8. Country Retreats

Dalton students visited Buck’s Rock School in New Milford, Connecticut from 1940 to 1947. From 1948 to 1982, they visited a farm in Otis, Massachusetts, where they milked cows, churned butter, sawed wood, and built dams. Student reports from 1959 and photo from Otis trip 1948 displayed.

Dalton on the Farm: 1948

Dalton students have almost always come from the big city and, realizing this, the school made an arrangement with a farm in Otis Massachusetts to provide a real farm experience. Our entire 4th grade class boarded the train along with our teacher, Mrs. Yvonne Baravelli and a few brave parents and set off for Otis. Upon arrival, we were shown where to put our sleeping bags in the hayloft of the barn and treated to country food and a real rip-roaring square dance. The next day, after a huge farm breakfast, we went out into the woods to chop up firewood and feed the animals. We each took turns milking the cows and preparing food for dinner. It was total immersion in a very unfamiliar environment and gave us all a very good insight into a lifestyle that was unfamiliar and yet widespread. We had a very happy class and made close friendships that have lasted these many years.
—Tom Pereira ’56

Before the excursions to Otis, Massachusetts, students took trips to Buck’s Rock School in New Milford, Connecticut which was a camp Miss Parkhurst had built on her property. “During the month-long stay in very elemental living quarters, whole grades at a time studied New England during weekly trips around the area. Students visited old churches and virgin forest and discussed Emerson’s essays. A student-faculty committee was formed to work in the kitchen, clean the dormitories, plan recreation, run a newspaper, etc.”
—Yearbooks 1943–1945