Memorial Day is a national observance to remember those fallen in war. It's the unofficial first day of summer. In 1986, it became for me a day of remembering a way of life connected to animals.
I was 28 that year and my daughter was 3. We lived in Minneapolis and drove an hour north, to the century farm where I grew up, to witness the cows' last day.
My Swiss great-grandfather learned dairy when he came to the United States in 1880, working for his uncle east of town before buying land of his own, three miles north. The herd he established was improved by his sons from 1912 to 1957 and by his grandsons from 1957 to 1986. Some of the Holsteins in the photos that I took that day are certainly descended from cows I knew as a girl on the farm in the 1960s and '70s. Most of them were stanchioned in the barn built in 1963.
In the 1980s, the U.S. economy put a lot of farms out of business. The conventional wisdom was that a farmer had to get big or get out. The movie Country was released in 1984, and the first Farm Aid benefit was played in 1985. The Food Security Act (or Farm Bill) of 1985 signed that December authorized, among other things, a dairy termination program or whole-herd dairy buyout. After a bleak assessment of many factors, my dad and uncle entered a bid and it was accepted. A date was set and appointment made with a trucker to arrive on that holiday Monday in May.
Dad and Uncle Gaylon were happy that morning. It was impossible not to be affected by that or reflect on what their lives had been to that point. Almost every one of their days had been defined by the necessity of milking a herd of cows twice, roughly 12 hours apart. They knew how lucky they were to milk with electricity and running water—and how lucky to milk in partnership, with the possibility of giving each other days off for vacation or illness. How lucky they were to have hard-working wives, sons, and daughters. But their children had other opportunities now. Dad and Uncle didn't want the hard life of dairy farming for us.
I took photos of the cows, of Dad milking for the last time, of my daughter next to the stainless steel bulk tank, of Uncle Gaylon and her next to the big tractor. I took a few photos after the truckers arrived, but I was too sickened and sad and had to stop and take my daughter away from the barn. After dark, loaded with our cows and heifers and calves, the trailer labored out the driveway and the barns were silent.
A condition of the buyout program was that the facilities and land on a participating farm could not be used for any dairy operation for five years. One goal was to reduce the milk supply and help raise the price of milk for the remaining, mostly bigger dairy farmers. Another was to help small farmers make the transition out of farming and into another line of work.
As with so many things, there were unexpected consequences, some that—even then—didn't seem so unexpected. Beef farmers put up a fuss because their prices went down when the meat of a million slaughtered dairy cows and more than half a million heifers and calves hit the market. Also hitting the market about that time was bovine growth hormone, which increased the milk output per animal, so the dip in national milk supply was brief. The average size of U.S. farms went up.
During those five transitional years, Dad and Uncle pastured a small herd of beef cattle, which was easy compared to dairy. Dad took classes. got a boilerman's license, and worked in a series of maintenance jobs at local schools and nursing homes until he landed a job with weekends off. Even being on call 24/7 seemed easy. Uncle drove a paper route and tried some other things, but five years after the buyout, when a neighbor bought the Marty farm, he went to work for him on that much bigger dairy farm.
On Memorial Day 1986, Dad and Uncle didn't know what would happen in a year or five years. They just knew they didn't have to get up the next day or the next or the next to milk cows. Their faces were filled with relief. That was the saving grace of that day.
Every spring, at the First Lutheran Cemetery east of town, we plant flowers on the family plot before Memorial Day. My great-grandfather bought a plot there because, he said, he wanted to be buried in the earth where he first herded cows when he came to America, learning the dairy trade. It's a pretty spot, high above Rush Creek, where he dreamed of the life he wanted to create for his descendants. I'm glad I was one of them.
Photos by Gayla Marty. Kodacolor. May 1986. Top: Cows on the southeast quadrant. Middle: Gordon Marty holding a pipeline milker. Bottom: Gaylon and Gordon Marty.