PBS American Portrait

Growing up, I had never thought I would be a farmer, like that wasn't my thing. And my husband, even though he grew up on a dairy farm, he wasn't the kid that was gonna come back to the farm. He, went out into the world and got jobs and was working, but after we got married I decided I wanted to try dairy farming. Hey, good job mama. And I've really found something that I loved. Good job. My husband and I are working on hopefully keeping our dairy alive for the next generation to take over, if that's what our boys want. Yay. Over the last five years, the dairy industry has really been struggling. We were basically paying to stay in business and just going further into debt. And then right before COVID hit, we finally had some better milk prices and things were looking up. But now, since COVID, everything's kind of gone to hell. We have buildings that really need to be replaced, equipment that is always breaking down and we have a lot of that coming our way. So what's up? The engine oil is plump full of coolant. Awesome. If we're really unlucky, which we tend to be around here, then it's an engine rebuild. And that's - And several thousand more. closer to $10,000. Awesome. I don't know what to do right now. I don't know what to do, I haven't figured, I just figured this out. The hydraulic motor on our bagger, which we need to make feed went out of course. I just grabbed the mail quick, and we had our milk cheque cheque stub in there, and we're gonna lose like maybe $5,600 this month. Last night, during the middle of milking, part of our milking system broke. I just wish we could go a couple of weeks with things going the way we hoped they would. We need to do some major investing in infrastructure. We have posts that have literally rotted off. So, yeah this building just really needs to be completely replaced. So we're looking at maybe 1.5 million to do that. And it's just really hard to sign up to spend that kind of money, when for the last four years, you haven't even broke even. (cows mooing) We choose to do this as farmers. I mean there's a lot easier ways to make money than farming. We could go work in town and have a 40 hour week instead of the 80 hour week that we usually have. But there's a passion that I think drives farmers, it drives us, it drives our family. And that is to put the food out there for you to buy at the grocery store. And that is important to us. Is this really what we want to do? That's a nearly daily question. I left a job in town for, with 401k and profit sharing and dental insurance and health insurance to, to, to, to do this. And now you can't keep going in perpetuity with buildings that are literally falling down. We can't it's it's it's, No, it's come to our head. It's gotta be done. I think we should start with our banker go to him. So we have to see if the banker says, I mean if, if the banker, - if the banker's like it just isn't gonna work then that kinda answers the question for us. That answers the question for us and it's okay. It's time to sell the cows. So we are headed to the bank, see what they have to say. Hoping that we can get some good news and start moving forward. (cool jazz music) So we just finished up with our meeting, and I think it went well. It wasn't nearly as scary numbers as we thought it would be. I mean, we can't afford to do everything we want by any means, but but I feel like there's something attainable there. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. (instrumentals) You just never know what the next day will bring. And it's not easy. It's really not easy. But at the same time we also get to have our kids work with us in the barn. We get to have a life that we want to live. Every decision we make today is based on the hope that one day our boys will want to farm. So we're gonna keep going as long as we can. As long as it makes sense too. As long as we haven't reached the end of our rope. That's our plan. We're gonna keep going. (cool instrumental music)