I wake up at 5 o’clock every morning and leave for work. I get one hour off for breakfast and one hour off for lunch. I come home around 8 P.M. each night. Sometimes 7:30 if things have gone really well. 8:30 or later if they haven’t. I have no say in how much I get paid, and I can never ask for a raise.
I am a dairy farmer
I am not one to go around telling people that I love my job, but that doesn’t mean that I hate it either. It’s the business I grew up in, and the only career I have ever known. My father was a dairy farmer and so was his father before him. I began helping my father as a child. I was driving tractors at age ten and farm trucks at age twelve. I have farmed with my two older brothers all my life. When I was twenty-one and finished with college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I officially became an “employee” of Heintz Dairy Farms. My father had decided to retire and my brother Ralph and I took over the family business. Together we decided to make it a partnership and split our income fifty/fifty. On the farm, we each do what we are good at. Ralph does most of the veterinary work along with planting and picking corn. I’m in charge of most of the mechanic work, and I also chop feed, bale hay, disc, and grind feed. My oldest brother Marvin is not part of the milking partnership but he does help us with welding and field work and he raises calves, as well.
All together, my two brothers and I own five farms. We each own our own farm and there are two farms that Ralph and I own together. The “home farm” is where we milk the cows. The other four farms are used for keeping heifers, growing crops, and storing corn, hay, and machinery. Ralph and I each live on one of these farms, separate from the home farm and we commute to work each day. Between us we own 520 acres of land. We use 150 acres for corn, 150 for hay, 100 for pasture, 20 for oats, and the rest is woods and wetlands and is considered wasteland.
When Ralph and I first went into business together, we only milked sixty dairy cows. As time went on and expenses went up, along with the number of children in our families, we needed to increase this number to have a larger income. Today we milk a hundred cows in two shifts of fifty cows twice a day, that is, two shifts at 5:30 A.M. and two shifts at 5:30 P.M. Milking one-hundred cows takes about two hours. There is some prep work to be done before each shift, like feeding the cows and calves, putting the milkers together, and scraping the walkway. There is also cleanup to be done afterward, like cleaning the milk-house, cleaning the milkers, and scraping the walkway again. To some this may sound tedious but it is what I have done for over thirty years. Just like you brush your teeth every morning and every night, you don’t think twice, it’s just something that you have to do. In this case it’s the same six hours of work everyday.
When we aren’t milking cows, we are feeding cattle, doing field work, or fixing things. These activities usually consume my afternoons. On Sundays, though, I take the afternoon off to be with my family and it is a day I look forward to. Farming is a seven-day-a-week, 365-days-a-year job, with no vacations and no sick days. If you do need to take off for some reason, you are responsible for finding replacement. This usually isn’t a problem since my son, Bob, is now old enough to handle most of the milking chores and some of the field work. He’s usually out there helping us anyway these days, but if we need more help, my daughters sometimes even come out and help, with smiles on their faces of course. Ralph’s son has helped out as well, and so have family friends when we’ve needed them in times of emergency, like when Ralph had a heart attack back in 2000. I appreciate the extra help anytime we can get it. It always makes our job go faster. That way, I can get home sooner to be with my family, attend my kids’ sporting events, or possibly get to bed earlier. In the summer, the barn can get very hot. Just imagine days when it’s ninety-five degrees out and you’re packed in a barn with fifty large animals. The heat is horrendous. The sooner I can get the cows milked and get out of there, the happier I am.
As dairy farmers, our cows produce milk that goes into making butter and cheeses. All of our milk is trucked to a co-op dairy in the small town of Alto which is about fifty-five miles away from where we farm in Poynette. Ralph and I get paid twice a month and our check is based upon the amount of milk in our bulk tank and the value of milk at that time. Because milk prices change all of the time, we never know how much we are going to be paid. Milk prices are regulated by cheese and butter prices. We are always watching these prices and budget our spending money accordantly if we know prices are down and our next check is not going to be that big. There have been time the milk prices have been real low, and many dairy farmers that we know have had to go out of business. This is such a frustrating time because you are working just as hard, or even harder to keep the bulk tank is filled to capacity and get the most money that you can, but your income doesn’t reflect this work.
The worst days for a dairy farmer, though, are when there are milking disasters. There have been times when the pipes that carry the milk from the milk machines on the cows to the bulk tank break or get disconnected and all of our milk runs out onto the ground. Your money literally goes down the drain. Or a cow with mastitis (an udder infection) accidentally gets milked and we have to dump everything we have collected if we don’t catch it before it gets mixed in with all the cows’ milk. If this contaminated milk were to slip past inspection and somehow make its way onto the milk truck, all the milk from all of the farms the milk truck has collected from would have to be dumped. If our farm’s milk (about 600 gallons per day) would contaminate the 6,000 gallons on the truck, we would be responsible for paying for the whole load of milk. This is something that very rarely happens though, because all of our milk is tested every time it is picked up and taken from our farm for market. The milk hauler tests it for drugs, water content, bacteria, cell count (a test for mastitis), and butterfat. A milk inspector can come out to our farm without notice at any given time. To stay prepared we must always have a clean milk house and clean barn. This is all part of being subject to state and federal guidelines for producing and selling our milk. One good thing is that we have always been told that our farm has some of the cleanest and safest milk. Up until Ralph’s heart attack, we would always dip jugs into the bulk tank and take raw milk home for our families. We no longer do this because raw milk is so high in fat. Surprisingly, my family and I now drink skim milk, which was very hard to get use to since we once drank the freshest milk you could get.
Even though a person may think, for dairy farmers, spilled milk is the one thing we would cry most over, it is only one of the catastrophes I have faced as a farmer. There have been numerous machinery breakdowns or blown tires in the middle of field work, machinery fires that we couldn’t put out and had to call the fire department to help us (in the middle of field work), and escaping cattle onto country roads where they can get hit or kill someone (this has happen too many times to count, sometimes in the wee hours of the morning and we have to search in the dark until we find all of them and then fix the fence that they broke out of). With farming, you never know what to expect next and you always have to be on top of things and be paying attention. My brothers and I have each had our own personal scares on the farm, cases where we have almost died. Each of us have been chased by a raging bull, kicked by a cow, or have been on a farm vehicle that suddenly caught fire. Ralph once got his wedding ring caught on a piece of equipment and almost had his finger ripped off and had to be taken to the hospital. Marvin has had his jaw broken and the side of his head cut when a jack popped out from under the equipment he was working on and hit him in the face. I have fallen off of a barn roof, experienced short-term memory loss, broke 4 bones in my face, and received over one-hundred stitches. Farming is dangerous job, there’s no denying that, but it is my life. I don’t think about it twice. I just work harder to be more careful by telling people where I will be working and learning from the things that went wrong so they don’t happen again so I’m more prepared the next time they do.
Farming is hard work. Every season there are different things that need to be done at a certain time, in certain weather in order to get the maximum benefits. In the spring we disc, plant corn and oats, spray for weeds, and chop green feed. In the summer we mow, rake, and bale hay, cultivate corn, combine oats, bale straw, and chop green feed. In the fall we pick the corn, chop stocks, chop green feed, chop corn for the silo, and disc. A lot of these activities require rain at specific times for maximum growth. Too much rain will flood the fields or prevent the hay from drying out so it can’t be baled. Not enough rain means the crops won’t grow tall or fully mature. We must also battle with early frosts, hale storms, and high winds. We want to have plenty of crops, hay, and straw harvested so when winter comes we don’t run out. This is why problems with machinery are so frustrating. Most recently our corn picker started on fire and we had to wait a week after the corn was ready to be picked to replace it. This only makes the corn more susceptible to frost and risk of damage. It is devastating to see half a years work go to waste and then have to figure out some way to make up for it to feed the cattle.
For the Heintz’s, farming is a family business. We don’t know any other way of life. Waking at five in the morning is just natural to me. I love farming because I can see the things I accomplish from start to finish, like raising cattle or planting crops. I have a hand in it all and I reap my own rewards. I love the rural life and I always wanted to raise a family in the quiet country life. I never thought about how long I would farm when I took over the farm with my brother. I’m fifty-five now and Ralph is sixty, but I do not see us retiring anytime soon. Ralph’s kids are all grown up, but I’m still putting mine through college and right now milk is paying for that. My youngest son Bob wants to attend UW Madison next fall to study Dairy Science and plans to one day take over the family business. This would be my greatest dream. I would love to see the farm continue on after I retire, but I don’t know if he can do it by himself.
What makes me the saddest right now, though, is to see the loss of farmland to development and other farmers having to go out of business because of low milk prices. There used to be farms all over the Dekorra Township. Now, it is though the dairy farmer is becoming an endangered species. Many people don’t understand farmers and the importance of this life to us. We are stewards of the land. We bring milk, butter, cheese, and yogurt to your tables. We work hard everyday, never knowing how we will be rewarded. Most important of all, we keep tradition alive. I hope the tradition of Heintz Dairy Farms doesn’t end after me.
I am a dairy farmer
I am not one to go around telling people that I love my job, but that doesn’t mean that I hate it either. It’s the business I grew up in, and the only career I have ever known. My father was a dairy farmer and so was his father before him. I began helping my father as a child. I was driving tractors at age ten and farm trucks at age twelve. I have farmed with my two older brothers all my life. When I was twenty-one and finished with college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I officially became an “employee” of Heintz Dairy Farms. My father had decided to retire and my brother Ralph and I took over the family business. Together we decided to make it a partnership and split our income fifty/fifty. On the farm, we each do what we are good at. Ralph does most of the veterinary work along with planting and picking corn. I’m in charge of most of the mechanic work, and I also chop feed, bale hay, disc, and grind feed. My oldest brother Marvin is not part of the milking partnership but he does help us with welding and field work and he raises calves, as well.
All together, my two brothers and I own five farms. We each own our own farm and there are two farms that Ralph and I own together. The “home farm” is where we milk the cows. The other four farms are used for keeping heifers, growing crops, and storing corn, hay, and machinery. Ralph and I each live on one of these farms, separate from the home farm and we commute to work each day. Between us we own 520 acres of land. We use 150 acres for corn, 150 for hay, 100 for pasture, 20 for oats, and the rest is woods and wetlands and is considered wasteland.
When Ralph and I first went into business together, we only milked sixty dairy cows. As time went on and expenses went up, along with the number of children in our families, we needed to increase this number to have a larger income. Today we milk a hundred cows in two shifts of fifty cows twice a day, that is, two shifts at 5:30 A.M. and two shifts at 5:30 P.M. Milking one-hundred cows takes about two hours. There is some prep work to be done before each shift, like feeding the cows and calves, putting the milkers together, and scraping the walkway. There is also cleanup to be done afterward, like cleaning the milk-house, cleaning the milkers, and scraping the walkway again. To some this may sound tedious but it is what I have done for over thirty years. Just like you brush your teeth every morning and every night, you don’t think twice, it’s just something that you have to do. In this case it’s the same six hours of work everyday.
When we aren’t milking cows, we are feeding cattle, doing field work, or fixing things. These activities usually consume my afternoons. On Sundays, though, I take the afternoon off to be with my family and it is a day I look forward to. Farming is a seven-day-a-week, 365-days-a-year job, with no vacations and no sick days. If you do need to take off for some reason, you are responsible for finding replacement. This usually isn’t a problem since my son, Bob, is now old enough to handle most of the milking chores and some of the field work. He’s usually out there helping us anyway these days, but if we need more help, my daughters sometimes even come out and help, with smiles on their faces of course. Ralph’s son has helped out as well, and so have family friends when we’ve needed them in times of emergency, like when Ralph had a heart attack back in 2000. I appreciate the extra help anytime we can get it. It always makes our job go faster. That way, I can get home sooner to be with my family, attend my kids’ sporting events, or possibly get to bed earlier. In the summer, the barn can get very hot. Just imagine days when it’s ninety-five degrees out and you’re packed in a barn with fifty large animals. The heat is horrendous. The sooner I can get the cows milked and get out of there, the happier I am.
As dairy farmers, our cows produce milk that goes into making butter and cheeses. All of our milk is trucked to a co-op dairy in the small town of Alto which is about fifty-five miles away from where we farm in Poynette. Ralph and I get paid twice a month and our check is based upon the amount of milk in our bulk tank and the value of milk at that time. Because milk prices change all of the time, we never know how much we are going to be paid. Milk prices are regulated by cheese and butter prices. We are always watching these prices and budget our spending money accordantly if we know prices are down and our next check is not going to be that big. There have been time the milk prices have been real low, and many dairy farmers that we know have had to go out of business. This is such a frustrating time because you are working just as hard, or even harder to keep the bulk tank is filled to capacity and get the most money that you can, but your income doesn’t reflect this work.
The worst days for a dairy farmer, though, are when there are milking disasters. There have been times when the pipes that carry the milk from the milk machines on the cows to the bulk tank break or get disconnected and all of our milk runs out onto the ground. Your money literally goes down the drain. Or a cow with mastitis (an udder infection) accidentally gets milked and we have to dump everything we have collected if we don’t catch it before it gets mixed in with all the cows’ milk. If this contaminated milk were to slip past inspection and somehow make its way onto the milk truck, all the milk from all of the farms the milk truck has collected from would have to be dumped. If our farm’s milk (about 600 gallons per day) would contaminate the 6,000 gallons on the truck, we would be responsible for paying for the whole load of milk. This is something that very rarely happens though, because all of our milk is tested every time it is picked up and taken from our farm for market. The milk hauler tests it for drugs, water content, bacteria, cell count (a test for mastitis), and butterfat. A milk inspector can come out to our farm without notice at any given time. To stay prepared we must always have a clean milk house and clean barn. This is all part of being subject to state and federal guidelines for producing and selling our milk. One good thing is that we have always been told that our farm has some of the cleanest and safest milk. Up until Ralph’s heart attack, we would always dip jugs into the bulk tank and take raw milk home for our families. We no longer do this because raw milk is so high in fat. Surprisingly, my family and I now drink skim milk, which was very hard to get use to since we once drank the freshest milk you could get.
Even though a person may think, for dairy farmers, spilled milk is the one thing we would cry most over, it is only one of the catastrophes I have faced as a farmer. There have been numerous machinery breakdowns or blown tires in the middle of field work, machinery fires that we couldn’t put out and had to call the fire department to help us (in the middle of field work), and escaping cattle onto country roads where they can get hit or kill someone (this has happen too many times to count, sometimes in the wee hours of the morning and we have to search in the dark until we find all of them and then fix the fence that they broke out of). With farming, you never know what to expect next and you always have to be on top of things and be paying attention. My brothers and I have each had our own personal scares on the farm, cases where we have almost died. Each of us have been chased by a raging bull, kicked by a cow, or have been on a farm vehicle that suddenly caught fire. Ralph once got his wedding ring caught on a piece of equipment and almost had his finger ripped off and had to be taken to the hospital. Marvin has had his jaw broken and the side of his head cut when a jack popped out from under the equipment he was working on and hit him in the face. I have fallen off of a barn roof, experienced short-term memory loss, broke 4 bones in my face, and received over one-hundred stitches. Farming is dangerous job, there’s no denying that, but it is my life. I don’t think about it twice. I just work harder to be more careful by telling people where I will be working and learning from the things that went wrong so they don’t happen again so I’m more prepared the next time they do.
Farming is hard work. Every season there are different things that need to be done at a certain time, in certain weather in order to get the maximum benefits. In the spring we disc, plant corn and oats, spray for weeds, and chop green feed. In the summer we mow, rake, and bale hay, cultivate corn, combine oats, bale straw, and chop green feed. In the fall we pick the corn, chop stocks, chop green feed, chop corn for the silo, and disc. A lot of these activities require rain at specific times for maximum growth. Too much rain will flood the fields or prevent the hay from drying out so it can’t be baled. Not enough rain means the crops won’t grow tall or fully mature. We must also battle with early frosts, hale storms, and high winds. We want to have plenty of crops, hay, and straw harvested so when winter comes we don’t run out. This is why problems with machinery are so frustrating. Most recently our corn picker started on fire and we had to wait a week after the corn was ready to be picked to replace it. This only makes the corn more susceptible to frost and risk of damage. It is devastating to see half a years work go to waste and then have to figure out some way to make up for it to feed the cattle.
For the Heintz’s, farming is a family business. We don’t know any other way of life. Waking at five in the morning is just natural to me. I love farming because I can see the things I accomplish from start to finish, like raising cattle or planting crops. I have a hand in it all and I reap my own rewards. I love the rural life and I always wanted to raise a family in the quiet country life. I never thought about how long I would farm when I took over the farm with my brother. I’m fifty-five now and Ralph is sixty, but I do not see us retiring anytime soon. Ralph’s kids are all grown up, but I’m still putting mine through college and right now milk is paying for that. My youngest son Bob wants to attend UW Madison next fall to study Dairy Science and plans to one day take over the family business. This would be my greatest dream. I would love to see the farm continue on after I retire, but I don’t know if he can do it by himself.
What makes me the saddest right now, though, is to see the loss of farmland to development and other farmers having to go out of business because of low milk prices. There used to be farms all over the Dekorra Township. Now, it is though the dairy farmer is becoming an endangered species. Many people don’t understand farmers and the importance of this life to us. We are stewards of the land. We bring milk, butter, cheese, and yogurt to your tables. We work hard everyday, never knowing how we will be rewarded. Most important of all, we keep tradition alive. I hope the tradition of Heintz Dairy Farms doesn’t end after me.
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