COOL SPRING FARM STILL RUNNING
by Jerry Westbrook
SOME DREAMS DO COME TRUE. Just ask Dr. and Mrs. J. William Moore of Cool Spring Farm in Union County. Leaving his western Pennsylvania farm roots in 1959 to teach at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Dr. Moore quickly realized that apartment life was a bit stifling. He roamed the area, feasting on the panoramic views of scenic farms. He confesses to "coveting" one farm in particular, a dairy operation just off Route 45, west of town.
He looked up one of the owners, Edith Erdley, who worked in a Lewisburg bank, and half-jokingly asked if she would sell the farm. She wasn't interested in selling the property that had been in her family since the 1930's and had been developed into a thriving dairy with its own bottling plant and delivery routes. The goodnatured bantering continued for more than 25 years until one day in 1985, then he asked the question again, "Edith, when are you going to sell me your farm?" Her one word answer was, "Now!" The dream came true, but the work had just begun.
No stranger to hard work, "Bill" Moore, who had taken as many as 21 credits a semester in college while helping to run his family's western Pennsylvania dairy farm, grasped his mother's sage advice: "Take the next step that is available to you, no matter how difficult it is." This step took a year to rejuvenate the house, opening closed fireplaces, repairing a spider-web of cracks in the horse-hair plaster walls and a plethora of other modernization projects. Fortunately, the mid-1800s-era barn was in good shape.
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