After four generations
the Thayer farm on Kennedy Road,
Frewsburg, still is producing milk and other products
for Chautauqua
County. Once
covering about 1,000 acres
on land purchased from the Holland Land Company, the
farm now consists of about
160 acres under management of Frank Thayer for his
mother, Mrs. Minnie J.
Thayer.
The region was little
more than a wilderness early in the 19th
Century when Isaac Eames came from New England to what
was then Carroll to make
a new home for his family.
The frontier
was nothing new to the family since Isaac Eames, his
mother, and others of his
family had been carried of by Indians during a raid on
their farm near Ware,
Mass. Isaac,
however, escaped and later
married Betsy Woodward, Orange Mass.
Two homes, one a cabin,
were built on the Eames land before
the present homestead was built in 1840.
Here most of the Thayers children of succeeding
generations were born.
Mr. Thayer still has in
his possession some of the
implements used by his grand father but his farming
methods are as modern as
any other farmer’s in the county. He
uses a tractor – he calls it his “iron horse” – but he
is about the only farmer
in the section who still has a team of horses.
He admits he may be influenced somewhat by
sentiment but he emphatically
feels the horse still has a place on the farm.
He is proud, too, of
the dairy herd which normally runs
about 40 head of cattle but today he has reduced it to
some 18 registered
Holstein milkers as well as some calves and heifers. He also has a
bull but generally prefers to
depend on artificial insemination for breeding.
The farm also includes
a sugar bush where in the past he has
hung about 450 buckets but Mr. Thayer says he will not
work it this year.
Thayer farm may be more
than a century old but modern
farming methods keep it young and productive.