Rural Heritage June/July 2026

Angus and Malcolm all grown up and raking hay at the 2025 Addison Field Days. You can see they change sides.

homes, and people lived on the floor above. Yaks were commonly used for work. For a few days, Ivy and the students were sent to a farm down the mountain to work. The farm provided food for the school. After the second year of teaching, Ivy returned to Vermont to reunite with friends. While being employed at the vegetable farm, she became friends with the neighboring dairy farmers. Ivy learned something vital; she really liked cows. She learned to milk cows, drive the dump truck and other farming tasks. During this period,she acquired and trained a bull calfnamed Lucky; he became her first ox. There weren’t any mentors in the area where Ivy was living. She relied heavily on the original DAPNet forum for information and training advice. Ivy said Tim Harrigan faithfully answered all her questions pertaining to oxen as she learned. She was able to work with him in person later in life.

After working as a herdsperson on dairy farms, Ivy had the opportunity to go into business for herself. This short venture from 2011 to 2012 was supposed to be a micro dairy named Star Dairy. Ivy now refers to it as the disaster farm. In 2012 to 2013 she tried pastured poultry as a business model, which didn’t work out either due to land access challenges. She then took a break from agriculture and spent a year as a phlebotomist at the local hospital. Ivy said that people have smaller veins than cows do, but you don't have to stick them in the neck. The year 2016 was important for Ivy; it was when she realized she needed to learn more about oxen than she could teach herself. She went to Tillers International in Scotts, Mich., for a year to work as an intern. She left briefly and then returned to Tillers to work as the farmer.

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