To Whom It May Concern

The Sun Sets On 140 Years

Many of you know that I grew up on a farm, our family farm. In 1867 my family started farming in Nebraska. From the beginning there were dairy cattle at the farm. So for 140 years, cows have been milked twice a day, EVERY day at our farm. That's 102,200 milkings total, if you are counting. In the mid 1950's my grandfather modernized the facilities, and his sons (my father and my uncle), grew up helping with the dairy. My father went to college to become a diesel mechanic, and he was very good at it, landing a top dollar job at Caterpillar in Omaha in 1972. But shortly thereafter, my grandfather had a heart attack, and my dad moved into a house across the road from the farm, and went back to dairying. My uncle also came back a short time later to work at the farm.

On a dairy farm, there are no days off. On our farm, between the hours of 5 to 8, morning and night, the milking was done, because it had to be. Because of this, nearly all my memories of the farm are in some way tied into the dairy. I was helping out in the dairy barn from the age of 4. Sure I wasn't able to do a lot of work at that time, but I would take a scraper and push manure around. By the time I was 8, that was my responsibility all summer long, and on weekends, to clean the back of the barn. Most dairies milk twice a day, and by the time I was 12 I was helping out with the evening milking every day all summer, and during the school year on weekends, making 2 dollars an hour, and 2 dollars an hour being put away for college. I used to tell my friends I played with more tits than all of them combined. It was of course a joke, and 'teats', not tits. The summer before I went to college, my father and I, with help from other family members, were able to get to 10,000 pounds of milk every two days, from 125 cows. There was so much milk that it would nearly flow out out of the top of the milk cooler if you took the lid off. I went to college the next year, and although the dairy never hit 10,000 pounds again, it was fairly successful over about the next 10 years.

From the year 2000 and on, things started to go downhill at the farm. My grandmother, who had milked morning and night for many years, retired from milking. My dad took over completely, but despite doing his best, things were getting really run down. At 56 years old there is really only so much he can do. He spends his days working as hard as he can just to keep the dairy up and running, and everything else is secondary. Therefore the little things that need to be done for upkeep of the farm itself fall by the wayside, as all my father's time is spent doing the bare necessities so the dairy remains operational. This includes painting, building fence, trimming trees, fixing non dairy equipment, etc, all tossed aside because my dad had no time to get it done. Anytime you run a business, you have 15 minutes to a half hour of clean up and general up keep that has to be done each day. This hasn't been done on the farm for the last 15 years, you can imagine the mess that has piled up, because my father just didn't have enough time to get to it.

So my father put in for the government dairy buyout plan two years ago, but he bid too high. This year, he tried again, with a bit more conservative bid, and it was approved. Dad wanted this, but I was there when the call came in that they had approved the bid, and my father had a relieved, but very sad look on his face. I believe it is for the best, but how do you change your lifestyle when suddenly the activity, basically 6 to 8 hours daily of your last 35 years, is no longer available? Another sad note is that this is the last dairy farm left in Cass county in Nebraska, and perhaps the last family dairy within a 60 mile radius of Omaha. The writing, however, was on the wall. Given the state of affairs at the farm, either Dad had to take the buyout, or watch the farm collapse later and receive nothing at all.

I work for the military and for me to try and go back to the farm would be a huge pay cut and no guarantee that we could fix things enough to really make it worthwhile, I mean EVERYTHING is in disrepair. Still though I feel guilty, because for every generation of my family since 1867, the oldest male has always stayed on the farm. I moved on to do something different with my life. Of course now, some 15 years later, I question my decisions, and worse, blame myself for what has happened.

So tonite I drove down to be with my dad and milk cows for my first time in quite awhile, and what will be one of the last milkings ever at our family farm. I will likely be out there tomorrow night too. We talked about a lot of things, mostly related to the dairy, a lot of 'what if's' came up, along with a lot of fond memories, ending many times with a forlorn sigh. I guess I didn't expect it to affect me so much, seeing the sadness in my dad's face. It had to be this way, he's too old to continue on the way he does, he'll kill himself doing it all on his own. But even so, he feels guilty about this, and sad, because he raised all these cows, and now he's sending them all to slaughter at once. He said he actually broke down two days ago in the barn, realizing he was about to send the first load of cows off in the truck.

On the drive back home from the farm, I had to stop because I broke down myself, partially due to guilt, and because I hate seeing my father this way. But it's also because it is very hard to see the dairy part of our farm close it's doors, after having spent so much time in that barn milking cows as I grew up. This is a lot like experiencing a death in the family. If I feel this sad about what has happened, I know it's 100 times worse for my father. The last of the milk cows will leave the farm on Wednesday, and perhaps the biggest chapter in the history of our farm will come to a close.