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Paul Franklin was just 23 when he was elected to the Plainfield board of selectmen, and within four days he found himself standing before a crowd in the school gym, expected to speak intelligently about a warrant article. More than 30 years later, Franklin, an apple grower, still recalls his anxiety. "Was I nervous? Twenty-three years old in front of all the people I grew up with and my parents? You betcha," he says.

Fortunately, he was sitting next to a more-seasoned selectman, Steve Taylor '62. Just as Franklin was about to rise from his chair to speak, Taylor leaned over to offer some last-minute advice.

"Talk loud, boy," Taylor said. "They'll think you know what you're talking about."

Anyone lucky enough to get a seat next to Steve Taylor is bound to come away with something, be it a little rural wisdom disguised as a wry joke, a revealed connection between past and present or a lesson in how to run a meeting. In his 25 years as the state's commissioner of agriculture, Taylor earned a lasting reputation as the rarest of leaders, a canny Yankee farmer able to move effortlessly between barn and boardroom, sometimes without even changing out of his work boots. His affable personality, common-sense approach and folksy style elevated him to the level of a treasured New Hampshire institution.

Taylor just finished a record-setting tenure as an ex officio member of the University System Board of Trustees. Politically skilled without being political, Taylor weathered six changes of administration—from Hugh Gallen to Jeanne Shaheen—by first earning the steadfast respect of farmers, then gradually winning over the rest of the state.

"His breadth of knowledge cuts across geography, society, business, all interests," says Betty Hoadley '57, '72G, a retired teacher and former state representative who joined the board in 2006. During a Thompson School graduation, Hoadley happened to look down the row of fellow trustees, all in their sober black robes. There sat Taylor, his legs crossed just enough to reveal a pair of high-top work boots sticking out from under his robe.

Though he retired as commissioner in 2007 (a loss the Concord Monitor equated to "watching a shopping mall go up where the woods you played in as a kid once stood"), Taylor, 71, remains as active as ever. True, he's winding up 31 years as Plainfield town moderator, passing the role to Paul Franklin, now a practiced public speaker. But drop by the Taylor Brothers Sugarhouse and Creamery in the Meriden village of Plainfield, and you're more than likely to see a tall, white-haired guy, suspenders stretched over his T-shirt, out spreading manure, fixing a tire, or, if it's a Sunday or Monday, milking the cows. The Taylors have 60 head of Holstein milking cows and an equal number of heifers, which he calls "ladies in waiting."

The 166-acre farm includes cow barns, a creamery and a bright red sugarhouse and store. Taylor and his wife, Gretchen Schnare Taylor '62, live in the farmhouse, where they share an office and watch the Red Sox side by side in matching armchairs. Their friendly schnauzers, Katie and Theo (after Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein), have the sofa to themselves.

"People say, 'You could make a lot more money doing other things than farming,'" Taylor says as he drives a visitor past nearby fields and meadows in his red pickup. "And I say, 'yeah, but I couldn't do this,'" he continues, waving one sturdy arm as if to capture the pastoral landscape rolling by. "There is nothing greater than to be on a tractor and mowing around and around. You can daydream and just think about all kinds of stuff. I just love it."

Taylor started out as a reporter, and given his ear for storytelling and seemingly photographic memory, he might have easily risen through the ranks to a plum job with a major metropolitan daily. A political science major at UNH, he edited The New Hampshire in his senior year, then after graduation quickly moved from cub reporter at the Portsmouth Herald to managing editor of the Valley News. After seven years, he went freelance and roamed the state for the now-defunct New Hampshire Times, turning in pieces about fading local dialects and the origins of the working man's beer joint. At one point in his career, the Boston Globe came calling, but Taylor decided he didn't want to spend all his time chasing stories, especially if the chase took him out of the countryside. "I had a bunch of other interests, things I wanted to do," he says. "I'm still that way."

After his appointment as agriculture commissioner in 1982, Taylor wasn't about to break ties with Plainfield, the town where he'd grown up and where he and Gretchen had since tamed their puckerbrush into a farm. So every day he drove the 63 miles to his office in Concord and back again. He never once stayed overnight in the city after a late-night meeting, according to Gretchen. And, by the same token, neither did he use the traveling distance as a reason for missing work—during snowstorms, Taylor dutifully set out in his pickup, turning back just four times in 25 years.

Now the couple presides over what is, in these times, an uncommonly close family circle. Taylor and his youngest son, Rob, are the family members who primarily work on the farm; Rob is expanding the operation with a line of cheeses made from their own fresh milk. Two older sons, Jim '89 and Bill '87, pitch in when needed. The families of all three live so close by that Gretchen has watched over every grandchild from birth so her daughters-in-law could go to work. Some combination of those seven grandchildren, now ages 7 to 17, turns up in the barnyard nearly every day.

Taylor still considers himself a journalist—he's never stopped writing. As commissioner, he wrote a popular, newsy column for the Weekly Market Bulletin, the department's newsletter. His most famous work, however, is a list he put together for a Leadership New Hampshire program, called "100 Things You Should Do To Know the Real New Hampshire." Reflecting the varied interests and cultural passions of its author, the widely circulated list ushers readers toward traditional pastimes and homegrown pleasures—a cruller "straight from the kettle" at Muriel's Donut Shop in Lebanon, quiet observation of the goings-on at a deer-weighing station, a contra dance at the Nelson town hall.

Taylor says he compiled the list after polling some friends. And he freely acknowledges that even he hasn't done everything on it. So don't ask him to describe No. 34, the blessing of the motorcycles at the Shrine of Our Lady of Grace in Colebrook.

When he wasn't writing, milking, commuting, advocating for farmers, or reading (his favorite pastime), Taylor somehow found time to sit through countless meetings of the university system trustees. Given his schedule, perhaps it's not surprising that he was often observed dozin—but he never seemed to miss much. "It would seem like his eyes were closed and he was asleep," says Lorraine Stuart Merrill '73, a Stratham dairy farmer who served on the board with Taylor and succeeded him as commissioner. "But just at the time when perhaps opinion could be swayed, he had this uncanny way of opening his eyes and speaking. He's a very, very smart guy, and people shouldn't underestimate him."

Taylor was the perennial choice to lead search committees at UNH (including the one responsible for selecting the current university president, Mark W. Huddleston). Unafraid to step into a heated discussion and quick to redirect an aimless one, he could be counted on to keep meetings moving. "He just brings this ability to include everybody, make sure that everyone is heard," Merrill says. "He's very fair and has a lot of common sense, which I sometimes think is the rarest form of human intelligence."

As commissioner, Taylor made it his mission to explain agriculture to the public, a crucial ally in efforts to strengthen farming. He stayed on top of trends in the industry, encouraging growth in niche markets and other small-farm operations. And he spent an awful lot of time talking to farmers. "One of the best places to see him in action is at the annual Farm and Forest Expo in Manchester," says John Harrigan, the veteran Coos County newspaper publisher and writer. "As a guy who logs and farms, I love to work the crowd at the expo, hobnobbing with kindred spirits about who knows what, but Steve's the all-time champ."

It was Taylor who launched the very popular Expo, right after he was named commissioner.

As he eases into retirement, Taylor says he will continue to write. Any plans for a book? No way, he says—"650 words and I'm done." But you can catch him on the speaking circuit, leading audiences on fast-paced romps through history for the New Hampshire Humanities Council, the cultural organization he helped found in the 1970s. And his "Real New Hampshire" reports are occasionally rerun on public television. Spin-offs from his famous list, the vignettes are also studies of the real Taylor in action. Chip Neal, the producer at the time, says he used to meet Taylor at a selected location, like a covered bridge or the foot of a firetower. Then, they'd just shoot. Taylor never needed a script. Says Neal: "He would just kind of get rolling, and out it would come.

Freelance writer Lisa Prevost '84 is working on a book about attitudes toward housing development in New England.

Editor's note: On June 8, a few weeks after this article appeared in the UNH Magazine, Gretchen Schnare Taylor '62 died from complications of pulmonary disease. The UNH Alumni Association extends deep condolences to her husband, Steve Taylor '62, and their family and friends. Read the Union Leader obituary.