If you enjoy milk, thank a dairy farmer

After we left M & J’s place, the first stop on our New York trip was cousin T’s dairy farm. Family dairy farms are much rarer now than they were when I was a kid, and on the New York side of Lake Champlain, they are almost all gone. Somehow, T, his wife B, and their three young boys hang in there. Even with a herd that fluctuates around the 150-head mark, he is considered a very small farmer.

T has to go over to Vermont for almost anything he needs for the farm. Dairy equipment and parts just are not available anywhere nearby.

If you are like us, the price you are paying for milk is half again as much as it was five or ten years ago. Don’t blame T or the other small farmers. None of that filters down to his level. Maybe it goes to the bigger operations. More likely, though, it goes into the pockets of the middlemen – big dairy processors like Dairylea in New York or Alpenrose in the Northwest.

By the way, if you have an extra litter of kittens, PLEASE do not dump them on dairy farmers. T and B have a problem here. The supply of cats is far greater than the demand. For some reason, though, everybody thinks dairies need them.

People have been watching too many movies and TV shows that show someone who is milking a cow aiming the teat and firing at the mouths of nearby cats. It’s as if the dairy farms (where, in the movies, everybody still milks by hand) have more milk than they properly know what to do with and are some sort of mecca for cats. Too much milk? Give it to the cats!
Not so. There is no such thing as too much milk at a dairy farm. Milk is money, money pays bills, and there are always more bills.

T and B’s orphan cats might be too numerous to count, even if you could get them in one place to count them. They’re not mousers. More likely, the rodents living on the farm are catters. B puts a little bit of cat food out for them each day, because her heart is too soft. However, it doesn’t even make a dent, and the cats that aren’t the fittest die. T wouldn’t be sad if they’d ALL die. They’re always under foot, and a cow with a turned ankle cannot go out to pasture. It might even mean one more vet bill.



T and B are happy running the farm. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t do it. They work sixteen hours a day in all kinds of weather and do not prosper. Cows need milking and care every day, even when you’re sick or your son is getting married in Kalamazoo. If you cannot do it, you have to hire someone who can (if you can find someone that capable and responsible for hire and can afford to pay them).

Ts and Bs are almost extinct. When the Ts and Bs are all gone, all the dairy farms will be big, sterile commercial mega-farms. The world, or at least this part of the world, will miss them.