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Photojournalistas.com |
| Sept/Oct, 2002 |
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"I could walk out of here tomorrow and make more money. I could work at McDonald’s and make more money than what I do. It is definitely a lifestyle, if the time ever comes where I don’t enjoy seeing that newborn calf then I know it’s time for me to quit."
-Scott Bartlett |
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Scott Bartlett, who is in his mid 30s, became a partner with his father immediately after graduating from college. He says that love of animals is another reason that the farm lifestyle is attractive. "It’s not something you do to make money, I mean yeah you do want to make money and have enough to support yourself and whatnot but there’s a lot of different things I could do. I could walk out of here tomorrow and make more money. I could work at McDonald’s and make more money than what I do right now. It is definitely a lifestyle, if the time ever comes where I don’t enjoy seeing that newborn calf then I know it’s time for me to quit." Scott’s mother also expresses a strong love of animals that is shared with many farmers. "I think if you reach the point where you look at these animals as strictly a dollar sign and they’re nothing more than a number to you, then it is time to do something else. There are times when you lose a cow and it breaks your heart because she was an important animal to you." This love of farming and the animals that dairy farm life revolves around is not exclusive to the Bartletts or the Hintons. Visit almost any dairy farmer in the region and they will also enthusiastically talk about their farms, their animals and their way of life. So why, if dairy farmers love their lifestyle and are willing to sacrifice a larger paycheck to maintain the way of life they love, are Northern New England’s family dairy farms disappearing? SO WHAT'S GOING WRONG? Burton Hinton has something going for him that many farmers don’t; he is in his mid 30s, a dairy farmer in the prime of his life. His body is attuned to the fourteen-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week demands of farm life and is able to keep up with it. He also has family, his father Ellie and his fiancee Tammy, who help him run the farm. The Bartletts have similar advantages. Scott, who has stamina enough to play hockey once a week in addition to farming, is close in age to Burton Hinton and his mother and father both work the farm as well. A significant number of Northern New England’s dairy farmers, however, are reaching their 50s and early 60s. Their bodies are getting older, less able to keep up with the hard, physical demands of dairy farming, and good help is difficult to find. Adding to this, many children who helped out on the farm while growing up are not interested in taking over the farm and leave to pursue other lines of work that pay much better and don’t require the long hours of intensive labor. Some farmers encourage their children to go into something different because they see dairy farming as too great of a burden for too little return. Even farmers like the Hintons and the Bartletts are facing bigger problems. Urban encroachment, stagnant milk prices and increasing expenses are rapidly starting to take a toll on the romanticized vision of the farming community in this region. One issue that all dairy farmers agree is a major problem is that milk prices have not kept pace with inflation and are too volatile. This combination means that they are getting less return for their time and effort while the price of staying in business grows every year. It would be reasonable to figure that milk receipts for farmers should be going up as the number of dairy farms decreases and regional population increases. Improvements in technology have, however, enabled farms to nearly double the milk production of individual cows, this means that despite there being fewer farms the milk supply has usually more than kept pace with need.  David Williams of Fairfield, Vermont, a farming community not far from St. Albans, has been a dairy farmer for thirty-two years. He has seen his average per-cow milk production rise from 12,000 pounds per year when he first started to 20,000 per year presently. Some of his best cows produce up to 30,000 pounds per year, and he attributes this increase to higher quality feed and improved breeding techniques. He also says that many farms are maintaining bigger herds, which adds to the milk supply despite there being less farms. Ted Foster, of Middlebury, Vermont runs a dairy farm of 350 milkers with his cousins, has seen the same changes. After graduating from college Foster fought in the Vietnam War as an army officer and then returned home to help run the farm. "Things are a lot more mechanized and automated, production has grown dramatically. I think when I came back the herd average was somewhere around 14,000 to 15,000 pounds per cow and now we’re at 24,000 pounds."
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