The Gentleman Farmer

For a time, Fallingwater was more than a masterpiece of modern architecture – it was also a working country estate with its own dairy farm. Photographs, artifacts and memories of that time are featured in “A Fallingwater Homecoming,” on exhibit now through July 18 at the Barn at Fallingwater. And June, which is National Dairy month, is a perfect time to visit.

Attracted to the natural rhythms of farming, Edgar Kaufmann Sr. began to buy neighboring farms and opened his first dairy operation in 1939. “My father ran the dairy farm. Mr. Kaufmann was very meticulous about the barn and the animals. Everything had to be spotlessly clean. That barn was washed down every week,” commented Beryl Younkin, one of the community members interviewed for the exhibition. After that barn burned, Kaufmann added a milking barn to the former Tissue family farm. That milking barn is now our exhibition space.

Still a mainstay of the local economy, agriculture is a featured topic of the exhibition, with wonderful photographs of fields and farms, a copy of the 1939 Mill Run fair prize winners, and ribbons from that fair – where Kaufmann took a few firsts! Although he employed others to do his farm work, he regularly talked with and assisted local farmers, and even joined the Mt. Top Co-op, a Mill Run dairy cooperative. By 1951, however, he decided to close the dairy operation. The dispersal of the dairy herd was advertised with the colorful flyer depicted here.

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