Teaming Up

For most of us on the Island, winding down means doing something like walking on the beach, heading up to Menemsha for a lobster roll, or maybe just working in our gardens for an hour. For Liz Thompson, who spends hectic days running SBS in Vineyard Haven and mornings, evenings, and most spare minutes caring for the animals at the Thompson Family Farm just up the road, relaxing and recharging comes from hitching up her team of oxen and taking a walk in the woods.

“I like going out with them. You kind of forget about everything else and it’s quiet,” said Liz. “There’s a lot of body language and you don’t have to say much. When I go out to work with them, I say I’m going to check in, not check out.”
The day I visited her at the farm, it was nearing dinnertime and in the background, roosters crowed and Liz’s son, Oscar, interrupted with questions about schoolwork and chickens. But as Liz glanced out the kitchen window at her pair of seven-year-old Durhams, Star and Bright, that busy world faded away. “I’m just watching them right now,” she said. “They’re watching me back. They’re just lying in the sun. It’s beautiful.”

The Thompsons got their first pair of oxen nearly ten years ago as they prepared to build the house they now live in. “We looked at the piece of land we had to clear and we had no equipment,” Liz said. “My father had kept cattle, and oxen were suitable for what we wanted to do.”
Using oxen to clear land is an old agrarian tradition, especially on the Vineyard. “There used to be hundreds of pairs of oxen on the Vineyard,” said Liz, who grew up here. “They used to move houses from Aquinnah to Edgartown. Oxen are what built all the stone walls in Chilmark. They’re more traditional than horses here.” But as technology improved, the number of oxen on the Vineyard dwindled. “It’s kind of a thing of the past,” said Liz. Today, there are only a handful of Vineyard farmers that own oxen, but a great way to catch these farmers and their oxen is at the Agricultural Fair in August (see sidebar).

In the winter, the Thompson family uses the oxen to skid logs, carry stones, and drag the road. “They’ve had their moments,” Liz laughed. “Like in the wintertime when I’ve been stuck in the driveway, I yoke up the bulls. They can be heroic.”

Come spring, Liz brings Star and Bright, as well as her pair of Randall Lineback calves, Huckle and Finn, out for long walks in the woods to get them back into shape for summer work and the annual Agricultural Fair. Last year, Star and Bright pulled their own weight out eight feet at the fair, a personal best for the team. “It’s our big day,” said Liz. “And then we go back to the farm and mind our own business for the rest of the year.”

It’s not many people that would find their zen alone with a pair of cattle, each weighing about 2,000 pounds. But Liz says she can lose hours out with the animals. “It’s so nice to come home to them,” she said. “I’m real routine-oriented, so to get out in the woods with them, it gets me out of here.”