Sometimes, life moves forward in ways we do not dare to hope for, and in its own timing.
My father had set a goal of being a full-time farmer by 1960. He worked full-time and then farmed deep into the night. My mother worried about him running on little sleep and driving much of the day as an Allis-Chalmers salesman. He would find a payphone and call home a couple of times each day to assure her he was fine.
So, in late 1958, scratching out his balance sheet, my mother was elated when he said he felt they had beaten his goal by a year. A neighbor’s farm sale was coming up.
“Let’s buy 6 of Russell’s Holstein milk cows. They will be gentle, so fairly easy to milk,” he said to my mother. “If you can help me with morning and evening milking, I think I can turn in my notice.”
Dad always jokingly said I sort of messed up that well-devised plan. Mom was carrying a baby, due in April, and eventually could no longer “bend in the middle” to milk out half of the cows.
So Dad hired a neighbor boy, Tim Gallagher, and when April 1959 arrived, I was born on that boy’s 16th birthday.
They were milking in an old barn with no stanchions, but the gentle cows cooperated well. Dad would carry the milk to a small milkhouse, which sat about 50 yards away, close to the road, awaiting pickup.
And so, when Roger and Rosemarie McClure came to my parents in 1961 with the offer to rent them their dairy farm just north of our home place, it felt like a dream coming true. There was a milking parlor with six stanchions. The well-kept barn could hold plenty of hay and straw in its upper mows, and the block construction of its attached milkhouse would surely simplify Dad’s work.
The McClures did not want to move and felt unsure they could adjust to living so far from the home and farm they had developed with forever in mind. The rental offer included the small Holstein herd that they had built.
“If we choose to return, we will let you know well in advance,” Rosemarie promised. It was important for their own peace of mind to leave that possibility open. Roger’s heart and lungs struggled in high humidity and winter’s cold, so they chose Prescott, Arizona, as a testing ground, perhaps for a year or two.
And so, almost overnight, my parents’ lives and livelihood improved. Even if it was only for a year, Dad saw it as a golden opportunity to find out what being a dairy farmer really was all about. Like so many things that come to us in life, how we choose to accept and treat an opportunity makes all the difference.
The acreage available suddenly doubled, as well. Beautiful, lush farm ground on both sides of the road provided high-producing fields with yields every young farmer dreams about.
With genuine kindness, my young parents were filled with gratitude as well as empathy as they saw their neighbors off one early spring day.
Mom had baked cookies and made up sandwiches for the couple, as they set off on a road trip that was possibly marking the end of their life’s work. My parents were in their early 30s; the older couple was only in their early 50s, being forced to retire long before they wished.
Next week: Rolling in milk money
