Our small homestead is between two small towns -- one where I grew up next door to the last working farm in the borough, the other where my wife went to school. In the heart of ‘her town’ was also a dairy farm. Both farmers had the same last name -- though according to one, “We may be related, so far back nobody recalls.”
I was too young to really get to know my neighbor. My family did buy milk from him and I remember when it was my turn to walk over with an empty jug and fifty cents I would enter the milk house and stand on tip-toes to peer through the window into the parlor. I would see the farmer busy with the cows and rather than bother him I’d fill my jug and leave the money on the bulk tank.
I eventually became a carpenter but maybe drinking fresh warm milk mutates your genes and brings out the farmer in you. I built our barn before the house.
The other Mr. C and I first met when I remodeled his farmhouse in 1987. Several years ago the farm got auctioned off and he retired to a house on the other side of town. He recently asked if I would help remodel the new place. The stories he told constantly (and repeatedly) while I wrapped his house in vinyl reinforced my belief that farming may be a hard way to earn a living but it’s honest, sometimes embarrassingly honest.
I have admired and trusted farmers since I was born but they are human and can make mistakes when fed the wrong information. Only the wealthiest can afford to lose money year after year before giving in to those who promise more milk per cow or higher grain yields – through any means possible, including hormones, chemicals and genetically modified seed.
On the compost issue
I rode with Mr. C to the lumberyard one day and we stopped for lunch at a tiny diner. The waitress and most of the customers knew the old man and each had a good morning, short story or long joke.
I felt impatient and wanted to get back to the job but otherwise enjoyed the gathering of my elders. Once things settled down and coffee poured, I picked up a local newspaper from the counter. The gardening columnist is a friend and I asked Mr. Knows Everybody if he knew the writer.
“Naw, I’ve read him but gardening is a lot different than farming. I did study up on composting once but you lose the main thing you need in the fields.”
I looked at him, “Nitrogen?”
“Yep; it all goes up in the air by the time your pile is cooked.”
“Did you have the right ratio of greens and browns?” I asked.
“Do you realize how much green forty head of Holstein produce? Where would a farmer get thirty times that much for the brown? Raw manure is better. I dumped a full spreader on my wife’s garden every year. She grew the best tomatoes ….”
On the chemical fertilizer issue
“Didn’t need them and couldn’t afford them if I did. I was lucky to afford lime. Forty head of Holstein produce lots of fertilizer. It was all Reagan’s and Bush’s fault -- the first one, not the present Bush ....”
On the antibiotic and hormone issue
I asked if he ever used bovine growth hormone in his dairy and he said, “Around here no creameries would accept it. I probably would have tried anything to sell enough milk to pay the bills. It’s all Reagan’s and Bush’s fault ….”
Another day I caught bits and pieces of a monologue as I moved from sawhorses to ladder, usually with several measurements in my head. Forgive me if I seemed to ignore you, Mr. C.
“I lost my best milkers to a disease one year. Never did find out what it was that caused it. The vet bill almost put me out of business … Thing is, I believe he might have brought it in on his boots or overalls. He tried every antibiotic there was … The girls were fine one evening and the next morning wouldn’t eat. Within a week they’d be dead … I traced it to a farmer over the hill who, come to find out had brought in a few head from New Jersey ….”
On the herbicide issue
“I used a weed killer in the corn field but it didn’t take much, just a little bit mixed with gallons and gallons of water. And I would stop using it when the corn got so high.”
At the time of this story I was standing on tip-toes twenty feet above the ground on a 2x10 walk board trying to measure a gable fascia. The tape measure kept bending. The wind blew my hat off. The scaffolding jiggled. Mr. C kept talking.
“Yeah, just about this high, Keith. You see?”
I glanced down for a second, “Yep, looks like about sixteen inches?” I forgot my measurement and had to take another.
“Yeah, ’bout that. By then the corn got a good start and would be alright. Besides, that stuff wasn’t cheap. The big farms could afford to keep pouring it on. I couldn’t. It was all Reagan and Bush’s fault ….”
I wondered what herbicide he used and meant to ask later, when I could concentrate on something other than falling.
On the whole organics issue
My cousin stopped by the jobsite one day and I introduced him to Mr. C. They seemed to get along fine until my cousin mentioned he was looking to buy an Angus bull in order to start raising organic beef.
Mr. C doesn’t care much for Angus, “… they are the meanest, most stubborn cattle I’ve ever tried to fence in!” He asked, “Where you going to find organic feed? It must be expensive.”
“There’s a place upstate that sells it,” my cousin told him, “but they’ll mostly be pasture fed. Organic beef sells for six times the price of conventional beef.”
I saw Mr. C’s eyes light up for an instant. What a farm his could have been if his monthly milk check had been six times higher.