Friends on the Road; Three Farmers

Oh. The following program is made possible in part by a grant from the friends of Gen 21 incorporated. My husband had lived on a farm when he was a boy but I had had no farming experience whatsoever and they all thought I was crazy. But I had a ball. There's been once or twice when. I have. They have kind of looked at me and wondered what I would do with a cracker are a veil or a this thing. But I would have to say the majority of the people have stepped in there very well. Well I did have some friends it think you have to be a little bit kooky. Do you even say you like it. But on the whole be excepted is something else that she's doing. And another tangent. She's out. No not really good on the whole. But you know Jane she raises hogs

and. Frozen machinery. Hands bitten brought by a chilled with restless

snowbound livestock rotted barnyard slick with manure and ice. Few of us would be tempted to seek our peace of mind or a pot of gold on a farm in Bleak Midwinter. Those who do accept long hours and relentless exhausting work dairy cows don't wait to be fed or milked because of human illness and fragile January born lambs demand around the clock supervision. Those who are successful make their bargain with a grueling workload and with their age old adversary the weather. In addition they bring savvy skill and a little luck. A lot of sheer determination to their task. June Burns Alice Carroll and Beverly off singer are not typical farmers but they are not typical. Only because they're women in a field that has a reputation as a male domain. Their work and the business decisions they make. No no gender. All three have earned respect managing successful livestock

operations and all faced daily tasks familiar to any farmer. I don't know a farmer Yeah I'd like to think. What kinds of things make you know that you're a farmer. Well I guess the chores. When it rains or snow you still have to feed the hungry. It's kind of a different schedule year round right at this point I get up at 6:30 and make bottles for the triplets. They get one bottle a day the supplement their mother. And I put them in a pail and then said I'm inside the door so they're ready for me when I get ready to feed then I come out and see these guys this hundred thirty she bought here they get 15 bales of hay every morning. Then we go downstairs and the mothers with the babies get all. They get about a condo it's a piece a day and then they get their hate. Then I come up. And get

the bottles and the babies get their bottles. You can't hardly not like on all five of them. So I think they're just like teddy bears. Sam's life teddy bears and she did you know much about this when you started. I had never been on a farm I didn't know one man from the other. This is all new to me. Yeah. Bev No if singer is soft hearted toward her she but she's not soft headed toward cheap branching. Her professional decisions are tough for her and all business. This year we had 130 and we had 275 lambs with the second lamb. And it's a 200 percent lamb graph.

What is the average crop. I think the average of a little over a hundred percent 1.3. So you've been very successful. Yes we have. What do you attribute that success to. Oh I think. The selection. Of twins or triplets. By using prolific that are twins or triplets. And you keep it you must keep real scrupulous records. I do I have records all over the house. My index cards from the time they're born what their lambs do and then they're everything we weigh so we get a hundred and however long if they're keeping that I would give it 100 150 days gone by 100

200 days. And this is their identification and carry. If there's a tag in the rear for breeding stock if they go to market eggs or pool reuse for the next year's market stock. The first batch we had 130 had 230 lambs and only 56 one for meat. The rest went out into flocks and this is kind of been my goal is to get these twins and triplets out in the stock. You know when the flocks were breeding bad as the first and only woman on the Wisconsin sheep industry's blueprint for expansion board her gentle touch has brought her many no nonsense dividends and her pioneering techniques have forced other shepherds to scramble after her. I'm working for my husband but I'm working for myself I don't have a boss say and hurry up. People gotta get this done by nine o'clock or you gotta get it done by 10:00 o'clock. And you work at your own speed you don't have the tension that you would on a normal job.

The five Alice Carroll's days began long before me and they end long after five. Born and raised on the dairy farm she now operates almost milks 40 Holstein cows twice a day. She also does most of her own field work and maintains the farm machinery herself. It's no wonder her days begin before dawn. My morning start relatively early. The formula. For Brown milking time is really around the corner. Six. And after milking this will cost equipment to clean up. I have about 35. Young stock outside that require quite a bit of attention. And from then on the barn clean car that I don't have quite

as. Quite. Probably different food instead John Laws and. The level of classes and time for our. Food in around noon or this. Time when I have food to feed again and he is fed again in the afternoon about 5 o'clock I've been silent in the ground here on and off and time again of all the corners to sex and when I said she was the milking at night. I think so this time I think. First. It. Would not last. I. Couldn't. But. That's. Because I have.

Been very successful. I. Yeah. While all the extra time. Extra time brought her a prestigious first place in a national competition for Dairy Management. Three years ago she was named the outstanding young farmer. In her area. Her cows have also won milk production of them and have done well in dairy cattle. Alice also finds time to help bring town to youngsters in 4-H. It's more than just you know it's what you are. Lawn garden flowers cattle field work

that's we talk about farm that just includes a big big area. I enjoy the outside of the sun and. The new being close to nature. I enjoy working with the cattle and just. Seeing that the end of the day that you have really accomplished something. Maybe maybe the 20 acres of corn that you planted that day the corn was in the sack and by night it's in the ground and by fall you have. The product harvested and it's recycled through the cows. This is one of the things that made it worthwhile. My plants. Come on. Let's check them out. Registered nurse June Burns has traded in her uniform for a pitch for nine years ago she and her husband Jerry moved to farm and today she raises thousands of pigs.

In the morning about 6:30 get out get your hair up there were youngsters off to school and then farm day starts. First I usually make the grounds in the bank go to the outside exit get four different hands out there and different feed relations in different homes and feed them and scrape out so then you clean those pins are embedded in them and you go into the bye and you start to get salad and you greet some little pigs. Senator waiting to have a little peek and treat them. Cleanup will have to be clean you know we do have a bye bye so that you just get in and out when Jerry when the boys gets home from school we actually run out. They do spread night. I don't my tractor. How many hearts to raise now.

Per year. I don't really know but we get by all right around the 60 60 so our herd and keep them going and try to keep going. Three groups they get a little mixed up sometimes. But then not. So and in rough figures how many pigs is that about. Well I mean Little Pigs route that the last time I weaned exactly a 10 year average first time it ever hit him at 9.7. So it took like like 10 times time 60 which you really wouldn't hit but there'd be like 600 fearing time and you care about. Two point two times you about two times a year so that you actually be. On the highest peak probably twelve hundred little pigs. That's just amazement the thinking in the call that it's a pretty fast turnover with it. With Peter Pace Why did you choose pigs. What what is it about pigs that you lie.

I don't know. I just like working with with hogs is going here too. Like I think it really responsible and really smart. They're neat to work with. Even for those who normally enjoy farming it can be discouraging and depressing work especially in the winter. The manure spreader whispers I quit when the temperature hits 20 below and a hundred pigs are ready to float out the door on a tide of manure. A really good efforts that would make Florence Nightingale proud are not enough to save lambs plagued by pneumonia. With the milk truck snowbound 10 miles down the road hundreds of gallons of milk must be dumped. The list goes on and on. That's. Our way ever. There are just enough. Especially in the winter time.

Yes at times like these even the most dedicated time to shut off a little. One at the barn and head for a 9 to 5 job preferably in Florida. Ironically it's a times like these when a farmer must think of the future. Spring and the demanding new growing season that comes with it. When these three farmers are bone weary and it's another Cold Dawn what keeps them going. Always has such rewards. I guess. Besides a spiritual monetary. I don't know. You can just see your rewards with these you lambs that we keep each year as they grow and as they put out the babies take care of you just like your mom was. And this is what you're shooting

for. How much help do you get from your husband. He does all the feeding in the winter time when I lie on me. He feeds him at night which takes quite a load off me because I can be and catch a nap while he's speeding up and I guess moral support more than anything. How do you think your life would be different now if you were if you were still in town. You are still giving Santa lessons. Oh I'd probably be in the same rut. When it gets to the place where you have two and three meetings a day that's it. It's just too much. I don't know I don't think God meant us to work under such pressure. Do you think that you're happier now. Oh I'm sure it's. It's a totally different kind of life. You've seen this just being out here and she for such an easygoing

animal they depend on you and they're so grateful when you take care of them. Well you're almost like their mother. Yeah right. Most of them I am there's only about 15 that I have raised from babies out of the hundred fifty. It could be bad singer she branch means more to her than impressive statistics and hard cash. She loves the sheep so dependent on her with the UN inning stream of lambs to be fed and fussed over in many ways. They're like her children and like any devoted parent she needs them as much as they need her. Alice Carroll insists on doing an outstanding job rather than a merely adequate one. But she realizes that doing an outstanding job as a dairy farmer working alone takes a heavy toll. In the past has. Increased.

I'm interested in more production. More production per acre and so I've had more time. To reach my goals and make this worthwhile. So therefore it's given me less time for things I like to. Have that. I'm giving up. Myself to. Spend more time with. But she. Says stop production. Michaels said. I think that economic. The income from. That income throughout the year it's not like selling your ha. Someone somewhere has come then to my way I think. Certainly necessity. I've been trying to enjoy operation. I enjoy what I'm doing now and I want the best of whatever I do in my life. That's pretty much

what I do not the rest of this. Melva Carroll Alice's mother loves her land and is delighted with the work Alice is doing. It's something that I. Always wanted to do when I was a young girl. People would have been surprised to see a woman do something like that. What would you have done if Alice hadn't started farming in 1970. Do you think you would have stayed here and read the lander. Oh no I don't think so I think that would have been a really hard thing to do. But it would have been really fun like you know figured I could do. Well it's it's a huge job. Well it's interesting you think I have goals I want to reach than.

Maybe ones that I may decide on something different. There are a lot of us go and learn the foreign a lot of hard work. Yeah I think you're cast from outpost wouldn't go into something like that first place but I mean I don't feel like I'm so self-reliant that well if it wasn't given me all be moral support and help and there's no way that I could do anything. How do you divide the work you both work the farm jeered as the crops and he has a chance do you. Yeah yours and you went with the state and now our boys are getting beat you know to do some track to dream which they enjoy much more than. Shoveling this mother. They're more mechanically inclined now. It's a long way from a hospital to a hog farm and some people might say June Burns is squandering her professional training. But June is positive and buoyant about the job she does now.

I think raising a family you know you can doing anything I don't think you a straight education. Class you know with a hog. I really marvel then. Then you'd run then people would realize. That using like with medications and knowing what you're given given a sow's are the little pigs give all take shots and. In the cells once off I have a nervous. Nervous cell that is a little jumpy with. The syringe jare. He's real quick and trigger I get trigger syringe and he's quick trigger. So if I get a real in your head and down and down and before he goes to work. I'm haunted. Another one of the best things is watching the Bigsby. It's just you know it's just unbelievable it's just like it's just like.

What do you see for yourself here. Are you are you happy doing this would you like to go back to nursing. If you had it to do over again would you do the same thing. Oh yeah you know at this stage of my life I wouldn't even when you would consider going back to nursing. In fact down and it was so funny yesterday we were. When a guy had come from gone boating Peter Peterson of farming and told you this but it was somebody from being coming home and he said we just got a reference a letter today from the state asking for a reference maybe because you had applied for some opening in some state or something and I said you've got to be kidding. You know I thought they were putting me on. But no I don't know how this letter ever cropped up or whatever but anyhow I haven't applied to go back into nursing at the present time. I mean perhaps some day but I really can't go see him. I keep John dear I'm just going to subsume that he

can retire and raise hogs. Yeah. It used to be that. Yeah let's face it the man always took all the credit for it. It was just sort of in the background and she was running running the house and doing a lot of that a lot of. Her considerable helping in a bank taking care of the chickens washing machines carrying because it was one you want. I finally offered. And it was more going in. The bank. When we were farming. Full time. Work. Your husband. Did you know but what kinds of things did you do. Well I was following my husband. Well I didn't do so much

work outside then of course I had a family I had five children five daughters but. We had heard we had heard me and so. My job was practically in the house so I didn't do much outside then. So after the children got older when the herdsmen when I guess they were in the higher I for you then did you start working outdoors a few years. Did you enjoy that more than working in the house. Oh yes much more. I know a lot of women have started out in sheep because if she can do what I can do. But a lot of them don't have a husband who has farm background. There's a lot of farmers wives that have an active part in the work outside. And I. I put. That.

In the future. Are women operating farms because they're well after one or two have pioneered out and done it. There may be others that will follow and that's a place that you know I think it's really a great place to raise a family. Why is that. Well just because. I think you get because you're in your own group. I think on the whole your family works better as a teen and still like with things the way they are nowadays. Just because you're out of the country isn't in your own state. I have no if singer Alice Carol and June bird would not say their lives are easy. But each has found success in her own way and each meets a different set of rewards from her from what they share is something intangible.

An ancient philosophy that has bound a certain kind of farmer to his or her life. And for thousands of years it's a fierce affection for independence out of us. It's a compelling interest in the cycles of life and death wheeling through the seas and its inability to remember the green rise of spring when the land is frozen and still a stone. CLANCY. Let's. Say. Hey.

With that. With that. The preceding program was made possible in part by a grant from the friends of Gen

21 incorporated.