Old Family Portrait

Closed for Good

Much as I own I owe
The passers of the past
Because their to and fro
Has cut this road to last.
I owe them more today
Because they’ve gone away
And come not back with steed
And chariot to chide
My slowness with their speed
And scare me to one side.

New Family Portrait

Our Family Farm

The Snow family farm dates back to 1816, when members of the Snow family of Worcester, Mass. first settled in the hills around the Town of Caroline in Tompkins County. From its earliest history it was a small dairy farm. By the mid-1870s, it produced butter and grass-fed beef and veal from a herd of ten cows. They fed hogs with the skim milk left over from the butter.

During the national farm debt crisis of the late 1920s, the creamery shut its doors. Into the farm account book, Lamont Snow sadly penned Robert Frost's poem, “Closed For Good.” They sold the house, but managed to keep the barn and most of the land. Lamont moved off to Colorado Springs to work in a creamery there during the Depression.

In the mid-1930s, Lamont returned to the farm to split his time between raising poultry and civic duty. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, he served as Supervisor of the Town of Caroline. His daughter, Edith E. Snow, followed the call of duty into World War II. A feminist and career woman before her time, she entered the Army Nurse Corps in 1945, and by 1958 had risen to the rank of major.

In 1974, Calvin Snow took over the family farm and built it into a profitable enterprise using sustainable livestock and crop husbandry methods. The main source of income is currently wholesale milk sales. He is bringing back the creamery, which will re-introduce the Finger Lakes to Snofarm specialty butter and cheese.