WILLOW CREEK — Eighty former customers of the Farr family milk delivery route gathered at the Farr barn on Saturday for a reunion that was equal parts celebration and farewell.
Henry Farr Sr., who has operated the dairy farm on Farr Road since 1928, hosted the event to honor the families who sustained his business through three decades of morning deliveries. The route, which once covered the entire town and extended five miles into the surrounding countryside, has been shrinking steadily since the 1940s as more families bought refrigerators and switched to store-bought milk.
“We used to deliver to 120 households,” said Henry Sr., now 68. “Last year we were down to 43. It’s not the same business it was.”
The reunion drew former customers from as far away as Bangor and Portland. The barn was decorated with photographs from the 1930s and 1940s showing the Farr milk wagon — a horse-drawn cart replaced by a Ford pickup in 1948 — making its rounds.
“You could set your watch by Henry’s truck,” said Clara Beaumont, who received milk deliveries for 22 years. “He was here at 6:30 every morning, summer and winter, rain or snow. If you left your bottles out, they’d be full by the time you came down for breakfast.”
The highlight of the afternoon was the appearance of the restored Farr milk wagon, pulled by a Percheron named Bessie — the same breed that pulled the original wagon. Ezra Homan, who had been a Farr customer since 1934, posed for a photograph beside the wagon with his grandson.
“Door-to-door milk delivery is not a business that will survive much longer,” the Gazette noted in its coverage. “But the Farr family reunion proved that the relationships built on that daily stop at the kitchen door are more durable than glass bottles or aluminum caps.”
Henry Farr Jr., now 22 and working the farm alongside his father, told the Gazette that the dairy operation would continue even if the delivery route disappears entirely. “The route was my father’s passion,” he said. “The farm is mine.”