Farm & Food File: Heading for the exit slowly

My father began retiring long before the sale of our farm’s dairy cows in 1989. Began is the appropriate word because his exit from dairy farming was “slower than molasses in January,” as he liked to say. Years slow, in fact.

It was politely kick-started by me in the early-1980s, when the Ronald Reagan-led U.S. Department of Agriculture initiated a dairy herd buyout to whittle down the price-supporting government stocks of processed dairy products like cheese and butter.

Nearing 60 years of age and short on reliable labor, I proposed that Dad let Uncle Sam do the milking — sell the cows and start winding down the 720-acre farm. To my surprise, he took the advice.

To my dismay, however, he took only half my advice: Dad sent the bottom half of his then 85-cow milking string to the stockyards, refigured the milking parlor into a one-man, double four herringbone and turned it all over to Lou S., a born-to-dairy, youngish herdsman.

The following spring — and with just half the number of Holsteins to feed from its acres — Dad cash-rented much of the farm to friends. Never a fan of cash rent, I queried my father why he’d agreed to it rather than the typical southern Illinois shares arrangement of one-third to the tenant and two-thirds to the landlord.

“They wanted cash rent and I wanted them,” he said firmly, ending the discussion.

A few years later, I discovered the tenants were paying an astonishingly low $20 an acre for ground they planted to winter wheat.

I asked Dad, “Why?”

“It’s wheat,” he explained, “and nobody makes money on wheat.”

They were and the proof was that the farm looked like central Kansas because most of their rented, 400 river bottom acres were growing wheat.

Some years later, Dad was ready to leave farming for good — sell the remaining cows, heifers and calves and auction off the tiny 100-bushel Killbros grain wagons; a balky, beat-up three-row White combine; a handful of sagging Gehl silage wagons; and rows and piles of rusting mowers, manure spreaders, discs, plows, sprayers and scrap iron.

Always the cautious German, however, Dad chose to first auction off the dairy animals and milking parlor equipment, but not the field equipment, just in case he changed his mind about retirement.

It wasn’t a great plan, but he got lucky: A strong milk market brought dairymen from all over southern Illinois to buy anything that had four-legs, gave milk and mooed.

The average price for cow, heifer and calf alike topped $800 and the parlor equipment — the bulk tank, glass weigh jars, stainless steel and glass pipelines — brought top dollar, too.

A few weeks of fishing in Florida that winter convinced Dad to sell his farm equipment early the following spring and rent the entire farm. That second sale was the reverse of the first.

A wet snow the night before limited attendance and most of the worn-out farm equipment looked too tired to bring even scrap prices, and much of it didn’t.

At the end, and despite the disappointing results, Dad thanked the small, shuffling crowd for their purchases. My brothers and I then helped some buyers load their cheap junk onto pickup trucks and flatbed trailers.

By milking time, 4 p.m. on our farm for decades, everyone and everything — tractors, cows, straw and hired men — were gone. Then, for the first time since the early 1950s, the farm fell silent.

And silent it remains until I walk through the still-standing dairy barn and hear the farm’s heartbeat, the parlor’s rhythmic pulsators and see our gentle herdsman Howard encouraging his beloved “succums” to come and go.

And, like my father, I’ll hear it until my last breath.