HAROLD FARR
A New England farmer, as everyone knows, should be a taciturn, flinty character who makes a bare living scratching out rocks to build into fences to keep out his neighbors. The picture above is therefore remarkable because it shows a large group of neighboring youngsters and their parents raising a loud hurrah for Vermont Dairy Farmer Harold Farr. Farmer Farr, wearing a large grin and a warm sheepskin jacket, is sitting on the tractor that furnishes the power for the tow rope of Harold Farr's Ski Hill established only four years after the first ski tow was introduced to the U.S. Farr has been running a ski hill on his Randolph, Vt. farm for 21 years—free to all comers. The comers are mostly children, hundreds of whom show up on a snowy weekend. For beginners Farr carefully slows down the tow, and for the serious-minded he arranges for lessons from adult volunteers. As often as not, the parents who accompany the smaller children themselves learned to ski on Farr's hill. All this is just dandy with Farr, because his only interest in spending freezing-cold weekends sitting on his tractor is to encourage children to ski and to keep a careful eye on them. "I do it for the fun of it," says Farr, who himself does not ski. "I believe I should give more than I receive, especially where children are concerned."
PHOTO
DAVID BATCHELDER