The Southern Catskill region of New York State is well known for its dairy farms, often perched on steep, green slopes, overlooking lushly forested mountains, interleaved by the rushing creeks that feed the watershed of the upper Delaware River. A drive up Diehl Road in Western Sullivan County reveals one such landscape, defined by a single family, whose legacy dates back five generations on the same hillside, and overlooking the valley of the Callicoon Creek, where its patriarchal family established its original homestead more than a century and a half ago.
Agriculture
Upstate
TAUNY (Traditional Arts in Upstate New York) was awarded a grant to document, with oral histories and photography, changes that have occurred in work on dairy farms in northern New York in the last few decades. Eventually, 13 farms from four counties participated. TAUNY folklorists recorded over 30 hours of interviews with farmers and their employees on farms ranging in size from 35 milkers to one with well over a thousand.