Country World Archives 2001-2008
Three decades of milk, sweat and tears
When you pull your boots out of the mud, where do you go?
By DAVY MOSELEY | Country World East Texas
April 26, 2001 -- If someone had told me 10 years ago that when I was 25-years-old I would be writing for a weekly newspaper, I would have told them they were crazy.
"I'm going to be a dairyman." I would say.
And that's what I have always said. For as long as I can remember, I always have had an answer to the proverbial, "what do you want to be when you grow up," question. While my friends aspired to become astronauts, firemen and movie stars, I had my boots firmly planted in the mud.
Last Friday, my father and I pulled our boots out of the mud and stepped onto high ground.
After 31 years in the dairy business, my father and I milked our last cow, bottled our last Holstein calf, and washed the barn out for the last time as grade A milk producers.
Going out of the dairy business really hits you hard. So many Texas dairymen have reached the same point my family has, and been faced with the same decision. But, you find something else that works for you.
I was raised on a dairy, but I was also fortunate enough to be able to go to college, get a degree and get a great job writing for a weekly newspaper. It wasn't what I set out to do, but here I am.
Likewise, my father was also fortunate enough obtain a degree and has many options available to him that many ex-dairymen may not have.
But, that doesn't make it any easier.
Selling out of the dairy business is not an easy decision to come by, and yet it's not that hard a decision to make either. The hours are lousy, the pay is erratic and often insufficient, vacation time is nonexistent, benefits are spotty, and the arthritic knees aren't a plus either.
Someone who has never milked cows before might look at all the so-called downfalls to dairy farming, and think selling the cows and moving to town to work would be a no-brainer. People change jobs all the time. It's no big deal right? Wrong. The difference is that milking cows isn't just a job, its a way of life.
It's hard to put into words what dairy farming has meant to me. Sure I can say I'm a better person for it, and I've developed a good work ethic, but it's more than that. It's like being part of something very special; like what I imagine having a child would be like. You watch them grow and mature, you're there through the hard times, and glad for the good times, and then one day they're gone and things are never quite the same.
As any dairyman, past or present, can attest, there is not much time to focus on the little things when you milk cows. We had never taken any pictures at the milk barn, so I brought my camera with me that last morning to capture 31 years of memories on 35 mm film.
Some day when my children ask me what it was like to milk cows, I'm going to dig those pictures up and tell them about the milk, the sweat and the tears.
I'm going to tell them, him or her what it's like to watch the sun rise and set on a dairy farm. They're going to know what it was like to lay in the hay at a livestock show and snuggle up next to a show heifer to take a nap - her heart softly beating against my back.
I'll explain why dairy farmers wear rubber boots, tattered old flannel shirts and faded jeans with the knees wore out. I'll tell them a few stories about fun in an old work truck, and that you can find anything you need in that truck from bailing wire, to penicillin to electrical tape - when your not looking for it.
I might even tell them about scraping the drip shed, or getting swatted in the face by a cow's tail, or taking a fall in knee deep mud and having to be sprayed down 4-alarm-fire-style by a laughing father who had took the same fall many times before.
They'll need to know about walking deep into the bottoms searching for a cow that has gone off to calve quicker than we expected. How you can spend hours walking in and out of creeks, through thick woods, and then all of a sudden you bust out into an open clearing, and there's momma and baby laying in the sun, looking as if to say, "What took you so long?"
And speaking of babies, I've got mixed feelings about bottling calves. I may have to glorify that some in my tales.
Well, I've no regrets; and while you will see my byline in Country World for a long time to come, we'll always have beef cattle, my dad and I will always work together - when we get time, and I'll never leave the place. It's where I belong.
For those of you still milking, keep it up. For those of you who have moved on to other things, hold your head high; and hang on to those pictures.