From farm to film: how one farmer's work on the farm fuels his art

The original version of this story, "George Woodard realizes his dream of a second feature film, 'The Farm Boy,'" by Laura Hardie, was published by the online newspaper Waterbury Roundabout on February 3, 2023. www.waterburyroundbabout.org.

George Woodard and one of the military vehicles he purchased for the filming of “The Farm Boy.” Photo by Laura Hardie

Waterbury, VT – For Waterbury farmer George Woodard, life on the farm isn't just a way of life. It's what inspires him to entertain people through music and theatre.

"In high school, my senior year, I discovered theatre and acting. Community theatre is the best thing in the world, second only to milk," Woodard said as his fans chuckled.

An accomplished actor, director, and a bit of a local celebrity, Woodard travels around the state to show his films and talk about his life on the farm, family history, and filmmaking process.

While showing a slideshow to a crowd in Montpelier in early 2023, 70-year-old Woodard inserted bits of humor on a black screen with white text that read, 'But always home to milk the cows' and 'But always drink whole milk' in between playing portions of his new two-hour movie, "The Farm Boy," which debuted in the spring of 2023.

Woodard began making "The Farm Boy" in 2016. Set in December 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge, he says it took over six years to complete between doing farm chores and searching for snow in Vermont.

"Those friggin' German winters. That was a problem because the snow would disappear in mid-March. Well, gotta wait until next winter!" Woodard said.

"The Farm Boy" is inspired by his parents, George and Teresa Woodard, both from farm families and the second generation to live and work at Woodard’s Farm in Waterbury Center.

He described how his grandfather bought the farm in 1912.

"The deed said ten cows, some chickens, two horses, and one of 'em ain't that good," Woodard said in the comedic speak-singy style he's known for.

The film follows his parents when they met at a barn dance, fell in love, were separated during World War II, and came back together.

Woodard's short and feature-length films are entirely shot in Vermont, with many scenes filmed on the farm’s 200 acres of farmland. They're shot in color and converted to black and white. Woodard says it allows him to convey emotions that can't be achieved with color.

George Woodard with a portrait of his parents, Theresa and George, the inspiration for his feature-length film, “The Farm Boy.” Photo by Laura Hardie

"We have a fantastic scene where the farm girl asks her father about going on a date, and they are milking cows. She's milking one cow, and he's milking the other, and they are just talking. It's not something that anyone will experience much anymore," Woodard shared. "I wanted to present a period that people my age will look at and relate to, and younger people can look at it and see a type of lifestyle that is gone," Woodard said.

Woodard has an extensive collection of black-and-white photos of his family and the farm. The images set the stage for understanding "The Farm Boy," which brings to life letters Woodard's parents wrote, including how they called each other 'darling,' stories they shared, and extensive research on World War II-era times.

"When you have all those young men that are over there, you can take one soldier and follow his story, and you can make up things if you have the right specifics to go along with it," Woodard described of the moment that sparked his idea for the "The Farm Boy." It was after he saw a World War II film that involved a truck wreck. He was left wondering what the driver's story would be if he survived. Thankfully, he said, his father lived to tell the story and start a family. 

"When George returned after World War II, they had four children. Bernard was the oldest, Joanna was the girl, Steve was the youngest, and I was the good one," he chuckled. "Growing up on the farm, there are all kinds of adventures, and you can be all over the place."

“My father [George] was the oldest. He’s the one on the right. Everything was done with horses, including riding to town and everything. They did buy a tractor in the late 30s. At the same time, Walter bought a truck and a milk route so his oldest son would have some work to do.” - George Woodard/family photo

The Evolution of Woodard’s Farm

After World War II, George and Teresa purchased Woodard’s Farm from George's parents and increased the herd of cows to 25. They farmed for about twenty years.

"At that time, everything was still a lot of handwork; they had some machinery and horse-drawn equipment. My father decided in 1961 that they would sell the cows, and he went to work in construction," George Jr. said.

The farm was inactive for over ten years until Teresa proposed that her son give farming a shot.

"My mother asked me in the early 70s if I thought about running the dairy farm, and I said, 'Well, I hadn't thought about it.'" George Jr. said. "I went to Vermont Technical College and worked on other people's farms, mostly haying. I came back in 1973, and the barn was in rough shape because the frost heaves had broken the foundation. We bought ten cows. The following year we bought ten more."

George Jr. and his brother Steve Woodard started shipping milk to Cabot Creamery Cooperative in 1975 and milked cows together until George moved to California in the early 80s, where he earned his filmmaking and acting chops. He was there for three years while Steve watched over the farm and trained as a veterinarian. In the mid-80s, George returned to Vermont on a mission to make films and perform in his home state, all while milking cows.

"I felt like they weren't doing anything out there in California that you couldn't do anywhere if you had a camera, lights, and actors," Woodard said. "We had done so much work to rebuild the farm back up to where it was a small dairy farm, and I didn't want to bail on it."

While George returned to farming, Steve shifted his focus to his veterinarian work and helped when he could on the farm because, as George said in old Vermont language, "he lived down the road a piece."

George says his brother was one of the first vets to incorporate homeopathic medicinal practices on conventional dairy farms, "He was at the head of when the organic movement began popular in the mid-90s and had a foot in the door, you might say, for the understanding of homeopathy, so there were a lot of farmers who would call him about what to do," George said.

Steve died in 2011 at 54 after a battle with cancer. His daughter Suzanne Woodard is keeping her father's legacy of homeopathic medicine alive as she builds a new business on the farm – a micro apothecary.

George Woodard and his niece Suzanne recreate a Vermont-style version of the classic “American Gothic” painting. Photo courtesy of Suzanne Woodard.

Suzanne moved to her uncle's farmhouse in 2019, a year before he decided to stop milking cows. The decision to stop shipping milk came just as the farm was about to lose its milk contract with Horizon Organic as they left the Northeast and because of the difficulty of farming with an aging body.

"I was going to let it go anyway because my knees were old," George recalled.

Suzanne and George downsized the farm to milk a couple of cows to sell the raw milk directly to consumers and got a herd of beef cows.

“Change is inevitable, and I don't have a concrete plan for the future of the farm in place but what's happening is an organic passage, and keeping cows grazing on pasture and the farm operational is very important to me,” Suzanne said.

Suzanne created a line of herbal tinctures from plants grown on the farm called Loomis Hill Botanics.

Suzanne Woodard, the next generation at Woodard’s Farm, with batches of the farm’s apothecary products in the making. Photo courtesy of Suzanne Woodard.

"She's a go-getter, and she works hard, and she wants to be here, and that's a big part of it," George said. "She knows how to hay and milk cows, and it's good because it gives me a little more time so I can take off for an evening and go show the films."

Suzanne said of working alongside her uncle, "Vermont agriculture is noticeably changing; we see farms disappearing and my biggest passion is to not let that happen to this farm. My uncle George has taught me so much about farming, and I really admire the way he takes care of this piece of land and the animals here. He has shown me that there's magic and creativity in what may appear like mundane work and that hard work is very satisfying."

For both George and Suzanne, and perhaps many farmers, the act of working with animals, the land, and plants creates a flow state that promotes the ability to be in tune with the highest version of themselves and to access creativity in the same way a painter or a filmmaker might.

Farming is holding so much hope for a living thing to flourish and grow. It's the satisfaction of shaping something beautiful with your hands and picking up the pieces when it falls apart. The process itself is often painful. Farming is their art.

George says he continues to draw his creative inspiration from the farm and is optimistic about the future of small farming, despite everything he hears in the news.

"Dairy is the best thing in the world. Small dairy farms work. They actually work better than bigger ones, but it's been drummed into people's heads that you have to get big," George said. "Big farms never get out of debt. When you stay small, you can get out from under it after 10 or 15 years."

Photo courtesy of Suzanne Woodard. 

He's also saddened by the loss of culture when small farms go by the wayside.

"The people that suffer the most when we lose small farms are the neighbors that don't get a chance to help," George said." If you're a neighbor of a small dairy farmer, maybe you'll be able to do a little work to come and help with a little haying, feed the calves, and learn how to milk. If you're a neighbor of a big dairy farm, you're probably not going to get a chance to do that."

George says that milking cows for over 40 years was likely the most important thing he ever did, not just because of all it gave his community but because it taught him how to be a filmmaker. 

"When you're a small dairy farmer, the one thing you have to know is how to do everything; you have to do animals, repair machinery, be a bit of an electrician, a carpenter, everything," George said. "When it comes to being a small filmmaker, you have to know everything. You have to know how to direct actors, composition, lighting, how the camera works, and how to tell a story visually…I don't really consider myself a filmmaker because it's not something I really made a living at. I still consider myself a dairy farmer. Dairy farming gave me the knowledge required to do that stuff."

How Woodard's Films Got Off the Ground

In between farm chores, George and his brother traveled the state performing and talking about George’s filmmaking.

"Me and Steve played music here, there, and everywhere, but not until we had the cows milked at night, and we were always back to milk in the morning," Woodard said. "Then there was the theatre. Oh, the theatre."

The theatre he speaks fondly of is his brainchild, The Ground Hog Opry. As described in the Times Argus, it's where "Saturday Night Live meets the 'hick set,'" and it "has been part of the back-side-of-Vermont entertainment landscape since its first tour in 1995."

The cast of local performers hosted The Ground Hog Opry in every corner of the state, with the last one in 2017. As a Seven Days article said, "The Opry draws fans like flies to, well, cow plop."

The income from the successful Opry funded George's first feature-length film, "The Summer of Walter Hacks," which was released in 2009. Woodard describes it as a Western adventure movie set in Vermont, with an 11-year-old boy as the "cowboy."

"It's about a boy that has great adventures. There's a runaway stagecoach, but the stagecoach is an old farm tractor," Woodard described.

Evan Reichelt, Nadia Chudzik and Caroline O'Reilly in a scene from 'The Farm Boy.' Photo courtesy Hanging Mudflap Productions.

Of his biggest compliment yet, "I've had two 11-year-old boys tell me when we screened Walter Hacks that this was the best movie they'd ever seen. If you've got a kid, 11 years old, that's seen Star Wars and the Harry Potters, and they are saying this is the best movie they've ever seen, that's something."

Woodard's son Henry, now in his 30s, is the central character in both "The Summer of Walter Hacks" and "The Farm Boy." The cast for Woodard's films also included other family members and many first-time actors from across Vermont, primarily from the Lamoille County Players.

"After the first movie, Henry said, 'Never again,' and then 15 years went by, and he said, 'Well, it wasn't too bad.' I asked him if he wanted to do it again, and he said yes, so time will ease all pain," Woodard chuckled.

Funding for "The Farm Boy" also came from the Opry and a GoFundMe campaign that the film's producer, Joan Brace O'Neal, set up.

Woodard hopes "The Farm Boy" will resonate with his audience as much as his first film. 

"When we did Walter Hacks, I had a lot of older people come up to me after and say, 'That was me when I was a kid.'" Woodard said. "I hope it's the same with the Farm Boy. Unfortunately, a lot of the World War II veterans are gone now, but there are still a lot of veterans, and I hope we've made something that is honest that they would appreciate."

Always An Entertainer and a Farmer

Woodard is considering selling both of his feature-length films for broader distribution, but for now, the only way to see them is when they're screened locally in Vermont. He says his mission is to entertain as many people as he can.

"There's got to be stuff in it that makes people feel some emotions. You want people to cry; you want people to smile," Woodard said.

Bob Nuner of Montpelier, a friend and fan of Woodard's work, said of Woodard and his movies, "I've known him for a long time, and he impresses me, and he doesn't seem to be able to stop impressing me; I have to talk to him about that and make him stop."

It's a compliment that might just make Woodard smile in return. Perhaps just as important to Woodard as entertaining people is that they know the beauty and importance of small farms. Something he puts on full display in his films.

"There is beauty everywhere you look on this farm, which is what I relied on when making films. It's a backdrop. There's beauty all around at this place," Woodard said.

To keep up with Woodard’s Farm, follow them on Instagram.