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"There's a lot of pride and independence involved. You'll find that more with dairy farmers than with anything else I believe. With most of them the reason they want to be dairy farmers is because they are independent. They don’t want to work for someone else, they want to take their ideas and go with them."
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Every day before sunup on a small Vermont family dairy farm nestled between rolling hills not far from the Canadian border, Burton Hinton walks into the milking barn to start a working day that will end anywhere between 14 to 16 hours later. Hinton, his father and their forefathers have been working the same farm since the Civil War era. Across Northern New England similar scenes play out everyday on family dairy farms of varying size, although the number of times it plays out decreases with each passing year. The reason for this decline is usually not financial failure, although many farms do have their money problems. Instead it is a result of too much work and investment for too little return compounded by the fact that many farmers’ children do not follow in their footsteps. Those who do choose to continue face ever increasing production costs, stagnant milk prices, difficulty finding labor and urban encroachment, all of which add to the already heavy burden of being a family dairy farmer.
Burton Hinton is one of those farmers who wants to continue to run a family dairy farm despite all the worries and efforts that come with the job. He enjoys farming, putting in a good day of work and trying to make their Westmore, Vermont farm a little more efficient and productive every day without it growing beyond its current size. The milking barn in which Hinton starts his day is a peaceful place where a symphony of soothing sounds can be heard once the morning milking cycle begins. Some sounds are rhythmic, like the low hisses and pulses of the milk pumping equipment and soft moos of cows anticipating that they will soon be milked. The continuous sound of the milking machines is occasionally accompanied by the plopping of cow manure and splashing of urine as the cows freely relieve themselves. Adding dimension to the symphony are the light sweeping sounds of the cows brushing their noses through hay and feed and the farmer’s footsteps as he moves from cow to cow. The least heard noise is the human voice, used only when another family member or helper asks if a cow has been milked yet or to quickly work out some unforeseen problem that throws off the routine. Complementing the sounds are a myriad of smells ranging from those of the cows themselves and the never ending piles of manure they produce to the sweetish sour smell of the cow’s feed and the layers of sawdust present all over the barn. The vast amounts of milk produced also add to the barn’s unique aroma.
 Hinton moves through the barn in his manure stained T-shirt and jeans at a pace dictated by experience and the size of the farm’s dairy herd, of which approximately 55 are milkers. After turning on the milking machinery he begins to ready individual cows for their morning milking. First, he takes a milking cluster and connects its hose into the piping that moves the milk to the barn’s refrigerated collection tank. He then wipes any animal waste and dirt off from the individual teats of the cow’s udder and disinfects them with an iodine-colored solution. Next Hinton attaches the stainless steel cylinder-shaped suction cups of the cluster to the teats, and the milking begins. Once this procedure is completed he moves on to the next cow and then another after that until the cycle is finished. At least four cows are milked at once and, if possible, he performs other tasks as well. Often another family member helps with the milking and the feeding. If the sun is not up this work is done under dim lights barely bright enough to accomplish the task at hand. The barn must be cleaned of animal wastes, which are scraped with a hoe into troughs that run the length of the barn behind the cow’s stalls. Old sawdust must be discarded and a new layer put down for the cows to rest in. When the milking is done the piping and milking clusters must also be cleaned before they can be used again. Hinton finally grabs a quick breakfast and then moves on to a multitude of other tasks that must be completed before the evening milking.
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