Hay Farmers getting out of farming

[ultrarunner]

Around here the number of diary farmers has drastically shrunk. Farm acreage has probably stayed consistent. To me, this means the margins are thinner. As a kid I remember the 35 cow dairy farms, with one or two tractors that supported a family of six, and mom stayed home. Now a 100 cow farm is a small struggling operation and wife has second income.
Now, it takes more cows and more land to support that same farm family. Smaller margins, means consolidation, with only the bigger farms having the capital or the credit to expand into a mechanized, diesel dependent industrialized trucking and equipment operation that can do more with fewer people. Most farms now, the cogs, err cows, never sees a green pasture.
I guess efficiency is good for some people, bad for others.

Yes... 30 milk cows, organic milk before the term even existed... calves, grandma egg money and grandpa pigs plus fruit, veggies and a lifestyle pretty much unchanged for generations with tractor replace draft and making machine replace hand milking...

Best cook on wood fired stove...

 

[Hay Dude]

I still remember as a little kid going with my mom to a small local farm & house in my neighborhood. They grew veggies and sold milk there.
The house was torn down but the barn and fields remain.
I farm those fields now.
The memories it brings back when Im there working the fields really haunt me.

 

[sree251]

I still remember as a little kid going with my mom to a small local farm & house in my neighborhood. They grew veggies and sold milk there.
The house was torn down but the barn and fields remain.
I farm those fields now.
The memories it brings back when Im there working the fields really haunt me.

What made you buy that farm?

 

[Hay Dude]

What made you buy that farm?

I didnt buy it.
Just by coincidence, a new owner came along and bought it. 40 years later, I was farming it for him.
I farm a few different parcels I walked on as a kid.
Its pretty weird sometimes, in a good way, but still kind of weird.

 

[JDZ735M]

........and that's the only thing they want to do. It's seldom a matter of choice.

Whut???

 

[sree251]

I didnt buy it.
Just by coincidence, a new owner came along and bought it. 40 years later, I was farming it for him.
I farm a few different parcels I walked on as a kid.
Its pretty weird sometimes, in a good way, but still kind of weird.

You said you were kept idle by injuries. Nothing serious, I hope.

So, what do you do? Providing brush hogging, planting and harvesting services for farms?

 

[sree251]

Whut???

Perhaps, Hay Dude can answer your question. He is farming even though it's not his own farm. So, he either loves doing it or he doesn't have a choice.

 

[LHF2019]

My grandmother who passed in 2019 at 92, spent almost a decade in a nursing home, had a daily home healthcare worker for several years before that still had over 1.5 million to her name. My grandfather.............milked. All JD tractors and nice equipment and facilities. It used to be possible. I am the 3rd generation and gave it up though reluctantly. Still miss it to this day. That is why 20 years later I now milk in the winter for fun. 60 cows down to 2.

 

[JDZ735M]

Still miss it to this day.

That feeling is completely understandable!

 

[OzarkChris]

You talking to me? Who is arguing with farmers that farming isn't hard work? I believe most farmers are born into that life and that's the only thing they want to do. It's seldom a matter of choice.

I vehemently disagree, life is nothing but choices! We've been given the ability to have free choice, so we can "choose" to do whatever we want to do - good, not so good or indifferent! It's just that most, if not all, choices come with consequences. Some good, some not so good.