To the Editor:
Re “The Last Days of Butter Ridge,” by Eli Saslow (front page, May 3):
This article offers a clear picture of the personal toll that losing the family dairy farm brought upon Brad Watson and his family. However, we did not get clarification on an important point: “His milk check came every other week.”
Where does the milk check come from? Is there only one place in this country to get your milk check? Is this how other dairy farmers make money selling their milk — the milk check just comes? Is our economy so inflexible and top-heavy that there’s only one outlet for profitable milk sales as a family producer?
I’m a physician, not a farmer, and I can’t help but draw parallels from the Watsons’ experience to what has happened in health care. Everybody is just waiting for the “milk check.”
Many craftsmen and professionals in America have seen their products or labor lose economic viability. Often this can be traced to the failure of local markets. In many cases, large corporations control the flow of the product, set prices and ultimately the reimbursement to those who actually produce value in the economic system.
Some doctors are waiting for their “milk check” from the insurance companies; they don’t get to decide how much they get paid. Instead, they keep the doors open while reimbursement rates decrease and costs increase, until these independent doctors are forced to close their offices. Their practices become, as the Watsons’ banker told them about their farm, “a hobby, not a business.”
Jarrod P. Couch
Abingdon, Va.
To the Editor:
This article makes it seem as if the collapse of a small dairy farm is somehow the inevitable outcome of rising costs and government policies that favor and subsidize the large industrial producers of farm products. It’s a system that completely fails small producers.
When will the people of Pennsylvania stop wringing their hands and stop voting for politicians who pander to big industry?
The current farm bill includes many provisions that masquerade as cultural issues but really are just catering to giant profit-hungry corporations and squeezing the producer and the consumer.
The myth that we cannot feed the millions with small farms is based on self-fulfilling government policies.
Serge Scherbatskoy
Arcata, Calif.
To the Editor:
Reading this heartbreaking article, at times through tears, set off a flood of childhood memories of our dairy farm. We must never take for granted our easy access to safe, wholesome milk, which is available because of people like Brad Watson, my father and so many others like them.
These unsung heroes must balance the freedom of being their own boss while looking to the future, facing risks that are beyond their control — the weather, milk prices and increasing costs. There is always next year, until there is not.
Only now, as I approach retirement, do I see how my father’s indomitable patience, perseverance, courage and optimism imbued me with some of those qualities to inspire my pursuit of an equally uncertain career in classical music.
If only, while I still had the chance, I could have seen that and thanked him.
Gary Fisher
Pittsford, N.Y.
To the Editor:
I wept for the Watson family and the loss of its dairy farm.
When I was a child in the early 1940s, my uncle Porter Hardy Jr. taught me, his town-girl niece, to milk a cow. On the family farm he also taught me to drive a tractor, feed livestock and muck out barns.
Uncle Porter went on to the U.S. House of Representatives, serving Virginia’s Second District with distinction from 1947 to 1969, and I became a city girl, starting a writing career at The Richmond Times-Dispatch.
But the lessons of farm life, including reverence for nature, respect for the land and an understanding of what we mortals owe one another, were the truths he taught me. They cannot be learned beside an automated milking machine.
I’m certain that generations past have given thanks for the work of generations of Watsons. I wish the present and future generations peace and success.
Fran Moreland Johns
San Francisco
To the Editor:
“The Last Days of Butter Ridge” provides a tragic, personal story about the last of a long line of dairy farmers leaving the business. The Watsons were clearly hard workers who loved dairy farming, but they labored in a society that fails to see farm animals as creatures that want to enjoy life as much as we do.
Through mechanical milking, cows can produce 100 times more milk per day than they would to feed their offspring, and they are at risk of mastitis and pain from distended udders. The cows dislike the process, as well as being chained to their stalls. At farm sanctuaries, caregivers watch cows move freely and enthusiastically.
If the public would view cows and other farm animals less as commodities, and more as sentient creatures, perhaps people would decide that their enjoyment of animal products isn’t worth the conditions the animals must endure.
Ellen F. Crain
Poughquag, N.Y.
The writer is a founder of Safe Haven Farm Sanctuary.
To the Editor:
I grew up in Connecticut next to a farm of prize Guernsey cows, who also had names, just like the Butter Ridge cows Jello, S’mores and Karma. One or another of the Harmony Farm herd would sometimes wander into our front yard, grazing contentedly on bluegrass.
Thanks to Eli Saslow for this bittersweet story at a time when much news is bitter.
Penelope Ross
Westport, Conn.
To the Editor:
Do you want to know what I found was the saddest part of “The Last Days of Butter Ridge”? It was that the owner believed that Donald Trump cared.
Polly Windels
Ballston Spa, N.Y.
