out. Not only do we have diaries from generations, but that just gives you an example of how we looked at our farming practices.
It wasn’t just, “OK, we’re growing strawberries and apples, is it going to frost tonight?” It was how we lived and died by small minutia with Mother Nature and how we tried to find ways to to push back on some of the risk.
W.O.: Have you noticed a big change in the weather over the years, just in your lifetime?
R.M.: There’s 45 minutes right there! We’ve done climate-change sugaring, which has involved actually making syrup from the same tap hole two years in a row. I have actually picked strawberries and made syrup on Thanksgiving. I have picked strawberries and made syrup on Christmas.
A lot of the work that I did in the early 2000s is actually no longer relevant, because the weather has changed so much in the last 10, 15 years.
W.O.: Really?
R.M.: Yeah.
W.O.: Wow.
One short little story that I think is relevant is we used to live across from the peach orchard, and one night, there was a frost coming. The peach blossoms were blooming. And we looked out at what looked like a Civil War camp, with all of these boxes of fires.
I ran up to Dwight the next day, and I said, “Hey, we saw it.” He said, “Yeah, we have these. You know, all of our wood goes into these boxes, and you know, it helps, it helps keep the blossoms from freezing.”
He said, “In the old days, we used tires.”
R.M.: The old days — that was in the ’60s, before things changed in the ’70s. Yeah, things are a little different now.
W.O.: Did you ever think at all, Read, of doing something different when you were younger? Or now?
R.M.: That’s not really quite a fair question, because in the sense of fairness, I do things differently all the time. I have an interest in biology and science. I get to explore that all the time. One of the things that I am keenly aware of in my later years is relationships, and I enjoy them, and I make it a point to continue to build and improve.
Probably Malah helped in the sense that she told me years ago, “Read, everybody has a story. And if you want yours heard, maybe you should be listening to theirs too.” So whether it’s science, whether it’s everyday life, or whether it’s finances, it’s always there, and there’s always an opportunity.
I think in some ways, my family might get upset with me a little bit because I do what I want. And I hear about it.
W.O.: Your family has been public in a lot of ways — not only things like your mother Gladys and the Dummerston Apple Pie Festival and all of the preserves and things that she put up. And then Malah, of course, doing that as well. Also, Dwight acted a bit in some local productions ...
R.M.: The Equivalent Lands, written by Joe Greenhoe.
W.O.: And you also were one of the first farms on board with the Brattleboro Farmers Market.
R.M.: The Brattleboro Farmers Market celebrated our 50th anniversary this summer. Actually, last year was the 50th, and I personally was at the very first farmers market. My father was one of the founders, [along with] Howard Prussack [and] a few others.
It’s been a pleasure to see the community and the market build together and to be supportive and helpful with each other and provide an opportunity for a lot of small farms to start. People don’t realize how important that can be, that sometimes everybody needs an opportunity. And the farmers market can be an opportunity for people to start up.
W.O.: Very much so.
There are so many younger people going into farming, which kind of blows my mind a bit.
R.M.: It’s good. Yeah. It’s different.
W.O.: Different kinds of farming?
R.M.: No, no — it’s different in the sense that, when I was a kid, I was a “dumb farmer.” In the ’60s and ’70s, I was a farm kid, and farmers at that time had the stigma of “you’re a dumb farmer.” Then in the ’70s, and as the ’70s gave off to the ’80s, it was, “You’re cool.”
And so the generation that is coming up now in their youth have the opportunity to be cool. My peers were not. But we’re doing the same things.
So I think it’s great that our society has changed and is inviting the next generation to try and to be involved in providing their good food.
W.O.: Right down the road you’ve got Bunker Farm kids. (They’re not kids, but to us, they’re kids.) And Full Plate is nearby. Rebop Farm, which is doing an interesting amalgamation of different things, including meat and raw milk and that kind of thing. So I found it very heartening just looking at it from the outside — younger people are really stepping and being involved with the community.
R.M.: And those farms, I know them all, and they’re all welcomed. It’s nice to see youthful energy. And every so often I see that they go through the some of the same things that I have gone through.
W.O.: And their lens is different too. Of course, they’ve grown up with climate change from the get go, so that’s something that’s built into how they farm.
R.M.: When I went to school I studied business, too, and law as well. And when [I studied] agricultural finances, [I learned] some pretty simple formulas.
But in the formulas that we looked at, nobody ever put in risk.
It is a number that exists in reality. It’s never taught to you by a banker; it’s not taught in school, to my knowledge.
I would encourage any young farmer or someone starting out to be aware that the simple math that you did on the napkin to get a loan or to go through this — you can take a number or two, and you can add the risk factor in there, which you probably are not even aware of. That might be an emotional number as well. And ask: “Do I have the finances to pay for the risk? Can I emotionally support myself and my family through that risk?”
Those are things that are. Not. Taught.
W.O.: And gosh, a farmer’s life is filled with risk. You’ve seen fire, you’ve seen rain, you’ve seen early melts, you’ve seen maple syrup that isn’t running, you’ve seen the equipment — the whole equipment piece of it now is different than you were a kid, too, right?
R.M.: And it does not come when you might be ready for it, or when you’re expecting it, and you might have three or four [catastrophes] in a row, and you’re saying to [your]self, “This is not fair.” And one of the first lessons that I learned when I was 12, 13 years old is that life is not fair.
So [you just need] to set that aside and move through the equation that is your life.
When we’re kids, we’re worried about: Do I have a girlfriend? What’s my school like? Do I have a job? What’s my work going to be like? Now that I’m retirement age, I think about the aging process.
But every one of those aspects is an equation that needs to be understood and worked through to make myself and my family happy. And so the reason I keep coming back to all these little things which are part of life — this fire that we’re talking about is part of life.
When the fire was still fully involved and my family was there, we were getting offers of support. And Martha or Will would come to me and say, “You know, Dad, how do you feel about this [offer of support]?” And I would say, “I can’t deal with it. You take care of it. I’m comfortable with you following through on how you want to approach that.” Which they did, and I trusted what they did.
And very clearly, the community reached out and said, “We support you. Now.”
One of the things that I did while we were still hot is thank the fire service. I used to be an EMT/fire guy, and there’s always a point in someone’s life when there will be a need. You may not have gotten there yet. But whether you’re doing hospice, whether you have a new baby, whether you’re having, struggling with school, there can be someone there to support you, to help you.
So to the community and the fire service [and everyone], I want you to know how important what you have given to me was. We will all need that at some point, and you need to be aware that you are appreciated for what you have given.
W.O.: Well, you just did a really good definition of what community is and can be, right?
Looking back at the farm, you’ve grown a lot of diversified crops, right? Strawberries, peaches, you’ve got a maple sugarbush that’s going on, apples, pears, blueberries, raw honey, of course, maple syrup. But you also had some animals for a time.
R.M.: Well, the you lived on the road for a minute or two, and there are four or five barns that were affiliated with the family. My father was a big sheep guy. He was the national president of the Southdown Breeders Association, so he was nationally renowned for sheep.
Originally, our farm was a dairy farm, primarily. That farm was then taken by Arthur Lyman Miller out to West Brattleboro, who then took it to Vernon. And so [his descendents] Peter Miller and Arthur Miller are in the dairy trade in Vernon, which originated on Miller Road [in Dummerston].
I do farming. Have done farming. I am not a look-at-me person. I will be at home trying to crack a case, trying to engineer, trying to figure out something that seems to me doable. Consequently, I’m not around a lot to talk about Miller things, farming things. I don’t do that. I’m not afraid of it — it’s not me.
We have a lot of interests, and we just do them. It’s not like, “OK, this is what I used to do, and I got to tell you about it.” It’s like, “I have another idea. Let’s see what that is. I have an interest in this other idea.”
The only reason that we stopped raising animals was because when Covid came through, we couldn’t get slaughter time. Covid interrupted everything normal.
You know, Covid was an odd thing. I sold — sell — a lot of maple syrup commercially in the Boston area. I also sell a lot of cider vinegar. You heard about the size of the loss in the fire, which was 30,000 gallons of vinegar.
So at the time of Covid, I was selling maple syrup into a chain of restaurants, and my buyer calls me up and says, “I’m canceling all my orders because the restaurants are shutting down.”
A day later, my cider vinegar sales go through the roof because now I’m selling a healthful tonic.
So I’m not saying that it averaged out, but I’m saying you just don’t know. And all of this happened within a week of each other. When we went from zero to where-are-we-going-to-buy-the- bottles-to-package-all-that-vinegar?
W.O.: It’s like the weather, right? It’s changing all the time. That’s interesting, though — I didn’t even think of Covid in terms of how it affected you guys.
R.M.: It’s [also] a family thing. I enjoy animals. I consider myself a livestock person as much as anything. But my kids aren’t.
I like to do veg as well. When my son came home from school, I tried to get involved in that, and he was doing all of the apples primarily. And I said, “You know, let’s plant more of something.” And he said, “Dad, I’m not interested.”
And at that time, finances are well enough around fruit. So we stopped doing acres and acres and acres [of vegetables] and processing and going to the big guys. You know, it’s listening to what someone likes to do, and the chances are, if you like it, you’re going to be good at it.
You know, one of the things that Will really likes is bees. My grandfather had bees, my dad had bees, I had bees, and Will is a beekeeper. And of all the things that we’ve ever done, bees are the one thing that we’ve never made money on.
I know I can go down through the list and say, “Oh, yes, at one point, that was good” or “Oh, but we had a bad crop.” I had a break-even year on bees and honey, that was a good thing.
W.O.: Yeah, but they’re out there pollinating.
R.M.: They’re doing it. And Will, to his credit, has been asking to get a license for the farm to make mead. He’s made some. It’s a great interest of his, and so we’re not pushing [beekeeping] back.
W.O.: Well, it’s interesting, because everybody does have their own interests, and being able to accommodate that is really a wonderful thing.
R.M.: You know, I have the utmost respect for my second cousins down on the Vernon farm, where they’re marketing their milk, etc. My family has been marketing and selling for generations. You know, I used to peddle with my father, my grandfather. We grew up growing and selling.
With all the things that are going on with the weather, etc., one of the things you don’t want to do is have the crop noose around your neck and either have no margin, or make sure you can sell it for a profit.
As the kids were growing up, there’s certain things that Martha was tired of me [saying]. She said, “Don’t say that again, Dad.” One was “opportunity cost,” and the other was “I don’t care whether your neighbor has green equipment or blue equipment. If you’re going to do it, you start with margin because I can’t work harder than my neighbor. I’m not smarter than my neighbor.”
It’s like I need to know where I have that margin to offset that risk factor.
W.O.: You’ve got to be pragmatic.
R.M.: I guess so.
W.O.: And nimble enough to be able to weather the risks as well. And again, it sort of goes back to family. It goes back to community. And I know that the fire....
R.M.: At the time of the fire, we had just come back from farmers market, and we were successful that particular day because we had no perishables to put back in the cooler, so we didn’t go to the building.
We got a call from one of the neighbors saying, “You know, your building’s on fire.” I actually said to whoever called, “Call it in,” and I dropped the phone. And Malah and I were up the road. I was up there half-dressed all day and all evening.
This fire does not define us. Does not define us. It’s tragic, it’s there, it’s happening now, but it does not define us.
W.O.: And at the same time, you’ve got the family that defines you and the family that’s there for support, and that’s the main thing. The community really stepped up.
R.M.: They did. It was a $2 million fire. [We had] insurance, [from] which there is some, but not nearly enough.
The community — approximately 650 people — came through with donations that were over $100,000.
There’s a reason why I’m talking to you today. How many times have you asked me [to come on the show], Wendy?
W.O.: Many times.
R.M.: I have said no to you half a dozen times because it’s not my personality. But this is a moment where it’s — I cannot be me right now. I cannot be the guy that sits over there and problem-solves and rebuilds.
I have to come forth and acknowledge what the community has offered. Thank you for the offer, and it will be employed and reciprocated.
We all have a need at some point, and I would encourage young people to come forth and volunteer, to do those sorts of things. You know, I grew up in a volunteering family — that’s what we did, that’s what I was shown.
And so this offer of thanks and gratitude is in part to say: Please continue [volunteering] if you haven’t. If you’re not sure how to be part of your community, come forth and do something to help someone else.
W.O.: Now you are moving forward, and you’ve got a whole support system in the farm.
R.M.: If you drive by the site, you would say it’s not moving forward. But we’re opportunists — [that’s how] one of my farming neighbors (Don Hazleton) referred to me.
We bought a sawmill — a full-blown, get-out-of-our-way-we’re-sawing-production-lumber sawmill.
The reason is that we need hundreds of thousands of feet [of wood] to rebuild that building. We have a lot of stumpage.
But it’s also an opportunity down the road. If Will, or my son in law, or some other member of the family wants to be in production retail sales of lumber, it is a value added. There’s stumpage over there, there’s a mill there in the middle, make something for cash flow. The [wood used in the] building that burned all came from the farm. I worked with a lot of mills, and had mills on the farm as well.
I bought this mill thinking, “It’s not for me.” I’m older. I don’t need to have a sawmill. But it fit, and I am very pleased the way that the family has stepped in, and now it’s their mill. It is their mill. It’s their machinery. It’s their opportunity.
W.O.: Yeah, it’s another asset in the farm.
R.M.: So if we were to say that is a bright spot, you wouldn’t know it when you drive by the building. But it’s going on right now. It is an opportunity that we have worked toward capturing.
W.O.: I think that, as you’ve seen and what we talked about with younger farmers, there’s a much greater appreciation from where our food comes from, and we live in a place where we can actually go and visit people who are growing our food.
And therefore it’s that wonderful circular thing of supporting each other.
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Editor’s note: Stories presented as interviews in this format are edited for clarity, readability, and space. Words not spoken by interview subjects appear in brackets.
Wendy O’connell hosts the award-winning series Here We Are: Brattleboro’s Community Talk Show, which airs weekly on Brattleboro Community Television and features conversations with a very wide variety of local people of all ages.
This News item was submitted to The Commons.