Farmer Boy - part 1 of a group of stories of life on one North Country farm
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The life of a dairy farmer is not one most of us would choose. In the winter, the work day begins around 4 AM and continues until early evening; in summer the hours often extend until it is too dark to plant, hay, mend fences or chop corn. I’m talking about seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. Typically the farm wife has a job off the farm, one that provides reliable income and benefits, and she may also milk cows.

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Farm babies

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Our best friends, Pierce and Sarah, are dairy farmers, a life they chose after leaving the service of the Peace Corps in South America back in the early 1970s, and one hot July 4th weekend - as they were approaching retirement - their son came home for a visit, introduced them to his Cuban-American girlfriend and decided to buy the farm across the road. These friends of ours suddenly veered off the path they had been traveling and embarked on an adventure bearing no resemblance to assisted living.

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It took some fast footwork to purchase the farm. It had already been “sold” to another farmer, a man already milking some 300 cows and building a dairy empire, but ink hadn’t been put on paper yet. Pierce had always been a very good neighbor to the seller, and that fact swung the deal.

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The view from one farm to the other on a January morning - Carmencita photo

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Six months later, a wedding was held in the old church that sits within view of the two farms, a wedding attended by family and friends, some 35 Cubans, and the young Amish family who were Pierce and Sarah’s hired hands. A team of Belgian workhorses who (if they thought about such things) were also about to trot in a new direction, went “dashing through the snow” pulling sleigh-fulls of laughing wedding guests from one farm to the other and back. Matt and Anna left corporate jobs in warmer climates and took up farming in the North Country.

Morning light in the barn - Carmencita photo
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This story to be continued...