Forrest Foster is getting done...for now.

Rumble Strip

Erica Heilman / Rumble Strip

Places & Travel, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2024

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I’ve made lots of stories about my friend Forrest Foster, a dairy farmer in Hardwick. He prides himself on being an ‘independent dairyman’. But a couple months ago, Forrest sold the cows. The last couple years have been hard on him. He lost his wife Karen. His barn isn’t up to code so he recently lost his insurance and he can’t keep the wood furnace burning in the house while he’s doing chores in the barn. But hardest of all, and like so many families, Forrest has a son with an addiction problem, which is expensive and terrifying and fills his life with uncertainty. So. This is a story about why Forrest is getting done with dairy farming…at least for now.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hub and spoke.
0:03.0	Audio collective.
0:06.8	This is Rumble Strip and this is a story about Forest Foster, a farmer in Hardwick who I've made a bunch of stories about.
0:13.9	If you haven't heard any of them, you might want to listen to some of those before this one.
0:18.6	But either way, welcome.
0:29.3	Thank you. some of those before this one. But either way, welcome. Silence.
0:32.6	Yeah, you won't hear that sound in the barn for a while.
0:36.1	It will be quiet here. I think I'm going to milk her evenings
0:40.3	and use what I can for house milking.
0:42.3	Then when I get sick of milk in there,
0:44.3	I'll just let her out and put her in a hamburger.
0:47.3	Something we always use, and the same with the big bull.
0:50.3	I ain't going to sell him and have a few dollars I'm going to eat him. That's good food.
0:56.3	I always have a hamburger. That's Rob McLeod and me next to the bulk tank, watching Forrest Foster
1:04.7	clean out his milk cans for the last time, or at least for a while, for now. Forrest sold his cows this fall to a farmer over
1:13.0	in Ryegate, and the truck was coming any minute to pick up the last of them. So Forrest and I sat down
1:18.9	behind his barn and waited and talked for a while. I'm selling out because of lack of
1:26.2	farm insurance. You can't ship milk in Vermont without liability insurance, product liability.
1:33.3	And you lost the insurance because of the barn?
1:36.3	Yes. The buildings are in bad shape.
1:40.3	They investigators for insurance company feel that it is a poor risk.
1:46.0	So rather than hold the cows until midwinter, I had a chance to sell them now while they're out on pasture,
	...

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