The Sprague Farm in East Brookfield has been selected 2005 Vermont Dairy Farm of the Year. In balloting by UVM Extension and New England Green Pastures, the Cabot/Agrimark Century Farm has been selected from over 1300 farms to receive this, the "Oscar" of the Vermont dairy industry.

Owned and operated by Keith, Gordon and John Sprague and their families, the farm has become the largest employer in Brookfield’s Route 14 valley, employing over a dozen full- and part-time people and currently milking 370 Holsteins.

Sprague Farm is a venerable Brookfield farming institution. The family first milked cows here in 1864, when John Keith Sprague bought a home, acreage and farm buildings for $2,300. While others came and went, the Spragues stayed with the land, passing it to George Sprague in the 1890s, to John Alan Sprague around 1937, and to John Keith Sprague in 1965. After 141 years, the farm is still in the family, passed collectively to John’s brother Gordon and to John’s son Keith, in 1998.

Spragues come into the family business early. Gordon and John, born in 1930 and ’42, alongside their brother Bill (’41), remember driving the old Ford 9N tractor and milking cows by the age of 10.

"I still have that 9N Ford," chuckled Gordon this week from his Florida home. "Life in the valley was all about farming back then," he remembered. "There were 20 to 30 small farms; neighbors helping each other."

The brothers, and younger sister Joyce, all helped with chores. The boys milked all up and down the valley on weekends at family farms whose names are familiar to area residents still: Osha, Martin, Wheatley, Gage, Allen, Lamson, Nichols, Farnsworth, and McKeg.

The children went to school at the one-room schoolhouse that still stands beside the dooryard of the old Sprague barns, just south and across the road to the east of the new expanded dairy complex. Coralyn Osha, Buster’s wife, was their teacher for three or four years at least. Her boys, Stuart, John and Bill, were in the same classroom as the Sprague bunch.

None of the farms had more than 30 cows or so by the time World War II ended. All the milk and cream went to the Gulf Road Creamery in North Randolph, founded and co-owned by George Sprague in the ‘20s.

"The milk was shipped in 10-gallon cans on the wood-staked back of Fords and Chevys," John remembers, adding "each can weighed about 100 pounds … made the hay bales seem light."

The importance of George Sprague’s Gulf Road Creamery to area farming cannot be overestimated. Farming at the turn of the century was a subsistence living everywhere in the valley. Sprague’s Gulf Road Creamery signaled the important move in farming as an income-producing enterprise.

George’s product was butter, and Gulf Road Creamery butter became a staple in households all around Boston. Providing too little income for far too much labor in those early years, the skim milk was left behind and fed to the pigs and calves on the farms.

Then, as now, the success of dairy farming depended upon developing quality markets for dairy products, and John Alan Sprague, George’s son, expanded the horizons for his operation by starting to ship milk as well as cream in the 1930s.

"All the farms but one had Jerseys," commented John Sprague this week. "The Gage Farm milked brown Swiss, right here where our new barn stands, but that was the only non-Jersey herd."

The late 1950s and ‘60s brought big changes to valley farming. In 1957, a 300-gallon bulk tank was installed and milk began going straight to Massachusetts. The premium placed on butterfat, which had favored Jersey milk, began to slide as bulk shipping made huge volumes easier to handle. Herds began to grow.

Bulking Up

In 1965, the Sprague barn held 30 milkers, all Jerseys. By 1968, the herd numbered 45 cows. When Keith Sprague was born to John and Linda in 1972, the farm had shifted completely to Holstein production. A new barn in 1979 with larger bulk tanks brought the herd size up to 100 by the following year.

Then, in 1988, the fire came. High winds, blowing together old knob-and-tube wiring that had frayed, started a blaze in the eaves of the classic farmhouse that had sheltered Spragues since their first days in the valley.

The Brookfield Fire Department, fighting through the night, saved the lower portion of the home. Incredibly, within five days, the roof was back on the house and interior rebuilding had begun.

Volunteers had come from all over the valley to help out in the wet and cold late fall weather, just as farmers had helped neighbors out in this valley for more than a century. The rebuild was a testament to the powerful love of community and to the tenacity of the Sprague family.

Growing up, Keith Sprague wasn’t much interested in farming. In fact, he trained to become an engineer at VTC and took a job at Applied Research in Royalton in the mid-‘90s.

At this point, his father John was still milking 100 and looking for someone to step in. Only two farms remained in the valley. Of nearly 30 small family operations, only Wheatleys’ and Spragues’ were left.

Then, one morning, standing behind a desk in the office, Keith Sprague realized that he missed farming. Keith talked to his father and his uncle Gordon, who had left Brookfield to pursue very successful careers in, first, recreation park management, and then international investment. Together they realized they had all the ingredients to take Sprague family farming into the next generation.

The Ingredients

John brought 180 acres, an award-winning Holstein herd, and 50 years of farming experience, Gordon brought deep love for the valley and the family farm and expanded capital and credit; Keith brought an engineer’s sensibility and vision for the future.

By moving to free stalls with computerization and mechanization, Keith reasoned the farm could expand four-fold within a few years. Milking 400 requires barn space for nearly twice that number of animals when replacement and dry cows are considered.

That’s a big operation … it has largely been accomplished in five years’ time.

To expand this way required about $2 million. The success of the Sprague Farm’s growth is not about money, however. It stems from a deep love of farming in every generation, and an ability to adapt to the changing needs and requirements of the environment, the markets, and the community in which they live.

Like generations of Spragues before them, John and Gordon and Keith have an uncanny ability to watch the numbers very carefully on the one hand, while developing an excellent farm staff on the other.

"Keith has a great ability to see a person’s talents and let them grow in their position," observed Gordon this week.

Echoing these observations, Bill Snow of the UVM Extension judging team said, "We saw in the Sprague Farm an operation that embodies all the best ingredients of farming, good animals, well-cared-for by a highly-trained and motivated staff of dairy people.

"When the farm first expanded," Snow added, "it seemed large to me, but when visiting with the judging team, I saw that it is about mid-size in comparison to other modern Vermont farms."

Farm with a Future

"This is a family farm with a future, and a farm that is providing a future for many people for years to come."

Roberta MacDonald, senior vice president for marketing of Cabot Creamery, the cooperative that receives Sprague milk, was beaming this week, when she said "The Sprague family epitomizes the heart and soul commitment of all our farmer owners. We are so proud of them and pleased for them."

As for the future, Sprague Farm is expanding. Keith married Chelsea Hammond and together they have two daughters, Sarah, almost three, and Annabelle, born on August 10.

The herd, too, is expanding. Keith Sprague’s short-term goal is to grow the herd internally to about 600 milkers over the next few years, and to double by 10 years out. With small additions to the parlor, the operation could grow even further.

Though Sprague Farm alone remains on Route 14, the rich heritage of farming in Brookfield’s abundant valley bottom land continues. Thanks to the vision and grit of the Spragues, more milk is being shipped now than at any time in the valley’s past. It’s a farming tradition that will endure.

For the Record

George Sprague, great-grandfather of Keith, had four children, including John Alan, who stayed on the Brookfield farm; George, who founded Sprague’s Dairy in Randolph; James, who worked for the Soil Land Bank; and Doris, who married Art Hill, founder of Hill-Martin on the Barre-Montpelier Road. So, yes, all the Spragues in the area are related and, through marriage, they are connected to most of the older families in Central Vermont.