Michael Muller and Judith Frank

00:00 Judy Frank, I am 64

00:04 I will be 64 when the month and its April 30th 2014. Where in Durham North Carolina and I'm here with Michael my partner my husband.

00:17 My name is Michael Muller and I'm 63 right now. And today is April 30th 2014 and we're in Durham North Carolina and I will be speaking to my wife Judy.

00:33 So am I going to ask you the first?

00:37 Why do you think we decided to settle here, North Carolina? Well, I think when we left Boston, we wanted to move to land somewhere, but we wanted to get away from the cold and so we traveled around and then went to lots of different places.

01:00 Traveling pretty slowly but just all over the South and ended up meeting up with your friend Libby from having Libby be here made us feel like having Libyan all the other people that she knew made us feel like we could find friends here though. People are nice to us another places. Yes, but it was its or just felt pretty comfortable here. It's like this community in Boston and a friends and

01:35 We wanted to be a part of a community pretty quick, even though we wanted to be on a farm right suppose. We buy ourselves supposedly.

01:46 You know away from the military industrial complex or whatever, but it needed to be near a College Community because of the political stuff that we were interested in doing two and then why just be out in the middle of nowhere and by you having a b Durham there was plenty of country in Farmland 10-15 minutes away at that time.

02:14 Did we get involved in politics as soon as we got here or did we just pretty much some of the stuff? It was through the YMCA at Duke with some Elmer Hall as we've been here for a while like we came and in the fall of 72, so

02:47 There was an election and we still voted in north in Massachusetts with me. I'm from Massachusetts right now.

03:07 So like that trip when we came down here in the car with other people. What what's like you have like a favorite memory from that drip like maybe in Culpeper when we stopped. We you know, we'd been going around and stopping at various little farm communities and and somehow or other we got interviewed by somebody on the newspaper or something.

03:39 I think it was such a small town at the time that they saw these kind of hippies pull up in a car and they were like

03:47 Who are they in is this will make a story for our newspaper writing them. So they had a little story about us the next day or something. That was that the same town where the guy was asking what it was even know what it was supposed to say, so.

04:08 Yeah, but then you know that we came to North Carolina and stayed on the farm that first are friends. Libby. We're on then did you right away start looking for some work or something or what it what do I mean?

04:35 We must have had to be for a couple months. No because cuz by October we were living in a little house and tried Boulevard. It's right cuz I cuz we have those pictures of carving a pumpkin.

04:57 Right next to Northgate mall, so I must have looked for my job was going to ask you about that, but maybe about looking for job. What was your memory of the Bluebird Cafe? Okay. Well, I didn't work there. I just went there to eat at right cuz I was working you were working there. Right? But that was I think we even went there on our first visit here when we first came to Durham and the band as Bush band was playing there and I think that was another nice good feeling of community until a lot of people there. She might have

05:47 She might have to remember that you've mentioned them before and I don't really remember that I don't really remember that or you will got the job. There's a cook right ridiculous, but mm.

06:03 I mean, I'm as you know, I made my best friends there right right away like, you know with Kathy and Pat Olivia, Nona and Martha. They were all part of the bluebirds.

06:18 And I mean, it's

06:22 It's amazing to me that I met all those people in the first.

06:27 Months that I was in Durham and those are

06:32 It was still some of my best friend, right? Yeah, I mean that cuz they ended up buying land with them after searching for land out in the country and we still have on that far now so

06:49 And and they all yeah, they they don't live there but it's like we kind of became a tribe.

07:05 And that in the beginning

07:09 Let's see like we took a long time searching for Farmland first and just travel around looking at all farms and stuff around here or here. Yeah, I know.

07:23 Yeah, like those were they were they were happy. I mean I was going to say it was kind of Bittersweet cuz we find these places and then we couldn't it was it took a long time to find somebody who would rent to us or and the other it was also kind of bittersweet because we kept finding these abandoned houses that had this or around them that were they they were kind of sad because they were so so so run down and overgrown and yet you could still sense that a family had lived there and you know, if it could be reinvigorated an atom be home again, they were Charming too hard and there were so many of them at that point. You know. Now how many of those houses are gone and it's true. That's true.

08:21 And now I don't think people would want to live there while it's true that water and have running water and it didn't have

08:31 Heaton they didn't have glass in the windows and

08:37 But that all seems doable in time.

08:41 I mean, I think the young like the young kids who are wanting to be Farmers now.

08:49 A lot of them have the gumption to take of run-down place and you and remake it.

08:56 And we look at them now and and Marvel at their.

09:05 Their confidence but they're yeah, I guess that they think that they can make make it work. Well, it's nice to see that, you know a bunch of young folks want to do that now to go back to Farmington right now. It's really nice. I love it.

09:21 Like when we finally found our farm and moved on to it. Do you remember some of the

09:33 Dealings with the early neighbors and stuff early dealings with him.

09:43 Most well, the thing that comes to mind first is that they couldn't figure out who we were how we were a family cuz I think there were like

09:54 Five or six women and two men you and Barry and in the beginning my boyfriend by then, but they thought that Barry and I were brothers or something and they thought they were married and they kept asking us.

10:21 And just that we weren't married was kind of

10:27 Almost incomprehensible not as much like a bad thing, but just like I figured out

10:39 But in the beginning most of the neighbors wanted to come down and kind of like see what was going on down there and and but they were also very helpful and anytime we had a question or anything. They were willing to help us in any way they could and stuff and I know and I remember being somewhat surprised because as a Yankee, I thought that

11:04 These Southerners were going to like reject me and

11:13 They were just so so helpful, even though we were so different. I mean they made it clear to us that that they thought we were kind of alien, but it didn't stop them from hell. No and then make them has or no and they included us in a lot of stuff like me and Mister Claude the neighbors that you know, we would help them. They come down and asked us to help me pick potatoes and stuff extra labor extra hands and then the big meals that Miss Nanny was made ya

11:50 I know I'm glad we knew them because they were.

11:57 They were like old.

12:00 I mean they were older than our parents, right? Yes. And yeah, they were living there before electricity was out there.

12:13 Driveway with the state but they showed that electricity only came there in the 40s like this. All the neighbors was because we

12:31 Seem to want to live in the country like they did and we respected the idea of a a family farm in living on living on land seems like a high-value to us rather than wanting to run away from it first thing tomorrow at some of their kids were.

12:53 When to reject the lifestyle, that's all we had was true.

12:58 Yeah, it was.

13:06 See

13:12 Like when you when we first lived out there on the farm at that point a lot of us, we're still had like part time jobs in town. But yeah, but it was very inexpensive to live out in the country. So he could you not get by with work in one or two days in town and and get enough money for gas. And and since we had a cow that we have to milk everyday.

13:40 How to be on the farm everyday talk again about when you and Libby did you go and pick up the cow or how did you get the text Libby brought the cow the first day and then had to go back and get the mule and her horse and she's the only one that had gotten lessons and how to milk. And so there were four of us out there that you know, it was time to Milk The Cow and Libby wasn't there she was having trouble getting the trailer over to the

14:17 I think it was Nona and Martha and I don't know if it was Pat and we probably got a pint of milk out of the whole thing. She wasn't happy. No because normally after we got going she was giving 4 gallons a day so I can you make me if you've got about a quarter, So it's like probably the next time it was time to milk her. Maybe Libby went out there and like tried to show us the next morning. She went. I mean she probably had one lesson yet. No, I think it was from Underwood's.

15:12 In Little River Township there and I remember we had one milk cow the mule for the blind in one two or three sheep sheep. They've had been rescued from the do lab somehow completely wild laying eggs on the back porch and eating the dog food out of the bowls and how many dogs probably the most / 10

15:46 It's a start with before anybody started as a puppies.

15:53 Did we have Ho Chi and David has to

16:01 I had a I got a free horse through the Anvil which was a paper fairly old was she when she been used to teach people how to ride so she was very gentle but I soon learned that you know, I just didn't know how to deal with a horse very much you really have to ride her every day and work with every day. What happened to the horse I gave her back to her and she then but that was a year later or more and she took her out to, Colorado.

16:46 Supposedly pulling are in a trailer with a Mustang and a kind of hitch that you just put on the back of the car. So I don't know if she ever made it up the mountain.

17:06 So

17:08 I remember when Hurley saw that we didn't have.

17:13 Well, I guess he felt like all those animals that we just talked about that wasn't enough to.

17:20 Fila 20 acre pasture right? Well, we some of those like the horses and maybe by then so and by then maybe we don't even have after yeah, we only kept her a couple years.

17:44 I think I think we had her longer because I think her lie, you know, what was right on us to think we'll hey these kids have this giant pasture and they don't know what they're doing and I'll just see if I can keep my cows down there.

18:00 And that was very fortuitous for us. Yes. That was great. That was great. And I just really like to remember that.

18:09 I don't think we thought this I don't know where we charging into that. We didn't charge him anything. And then after the first calves were born he gave us one of the Cavs and payment here in this one can be yours and it was like a surprise and it was

18:30 You know, I was like wow, that's pretty neat in. Oh and now it's 30 years later and we had cows ever sinned right and it became

18:41 Really a part of our identity, don't you think? Yes, that was a big turning point when we realized it was yeah, we had to get.

18:56 Either hated or the chocolate to help us.

19:01 Castrating men right and do everything and we didn't really know how to do anything.

19:08 But we learned we learned and we would at that point borrow a bowl for the another two months that we needed them.

19:17 Hannah hell. Yeah it so every year. We were kind of scrambling around to see who had a bullet right and so then you know. It just sort of the pain and no one of the bull was available channels are just born whenever somebody else didn't want their bowl right now.

19:36 Yeah, those are different days. And then finally we bought a bowl.

19:43 But then we had you no have a bowl all year long and he eats a lot. So it's always good when we eventually

19:57 We have always been raising grass-fed beef cuz that's green. I mean once in a while, I think we tried to lure them with a bucket of running right in the beginning cuz I don't the way people taught us.

20:18 But I'm so how many do you think it was a highest number of cattle we've ever had at one time? Yeah, probably about 30 to 35. And now we have brothers 29 now, that's about what we can at one point. We got like sort of up over our ability to feed them. And that was before we were doing the rotational grazing right and but now since we're selling them as grass fed beef or not selling them at the stockyard we have to keep him a little longer, you know, we have to keep him for two years and so were the days when we didn't have the hay

21:11 Making equipment right? And we always had to depend on somebody else to

21:18 Dakota Allen and Reagan and like they are you know, I can't lie. I remember very clearly like standing out in the field and looking at the rain come down and crying.

21:33 Yeah, well well in the beginning when we just had a couple of cows, I remember using like old horse-drawn equipment for pulling it with the tractor and it would break because it wasn't designed to be pulled by tractor that big truck and then from the truck into the barn and then loose. All right, and then once it was in The Hayloft somebody I'd be up there and Pitch it into a wild bear corn run.

22:16 We know Wonder Farm families used to have found 12 children when my parents used to come visit in the summer, but that the work he he pitched it up under the truck to

22:28 My dad did not know.

22:31 My dad and my mom just work.

22:35 Well, my dad was appalled he came around finally.

22:42 But he came around because you know just because he loved me and Roy and he saw that I was happy and knew so, okay.

22:53 I think my mom actually understood some of the Allure of living on a farm and being in the country. That's true.

23:03 I don't know. How about your parents? If they neither one of them country background really so they went into that but you know Dad appreciated seeing us how hard we were working to doing stuff with your mother to oh, yes. Definitely. I mean your parents and then when we were building our house, so we did it all from recycled. Material. Dad was out there when it came with a visit and help pull Nails on it. I think they were very proud of that you built the house by yourself. Yeah. Well we can, you know, we designed it together and then we will but I mean we did but what I meant was it you for them. I think it was really a

23:56 Was like a monument to what you could that was it in there the Incarnation of of your work it was hard work, but I think we learned a lot from it and stuff.

24:13 My favorite memory of tearing down the houses.

24:19 Well, I mean it's got to be that one house that we were tearing down.

24:25 That then

24:27 The guy said no, I didn't want you to have to put it back up. But by then we've already knocked down the chimney. I mean it was ridiculous because

24:39 Wasn't it condemned it has been condemned and sell them and I guess we kind of jumped the gun on that.

24:54 So I had to put the roof back up and we just covered up to tell me.

25:02 And then he even bought us like the house got torn down here later. And we were going to use the materials. Where is when they tore it down. It just got like right. I just got put into the Hall.

25:20 And then there's the other story about the church the day that was so hot while they was hot lots of dates, but no I was

25:33 Well that was the day that it was really hot and it it I mean it was over 90 something degrees and just out in the broiling sun and I think you are suffering from heat stroke or something and you work it on I mean really look like you are in bad shape and then I just took some water and threw it at you in first you were like you know freaked out and then I'll do it again

26:03 Oh I was thinking about the time when we were tearing down the houses on

26:08 I forget which street it was, but we are tearing down a house and it was allowed and then next to us the fire department had to go to and then on the other side of us.

26:29 They were bulldozer with a wrecking ball. And then you're thinking about the church that we tore down where the lady who

26:47 And we felt like we were going to that all the people are going to be like

26:53 Mad at us with Ryan and tearing down their church, but I mean it was in the way of what was right where they so it had to be torn down and and we thought people would feel like it was in this black neighborhood and we thought that they would like all here these white kids. Do you know tearing down our church, but they were like,

27:17 You know, we're glad that somebody is going to use it. Right that isn't just right put a wrecking ball to it. And at least one of the women came and actually help us load up the flooring it's you know, it's the falling in our house and it turned out real nice hauled off and I think the purple appreciated that that that was going to be reused remember when we had the truck full of all the used materials and we both just look like Coal Miner's cuz we were like so dirty and tired and we were driving home and we got off from the highway at the place are normal exit and then we went into the we went into like the 7-Eleven and I was buying a gallon of milk to go home must not have the cow anymore by then.

28:14 And I just remember coming out of the out of the 7-Eleven like with Dustin dark dripping off of me and like this counter milk, just like all I couldn't wait to get home and there's like a cop and Michael and these making you like showing your license and say why did you get off at the exit? And you said cuz we're going home and he didn't like it because that the next decks before the next exit was the way station for the trucks.

28:45 And he thought that we were trying to avoid before the waist and cuz I guess some truck drivers would get off at that exit and get on the next one. So he made us get back on the highway go through the weigh station and sure enough. We were like

29:01 I don't know. How do you pronounce overweight and the guy at the weigh station was just like, oh my God, never mind and all just like go home. He didn't think it was a big deal at all.

29:15 Yep, that was crazy. And we took the nails out of the wood that we you know, I mean brighten them.

29:27 And what I was saying earlier that I thought like young people had a lot of energy while we had a lot of energy then too.

29:36 Yeah, I'm glad we did it then. I don't think I could try anything like that now.

29:44 So

29:47 Spell sweet.

29:49 Well, then, you know like after we moved into our house there and actually even before that you were doing some.

29:58 Leather work, right?

30:01 Yep. Yeah, like for us to work to the Bluebird Cafe, but then I started doing leather work.

30:09 I mean I started working for stew at the leather works. Right first. I started working out in the country. You know, they had a shop. Yes.

30:20 And then I started working in the shop in Chapel Hill, right?

30:25 And I did that for like 2 or 3 years. Yes, but then you'd started doing on your own up to the farm.

30:36 And going to craft shows

30:42 I love doing the leather work.

30:44 I really did know I still like to sew.

30:51 You don't think I even like going to the the craft shows there were parts of it that I really did like

30:58 But I didn't like always being by myself at the farm in my little workshop all day. And then when I would go to the craft shows I'd be gone for

31:14 A weekend

31:16 I myself right? I need a quarter of a million people around that I didn't, you know have a partner to work with and you didn't have time to do anything because you were like, I was just be there. Yeah, so

31:32 But I like the leather work part. It was just

31:35 Selling it and

31:38 Being alone. That was not so great.

31:44 I feel like going up in my shop, but

31:47 I don't think

31:50 Hope you're going to keep doing that, but I don't like

31:56 There were lots of things that we did on the farm and

32:02 Different you know

32:05 Kinds of work things I guess and

32:11 So mean overall, it's been pretty nice out there.

32:16 Of course the real nice and calm de to go home there and

32:20 You describe your phone was it look like it's kind of Rolling Hills and there's several times on it. It's about a Hundred Acre Farm that we had bought together at all together.

32:39 It was a hundred acres, but it only cost $500 an acre at the time.

32:45 Which was a lot of money at the time but it was possible with 10 of us are equal to each of us to come up with $5,000 that we could like borrow or that saved or something and the land is about half in pasture and 1/2 in woods. And so there was lots of place to both raise pay and and keep the animals on pasture land and has an old it has an old house on it, which we all lived in in the beginning. It was like just a tenant house. It has never been like a beautiful house and it also had a bunch of outbuildings old. Tobacco barns us a Smokehouse.

33:33 So we got a barn it's got a nice car, but we each made, you know different people like made a bedroom out of a little Shack and so we and then after about after we lived here for two or three years then that's when Michael I started building our house separately if I heard that are not

33:57 Together

34:01 So

34:04 What I like did it turn out.

34:09 To turn out the way you thought when we left Boston not exactly. I mean, yes, it's turned out better in a lot of ways. I didn't really know what to expect my thing my fantasy back then had been too kind of have a a group that was switching back and forth between living in town and living out in the country in Conair rotating a little bit back and forth but turns out the other people went back to live in town and I stayed out the country of the country but but our lives also turned out to be you know, there was a lot of town stuff and a lot of country soon, I think

34:53 We didn't know.

34:56 I'm glad that we've been able to like have all the advantages of town.

35:02 And still have our beautiful country cuz it's only a half hour drive to town. So anything you want to do in town was doable and yet it was so nice and peaceful. It still is nice and peaceful in the country. They're so it's so it's very important to me. I mean, you know how many times you come home and sit on the porch and you know, that's really a very important part of me or walking all while running all over the place and everybody that comes out there and see why we want to stay out there.

35:45 So it's it's I'm glad we found that place and found each other to share that place with.

35:55 Neither of us had any Farm background, but we've both been really happy there. You know, I wouldn't have thought that I would have, you know, I used to see Dorothy and The Wizard of Oz and the part about it that always appealed to me was that I wanted to live on a farm. Don't ask me why

36:21 I don't know that you thought that you wanted to live on a farm before you head out to college, you know to not do not.

36:28 You still got your picket fence see white picket fence.

36:33 You did get report swing.

36:35 Yeah, that's what the first thing.

36:42 Okay ready? I think we're done.