GMS History The History of Greenbrier Military School | Page 23

Activities Building and garage behind the Company D hall, and adjoining
the garden, were the smokehouse and the private gas pump. Everything the
Moores could reasonably produce or grow for themselves, they did. GMS
grew almost all of its own food, from vegetables and fruits and grains to the
providers of meat. H.B. and later H.B. Jr. had farms of prize
Aberdeen-Angus cattle. J.M. raised sheep on his property, and D.T. had
chickens. More vegetables were grown on the camp property next to the
Greenbrier River at Caldwell. The school had its own dairy barn into the
early 1950s, when the state regulated pasteurization and thus the cadets
could no longer drink fresh, raw milk. A young Louis Longanacre (GMS
class of 1952) worked at the GMS dairy barn. After he provided each day’s
fresh milk to Miss Willie for use in the kitchen—and gave milk to Moore
family members—he sold the remainder to the Greenbrier Dairy in town,
thus making a profit for the school (Longanacre). It’s hard today to imagine
a school where the mind and body were trained with military discipline and
tough academic classes, where spiritual needs were met with regular chapel
and church attendance, where the body was fueled with the freshest locally
grown produce and meat, milk and butter fresh from real cows, no additives
or processing involved. A bucolic dream, yet this was the early GMS.
The 1930-31 GMS catalog describes the campus and farms as a large
thirty-acre campus and playgrounds. The school owned two farms of 800
acres and rented 600 acres, or 1400 acres in all. “On these farms are raised
almost all the food used in the school.” The main advantage of killing their
own meats and using milk and their own farm-raised products, said the
catalog writer, “is not in the lowering of expense, but in knowing the kind
and character of food placed on the tables and insuring it to be of the best
quality.” The faculty, nurses, and families ate the same food as the cadets, it
was pointed out. “Our milk, butter, ice cream, all secured fresh from our

Dress Parade in front of barns, 1938.