Goat Dairy Farming in Crumpler, North Carolina--Carol Coulter and Dave Walker

Interview of Carol Coulter and Dave Walker conducted at Heritage Homestead Goat Dairy in Crumpler, North Carolina, by Willard Watson, for the Blowing Rock Art and History Museum, Blowing Rock, North Carolina and "The We We Worked" exhibition from the Smithsonian.

"So my mom was a stay at home mom until we all left the house and then she just worked part time at Sears. My dad worked for AT&T in NYC so we liked to go to work and help and get telephone wire, but no we couldn’t really help him. I started working when I was 14, pretty much then it was like if I wanted jeans, or if I wanted to eat out, or wanted to go to the movies, then I would just pay for things myself. My dad was super big into investing and saving so we had a lot of education about that. So bank accounts, and you know talking about how to invest money, and how to save, and how to get what we wanted."

"My dad was in the furniture industry in the Piedmont and he made furniture, he sold furniture, he sold hardware that goes on furniture, he sold lumber, imported lumber from Brazil and Africa and sold that, so I kinda grew up in the furniture industry. And then my mom was a children’s librarian in Alamance County and so that’s where I would spend my time after school and on the weekends hanging out at the children’s library volunteering as Clifford the Big Red Dog doing that and the Fourth of July parade for a couple of years."

What do you do for a living?

"Yeah, so I just retired from Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture and I’ll be full time here at the farm now, working with Lon at the dairy We’ll probably add some new cheeses this year, since I’ll be in the kitchen more and Lon’s excited cause he’ll go out of the kitchen and start doing more in his blacksmith shop, and hide tanning, and broom tying, and all the pioneer arts he really enjoys.

"I’m the program director at Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture, so a lot of what I do is help bring people together and connect them with resources around sustainable agriculture..."

Read the full transcript below.

Asset ID #7787