ROYALTON — A piece of dairy farming history on the Royalton-Sharon town line is in the process of changing hands leaving its future uncertain.

Westlands Farm, a commercial dairy established in 1867, has been on the market for $1.2 million.

A sale is pending, but owner Peggy Ainsworth declined to elaborate this week on who might be buying the farm or the agreed upon purchase price. It’s also unknown to the public what kind of farming — if any — will take place on the property.

On Wednesday, the farm’s herd of 47 pastured Holstein and Brown Swiss milking cows and about 25 younger stock were loaded onto a red livestock trailer. They’ve been sold to Sunset Lake Farm in the Champlain Islands, north of Burlington.

Peggy Ainsworth has been running the farm since the death of her husband, David Ainsworth, five years ago. David, a former Republican state legislator and longtime Royalton town moderator, died in May 2019, after battling kidney disease. He was 64.

Peggy Ainsworth, who grew up in Chelsea, was an elementary school teacher for 30 years. She came to dairy farming 24 years ago when she married David Ainsworth, a fifth generation farmer who grew up at Westlands.

Ainsworth threw herself into the work and loved her time on the farm. “I’ve only been an Ainsworth for 24 years, but it’s special,” she said.

However, she’s ready for retirement. “Let’s face it, I’m 72,” she said. “And I’d rather go out on my terms. I ought to have a few years where I’m not shoveling s---.”

Hugging both sides of Route 14, Westlands Farm is 430 acres of rolling pasture and White River frontage. A fire in 1945 left the farm in shambles, requiring the Ainsworth family to rebuild much of the operation.

Today, the farmhouse and outbuildings sit butter-yellow below a hill with the grade of a ski slope. In addition to the cow barn, there are greenhouses for tomatoes, structures for chickens and a hog yard.

The hayloft above the calf barn is a cavernous space, 40 feet high with just a few windows under each gambrel. Except for a few one-ton round bales it was largely empty this week.

On the ridge above the barns, there’s a dozen spaces rented out to owners of recreational vehicles and campers. Like many dairy farmers, the Ainsworth family had to diversify to make ends meet.

At the family’s farm stand on Route 14, ribbons from the Tunbridge World’s Fair — Largest Tomato, 2023 — hang above current offerings of vine fruits and vegetables.

Finishing up milking chores on Wednesday, Ainsworth flushed out three calibrated glass “weigh jars.”

She recounted the story of David Ainsworth’s father watching her years ago undertake the task of cleaning the equipment that measures the milk yield of each cow. “Well, I don’t have to worry about David anymore,” he told Peggy. Inside the main barn, each cow made a final trip through the milking parlor on Wednesday.

“We ship somewhere over 5,000 pounds (of milk) every other day,” Ainsworth said.

Westlands Farm is a member of Agri-Mark, a cooperative that owns Cabot Creamery, McCadam Cheese, and also distributes to Booth Brothers Dairy. With a herd of under 100, the farm is in the small commercial dairy bracket. It’s a young herd, with a third being between 2 and 3 years old.

On Wednesday, farm manager Jimmy Kinnarney went about milking six black-and-white Holsteins into a series of weigh jars. “I call him boss,” Ainsworth said. “It’s the nuances I don’t know. That’s Jimmy. He’s been here 22 years.”

Kinnarney has a landscaping business and is also considering going back to driving school buses, along with looking into other farming opportunities. “He’s a good worker. He’s gotten lots of offers, once people heard,” Ainsworth said. “We’re not hanging him out to dry.”

Autumn Dauphinais, a Sharon teenager who’s been helping out around the farm for the last year, showed off the calf barn on Wednesday.

Dauphinais pointed out Bunny, a young heifer with a striking white marking, the shape of Vermont on her forehead. Many of the farm’s animals, including the two pigs, are friendly.

“I like it here,” said Dauphinais, but she doesn’t see a future for herself in dairy farming.

The farm will be remembered as an Ainsworth family gathering place.

“There’s a lot of family history,” Peggy Ainsworth said. “They used to have family picnics up on the hill. I called this whole area the Ainsworth compound. David’s sister lived down the road, his grandparents here, his other sister next door.”

Now David’s generation, apart from one of his sisters, has dispersed out West.

Neither of David’s adult children want to stay in the business, Peggy Ainsworth said. Her two teenage granddaughters, who live on the farm with her, have yet to show an interest in farming.

“It’d be too late,” she said, when asked if they might have a change of heart someday.

Ainsworth hopes to see a farming family move in, but “they’d be foolish to (continue the dairy operation),” she said. “In part because of the economics, but also because if you want to make money, you have to get bigger, but with the topography of the place … it’s super, super steep.”

“You couldn’t get big enough here to do what you wanted,” she added. “And the infrastructure’s outdated. Beef (cattle) would be easier.”

Between 2020 and 2023, the number of dairy farms in the state dropped from 636 to 549, a 14% decline, according to University of Vermont Extension.

It’s a reflection of a years-long downward trend in dairy farming numbers, and small farms, in general.

That said, cows produce more milk these days than ever. Dairy farmers often operate under a strict quota and harrowing lows of regulated milk prices. At the start of 2024, milk prices for farmers were down almost $4 per 100 pounds from the previous year.

The economics of it factored into Ainsworth’s decision to sell. The farm’s “grain bill was $5,000 every three weeks,” and her milk paycheck was between $7,000 and $8,000, she said. “That didn’t leave much to spend on all the other expenses,” she said.

Small commercial dairies are fewer and farther between. Ainsworth said she’s the last commercial dairy in Royalton.

In Windsor County, there are currently only about 15 dairy operations, down from more than 80 in 1997.

In April, 27 Jerseys and six heifers left Jericho Hill Farm in Hartford on livestock trailers bound for their new home in Canton, N.Y.

The town’s last working dairy farm was in the Miller family for almost 120 years. George Miller, 65, milked cows, including 60 Holsteins until 2015, for almost a half century before selling off the remainder of the family’s herd in April.

“At one time there were nine farms in this neighborhood,” said Miller’s brother, Chet. “Every acre of land was used.”

At least one of Westlands’ neighbors worries the property might become another “ghost farm.”

South Royalton cattle farmer Carolyn McAleavy said ghost farms “look great,” but cease farm production. The non-farming newcomers “keep the fields open and it looks great, but it’s…not.”

McAleavy and her partner Dan Kinney bought Lone Oak Farm on Route 14 when its previous owners gave Kinney the right of first refusal. Originally operated as a dairy farm, Lone Oak now pastures beef cattle.

“It’s been a conscious decision” to keep the farm intact, but not an easy one, McAleavy said.

McAleavy and Kinney received a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant for $30,000 worth of new fencing, but “we’re not the ‘farmers’ farmers,’ here. We’re just trying to keep it from melting, bring it up, and pass it on to a young farmer.”

Moving from Sonoma County, Calif., three years ago, McAleavy, 57, said she’s been amazed at Vermont’s cultural heritage. ” ‘Oh, Vermont’s a museum!’ ” she said, thinking back to when she came to the state.

Even during her short time in Vermont, McAleavy has come to recognize that the state’s lack of affordable housing and decent-paying jobs is making it more and more difficult for working-class people to “live here,” she said. “There’s this tension between (the landscape) that brings in the tourists and the things that are needed.”

As for Ainsworth, what’s next?

“Cleaning,” she said.

After the farm’s sale is finalized, Ainsworth, who sits on the White River Valley Unified District school board for Royalton and Bethel schools, doesn’t plan to go far.

“I’ll stay around here,” she said. “I want to be around.”

Kate Oden is a freelance writer. S he can be reached at ode nk06@gmail.com.