State farmland still vanishing

In the first half of the 20th century, the Joseph Waskewicz Dairy was one of several thriving dairy farms in the town of Seymour.

Waskewicz had a herd of cows, processing equipment to bottle the milk they produced, and a truck to deliver it to customers on his route. He brought it to customers' homes, putting it outside their door in an insulated aluminum box that kept the fresh milk cool.

It was a way of life that seems quaint today, but by the 1950s the tide had receded on the small dairy farmers of southern Connecticut.

"Dairy farming just wasn't profitable anymore. It was too much work for too little money," said Bonnie Stanis, Waskewicz's granddaughter who now operates Little Bit Farm, a horse farm on the 5 acres that remain of the former Waskewiczdairy on Bungay Road.

"My family made a transition to artesianwell drilling, and then in the 1990s, we started our horse farm on the land," Stanis said. The squeeze on small farms in southwestern Connecticut is tightening. In a region where towns are proud of their agricultural heritage and real estate agents point to rustic barns and stone walls as a part of the landscape that give old New England marketable charm, the pressures of taxes, real estate development and zoning regulations are making small farmers pack it in or consider the consequences.