 |
"The last vacation that Alan and I went on was for our 25th anniversary, and that was nine years ago…I’m able to get away, Alan’s able to get away and Scott’s able to get away but Alan and I have a problem getting away together."
|
If costly equipment is eating dairy farmers alive, the difficulty in finding qualified farm labor might qualify as some form of slow death by torture. The inability to find qualified help on many small and medium-sized dairy farms is having an effect on how well they can function. Lack of help makes it difficult for the farmers to get time off or to be able to deal with family emergencies. Dairy cows have to be milked at least twice a day an generally more than one person has to do this. For the dairy farmer to get a day off occasionally or perhaps even take a vacation, help is needed. The work is hard and most farmers can’t afford to pay the help very much, and the help has to be trained to do the job properly.
The Bartlett farm is financially sound, but the labor issue still casts a heavy shadow over the operation according to Scott. "Hired help is real hard to do, and the other thing with hired help is you have to pay them more than you can afford to pay yourself….I think the biggest thing that’s hurt it is just the fact that some kid can go to work at McDonalds’s for a lot more than what a farm can afford to pay him. It’s not very hard to stand at a cash register and take an order versus tell some kid that he’s got to go up in the top of the hay mound and pile five hundred bales of hay when it’s 90 degrees outside and a 115 in the barn. Your just not going to convince him that it’s a good idea." Scott’s mother, Dencie, said that the labor issue has definitely had an effect on their quality of life. "The last vacation that Alan and I went on was for our 25th anniversary, and that was nine years ago…I’m able to get away, Alan’s able to get away and Scott’s able to get away, but Alan and I have a problem getting away together." Even Burton Hinton, who is not located in a somewhat urban area like the Bartletts where jobs are plentiful, has difficulty finding and keeping help. "It’s a battle, it’s a problem. We usually get teen-aged kids and high school kids to help us part-time. Usually by the time you get them to where they’ve learned how to work and how to think for themselves they’ve grown to realize they can get eight to ten dollars an hour working down at the mill and then you have to start all over again. It’s difficult to find, especially someone to do the chores while your gone….Finding someone that you can depend on that has the know how to take care of stuff. And then of course you have to pay them."
 The labor problem often the most disturbing for these dairy farmers is that in many cases their children, for various reasons, are not taking over the farm. The child that leaves the farm breaks a cycle where the farmer had a steady partner until he retired. When his child took over as head of the farm after his retirement that child generally had children old enough to help him run the farm and the cycle would repeat itself. When this cycle is broken the elder farmer is left without help that his child would have provided until his retirement and it generally takes place at a time when the farmer’s body is starting to feel the effects of age. When this happens, even if he has been able to stay financially sound, he is left with very few options. It can be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back.
|
|
|
|
|
|
