Sad Night at the Dairy.

Strange that you are telling this story today. About two years ago I move to another city and away from a few farms that I used to pest on. I have been back to them but not as often. Today my brother stopped by a dairy farm I used to frequent. The last time I was there the dairy farmer was not as talkative. My brother relayed to me that the farmer was going to sell his cows and get out of the dairy business. He intends to grow alfalfa for the local horse farms. I hope he can make the change and earn a decent living. A sad state of affairs for sure. Bill

I just found out three days ago that my small local dairy will be going out of business. They will still have beef cows though.

I know what you guys mean when farms go out of business, a couple of years ago our last dairy farm went out of business. Now a gallon of milk cost $10.00 to $12.00 shipped over from the mainland USA.

I had heard something on the radio a month or so ago about there being a record surplus of dairy products. The attributed a decline in consumption, not great for the farmers - I cant be persuaded to give it up myself!

Here in Pa the farmers are getting paid the amount they received in the 1980’s for their milk. The small farm is hanging by a thread The weather has been so wet they can’t get into the fields. Seems like selling to the developer is the only solution.

Many of the local farms are now truck distribution centers of which there seems to be no end in sight.

I live along the 81 corridor and I am certain some travel that road . What you see is as you drive is 50% or less of what is there.

I dont “get” it but have trouble seeing it as progress or reasonable land use. 

Howeveer a vacant truck center would make a good indoor range. 

That's a universal sad story for small, independent farmers these days. My contribution here is regarding your fox eating the rats. Several years ago in VA something was killing and eating my bluebirds in their boxes. I couldn't figure out how this was happening, as I had the cans on the poles to keep critters out. One morning I was checking the nest out front, and found the baby birds mangled, half eaten. I reached in to clean the nest out, and out jumped a flying squirrel, I was lucky I didn't get bitten.

So that's what was killing my bluebirds! I hung a bird feeder on the side of a large oak tree out back, about 15 yd. from my kitchen window. The house had two spots out back, and they lit up the entire back yard like it was day. The first night I checked the feeder after turning the spots on, the tree around the feeder was swarming with those little flying squirrels, must have been close to a dozen of them. I got my RWS .22 out and popped one, and the rest of them split. Turned the lights out, waited about 5 minutes and there they were again. Killed 3 of them that night. This got to be a regular nightly occurrence, and after about a week, the 2nd time I turned the lights back on, there was a big red fox enjoying his meal...fresh flying squirrel. I had wondered where they all went in the morning when I checked.

I trimmed the population enough to give my bluebirds an even chance at surviving and helped make my red fox helper a little on the pudgy side as well!