SHERBURNE – After 45 years in the business, dairy farmers Robert and Susan Patt have decided that all signs are pointing toward a change.
The couple is hoping to sell the farm they’ve owned on the edge of the Village of Sherburne since 1989, citing age, the economy, and recent forces of nature as the deciding factors.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time now,” said Robert. “It’s time.”
The Patts are planning to relocate near their son’s dairy farm in Cayuga County, possibly drawing out the final point on an agricultural road map that’s led them from Robert’s birthplace in central Massachusetts, to Montgomery County (outside Albany) in 1972, then to Sherburne. They won’t say for sure what their retirement will entail, acknowledging it probably won’t be too far from the life they already know so well.
“We’ll still have a hand in it,” Robert said. “We’ll wait and see I guess. I’m looking forward to not having all your time spoken for.”
Susan is looking forward to being able to travel with her husband and visit their children who are spread across the country, a luxury the two have rarely shared together.
“We can go somewhere for a length of time, instead of having to come right home,” Susan said.
Robert said he’ll miss just about every aspect of working his dairy farm. But both he and his wife explained that steadily low milk prices, high fuel prices, and the June flooding have wreaked havoc on their farm, squeezing them and they believe others, into making some tough choices.
“A lot of farmers are going out of business here because prices are so low,” said Susan.“They’ve tightened up as much as they could, but they can’t go anymore.”
According to a report in the October issue of Grassroots, a monthly news publication provided by the New York Farm Bureau, milk prices are at a 25-year low, and individual farmers are losing an estimated $4,000 a month, costing the overall dairy industry in New York hundreds of millions of dollars.
“What can you do if there just isn’t enough money to keep going at this?” Robert said.
Robert also said that growth in the dairy industry, especially out west, and innovations in feeds and breeding have made larger industrial type farms more efficient and mass production the standard, almost phasing out the small farms. They both agree that some local farmers can still be successful by seeking out new alternatives, such as organic farming, but Robert and Susan contend they’ve been at it too long to reinvent themselves now.
The Patts said they don’t have any hard feelings, and that the recent downturn has only nudged them closer to a retirement they’d already been considering.
“It’s never been boring,” said Robert of owning his own farm. “That’s really important.”