Rural Heritage December 2025/January 2026

that. She also uses it if a team tends to put their heads down or turn around in the yoke. While we were talking about equipment I asked her about her whip preference. She uses a buggy whip to start calves because they are cheap and flexible. Her daughters use them on their show teams. For pulling, it’s more common to use a fiberglass goad. Tracy treats her animals with respect and care. This is a value she instills in her children and others that she works with. One thing she has taught is not to use the goad or whip excessively. A young teamster would sometimes hit an ox without giving a command. She has corrected them by taking that goad and tapping it on the ground in front of the teamster. The child will say. “Hey, what are you doing? What do you want me to do?” Tracy replies, “That’s how your ox feels.” Tracy began in Vermont, but 10 years ago she moved to Massachusetts after meeting her fiancé,

Derrick Turnbull. They own Autumn Mist Farm where they raise beef and have a farm-to-table store and restaurant. Within a few years, she welcomed her second daughter, Autumn Turnbull. The farm consists of 300 head of beef and 11 teams of oxen. The farm is located in Feeding Hills, Mass., outside of Springfield, Mass. The town gets its name from the fertile farmland that was used to feed the residents in this region. Now Autumn Mist Farm is one of the last farms in the area. The store offers various products from regular beef cuts to hot dogs, kielbasa and beef tallow lotion. The beef herd is unusual with horned cattle in the mix. There are Chianinas, the preferred breed of pullers, and recently the Chianinas are being crossed with Piedmontese, which bring a calm temperament to the cross and make them easier to work with. With such a large herd, all the farm work is done with tractors. The pulling oxen are conditioned on the track pulling tires. The show

Tracy pulling at the Big E in 2025. The load weighed 18,500 pounds.

December 2025/January 2026

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