Novel worth reading

[Jean]

I just finished reading John S Hall’s book, The West Window. It is written by a dairy farmer in East Montpelier, VT. I bought it because of the picture on the cover, so I guess you can judge a book by its cover.

It is a fun read, the characters are great, everyone of them reminded me of someone I know, or have met having lived in rural VT for most of life.

It is set in the 40’s. Pretty amazing how the prices of cows are the same today as they were then, but the prices of land are so far off the chart you would have to use another chart to track it.

Jean

[Plowboy]

Jean that sounds like a great book and may look into it for my Dad to read. He is a lifelong dairy farmer despite the pitfalls he has survived keeping his overhead low and to the amusement of some of our larger neighbors uses horses in the fields when possible. They are a little slower and when pressed for weather and time the tractors still come through. Milk is at an all time high but so is fuel, fertilizer and feed. The farm report claims milk will drop significantly and fuel feed and fertilizer will stay high. My fear is that the few remaining small dairies will throw in their hat and the small northeast dairy farms will disappear as they have steadily all of my 30 years. Even yesterday as we cleaned the horse barn he seemed discouraged and that if what they say is true he may have to throw in the towel. He has a good mixed herd with some good holstein, ayrshires, jersey xholstein, swedish red x holstein and now breeding in some dutch belted. A few years ago we were holstein and ayrshire purebred but the holstein has been bred solely for milk production and their longevity is terrible. We have been experimenting with different crosses to help get longer lasting cows and still keep production up.
Sorry to get off track but right now good cows are bringing upwards of $2500 with the high price of milk. If there are good cows bringing 1940’s prices in your area I’d love to buy a load and bring them back here to a good dairy sale and make some quick money. It’s amazing that everything a farmer buys at market value is so high and what he gets is subject to the wholesale market and the processor gets his share no matter what. It’s a terrible time we live in now. What used to be an agrarian society has turned into a minority only to get smaller except for a few of us that enjoy growing our own food.

[Author]

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