Love of the Land

(sirens wailing) My name is Romaine Tenney.

I was born on my family's Vermont farm in 1900.

The farm was set on 90 acres of beautiful pasture where my small herd of cows graze has ten acre woodlot where I cut wood to heat my home in the wintertime.

A spring I got for drinking water, a brook where I can fish an orchard for my seasonal crops and sweeping views of the valley below everything I need.

I'm one of nine children and after my father passed away when I was 14, my mother was left to raise all of us and run the farm.

Over the years, my brothers and sisters slowly left farm, but I was the one that stayed.

I've been happy here my entire life.

I'm almost 64 years old now, and I've kept the place just like it was when I was a boy.

No electricity and no gas powered machinery, not even a tractor or car.

Some people don't understand living this way without modern conveniences.

Well, it's just the way I like to farm.

Simple and peaceful.

It's all for the love of the land.

Each day pretty much starts the same.

My dog and I have our breakfast, and then we're off to the barn.

I got a small herd of cows, and every morning we start with the milking.

I milk each of my cows by hand.

There's something about taking time with my animals.

I like the simplicity of attending to each of them.

I know each one and they know me.

My afternoons are mostly spent on my land, depending on the time of year.

I might be cutting firewood with an ax or saw hay in the fields with the horses and maple sugaring.

Each night when it starts to get dark, I light my kerosene lamp and return to Cow Barn to milk all cows again.

After that, I mostly stay up late just tinkering with things by the light of the lamp.

One morning, things changed.

The state of Vermont offered to buy my land through eminent domain.

Seems that while I'd been happily living and farming the way I like my whole life, Vermont was changing.

Dairy farms had been closing around state, and a new interstate highway was being built.

It was going to run from Connecticut to Canada.

Seemed my land was in the path of progress.

I said no to their money and went to court.

A jury decided that I should get more than I was offered, but I would never accept any amount of money for my home.

It's where I was born, grew up, farm and love.

I'm supposed to be off my land by now.

While I haven't moved the highway, construction has been moving and it is coming in fast.

The road crews are dynamiting 100 yards from my house.

They've leveled my fields and pastures.

Bulldozers are all over the place.

My neighbors, friends and family worried about me.

They keep offering help.

They've been pleading with me to have someone take on my animals to help raise money for a new house for me, or to even have me move in with someone.

Well, I appreciate their offers.

I'm not accepting any help.

This is my home.

My 64th birthday was a week ago and today is my my last day on my farm.

Everything I love is about to be lost.

I know what's going to happen to my land.

It'll be blasted, bulldozed and paved.

It will become a place for cars to drive.

But what I don't know is how I will live without it.

In the afternoon, the sheriff and his deputies arrive with a court order.

As I watched from a distance, I start to clear out my horse barn and sheds of all its contents.

My tools and equipment are stacked into tall piles.

It's too much for me to watch.

I realize that for the first time in my life, I'd forgotten to milk my cows today.

Just after 2:00 in the morning.

I let my animals loose.

Once they were safe, I lit my barns on fire.

After that, I I left my dog outside and went into my home for the last time.

Then I set my house on fire.