Completely oblivious to my utter lack of herding skills, Farmer Jay yelled down to me, “Make sure none of the cows get through that open gate,” as four or five large Holsteins galloped in my direction.
As I placed my 200-pound physique in their path, I simultaneously calculated that the total bovine mass heading toward me was around 8,000 pounds. I never imagined a cow as being a particularly intimidating animal, at least until the moment arrived when I had one rapidly coming at me.
Luckily for me, a few claps of the hands and a commanding shout made up for the four ton difference and the animals came to a skittering halt.
This moment passed as did many others where I felt a sharp sense of city slicker panic over nothing more than the barnyard mundane. These moments were almost always punctuated with an amused chuckle or smirk from one of my gracious hosts.
Last Wednesday I traveled to the rural country of Smyrna to visit the Ingerto family farm, run by Jay and Ginny Ingerto. The couple has operated the 425-acre dairy farm for the last 25 plus years with the help of their two adult children Alan, 27, and Colleen, 24. However in the last few years, Jay and Ginny have run the farm mostly by themselves as their daughter moved away for college and their son married and started his own family.
“What do I really like about it? It’s the same chores every day, but it’s never the same day and the work changes through out the year. It certainly keeps things interesting,” said Jay.
“The biggest concern we have is having to milk twice a day, every day,” explained Jay, who hasn’t been able to take a “real vacation” with his wife in the past 25 years.
He explained that the animals have a natural cycle and should be milked about every 12 hours in order to avoid infection and achieve maximum milk output.
For most farmers, this means either getting up early or staying up late, for the Ingertos it’s more of the latter with their daily chores beginning early in the morning and taking until about 1 p.m. The work resumes at around 6 p.m., for about an hour, to feed the cows. Then later that night at around 8 or 9 p.m., the Ingertos begin their second round of milking that sometimes runs into the a.m. hours.
“Sometimes things go pretty smoothly and it goes by quick and sometimes, when there’s an unforeseen problem, it seems like we might be working all night. But that’s not too often,” said Ginny.
The couple met while attending college in Delhi; Ginny graduated with a associate’s degree in veterinary science technology and Jay has one in dairy husbandry.
I was only with them for about four hours during their morning milking time and the first thing any farmer does before they get to work is to dress for the day ahead.
On this particular morning, the ground was frozen and the air was a cool 40 degrees with the wind rolling over the open Smyrna hill sides, where the farm happens to sit, making it seem even cooler.
Besides the basics, here’s a list of clothing I put on: sweat pants, jeans, T-shirt, sweatshirt, wool socks, shoes, rubber boot-covers, gloves, winter hat and overalls.
The first activity of the day was supposed to be laying down saw dust in the calves’ stalls, but Jay explained that saw dust was getting harder to come by in the past year.
“Well, since the housing market took a hit, the lumber yards aren’t moving or cutting as much product and so there’s a lot less saw dust as a result,” he said. I paused for a moment at the idea of the falling economy landing so close to home in a way I had never thought of before. So instead, we used some discarded cardboard that had to be shredded first.
But Jay wasn’t worried. He, like most rural farmers, is among the most adaptable, capable and resourceful group of people you’d find anywhere. And it’s for good reason: the typical farm has a wide demand for many different types of skilled labor, from animal care to machinist, crop planting to food sanitation. Most families have to figure out a way to do it all. On top of that, the type of work changes with the growing of the seasons and the technology of the times. In the past two and a half decades, Jay said he and his wife have become adept at many jobs, including the repair of heavy machinery.
“Everything you can do yourself, you do, or learn to do, because if you can’t get it done then you’ll have to pay someone else to do it,” said Ginny.
After feeding and bedding the calves, we left to start milking the heifers. The Ingertos milk about 104 of their 200-plus herd, generating over 814 gallons of milk a day. A milk truck comes every other day to pick up over 14,000 pounds of milk (1,628 gallons), even on weekends or holidays if need be.
Ginny and Jay taught me how to milk with my bare hands and to my surprise, I was a natural. However, the practice is little more than a novelty these days and everything is now done by machine. Ginny explained that when the cow’s udders were attached to the milking machine, a number of the herd could produce over 17 pounds of milk a minute – that’s about a gallon of milk being pumped every 30 seconds from just one cow.
The machine also filtered and stored the milk in a 2,700 gallon storage tank found in the adjoining room.
I stayed long enough to help wash down and dry the udders of about half the milking cows (that’s 200 teats) while Ginny attached the suction machine onto them and Jay worked in the barn.
Ginny said she enjoyed the work. “We just like to work with animals and it’s fun, something different, something new comes up every day. Plus we get to work with each other,” she said.
During the walk from the barn to the car, I looked out across the snow white valley and beautiful country side. Birds were singing, barn kittens wrestled at my feet and the trusty German Shepherd security system, named Tipper, followed along side. The sun had come out and the world had begun to warm; even the air tasted clean and crisp.
Make no mistake: if nothing else, farming is a lot of work. But I think in another life I would have been a farmer. The animals, the work, the rewarding feeling at the end of the day knowing you carved a life from the earth itself seem very appealing to my younger country boy roots. When I finally did leave, I felt a sense of longing and a deep appreciation of the lifestyle that bordered on envy as I piled back into my car and drove back to my office cubicle.