A Farm Story | The End of an Era | Beahm Dairy Farm
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ส.ค. 2018
- Over 36 years of being in the dairy industry has come to an end for Chester and Carol Beahm and their family. With the rise large commercial dairies, and companies like Walmart creating their own dairy farms, the small-dairy farmer is becoming more and more scarce.
I followed this beautiful family around for a couple of hours in August, a few weeks before their cows were sold and the farm went quiet.
This is their story . . .
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And auction for the Beahm Farm will be held on September 15th in Remington, VA. For more information, visit this website through September 15, 2018: www.rogermillerauctions.com/
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**This farm is a working farm therefore there are farm sounds in the background.
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© Amy K. Fewell | All Rights Reserved.
www.thefewellhomestead.com
Music: www.epidemicsound.com
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Boy this made me cry.... and brought back a flood of memories when my parents had to sell out of our small dairy when I was a teenager. It was one of the saddest days ever & it broke my dads heart...Most farmers do it for the love of it not for the money .. but at the end of the day you have to pay your own bills and put food on your own families table, you can only stay in the red so long. Such a sad commodity being lost to factory farms. I pray for a common sense logic to sweep the minds of politicians and those in high places to hear the voice of the difference makers, the men and women whose hands and heart bleed to feed this land..they matter. I commend this man and his family! Thank you for sharing Amy!
17 18 and 19 Ohio lost many of their small family dairy's. During this time a big mega dairy went in just south of Van Wert ..
I grew up on a dairy farm, we milked about 100 to 150 head. I knew growing up that the money was not there and joined the Military out of high school in 1993. I got out just in time to see my grandfather sell the farm. He was able to keep a few acres of land and the house he built, but the farm was gone forever and so was the innocent farm boy who went to join the military. I came back a profoundly different person, and the life I left was gone anyway. In the end everything worked out and I have a good life. The military is a good choice if your a farm kid looking for direction but just remeber, there can be a price. Things seen can never be unseen. They will live with you forever, until death.
I cherish those memories of growing up on the farm and between that and the military... those are the 2 biggest events in my life who shaped who I am.
Just seeing this video... we sold out back in 93 milking 65 holsteins. When the cows left, a piece of me left with them. We purchased brood cows but still wasnt enough to stay full time and my heart just wasnt in it like the dairy.Hope yall are doing well with the transition and thank you for this video.
Thanks for taking the time to do this Amy. We will all treasure this!
The last of our milking herd left on Feb. 15th, 4 generations over 80 years. Currently switching over to producing/ selling orchard grass hay, but I'll always have a place in my heart for cows.
Lucky for this man who has sons still in farming and ranching that will make his transition and equipment auction a success.
This made me cry! This dairy is so close to my dad's dairy that we all grew up on....he loved his Jersey's!
Tragic story that's becoming all to familiar! I grew up in a dairy farm community and spent all my free time playing with the cows and milking... Now when I go home to visit I see pastures that are now being used for growing corn instead of grazing Holstein. Those that didn't move to small niche dairy (organic, NON-GMO, grass fed) are no longer dairy farmers. After generations of dairy... It makes me so sad! Great videography!
People ask me why i want to be a dairy farmer, and i can say is, I dont know. I just want to farm and know i can far forever
I've known of, but never met, Chester Beahm. My milk tester tested his herd as well, and kept me up to date on who all was milking in the surrounding counties. I'm still milking 50 Jerseys in the county just to the south of Mr. Beahm's. It sure doesn't pay much, but I really enjoy it.
That’s the most important that you love what you do. Love it so much you wouldn’t wanna do something else.
It’s your lifestyle ❤ ours too.
Great video Chester. You followed your dream! It is a Beautiful farm.
We had to close down a family machine shop. The emotions were almost
identical. Lots of people going through factory closings, mine closings,
main street type shops closing, each a traditional way of life going away.
Thank you sir for all you and your family have done. You are appreciated. I know the words may not be worth much but THANK YOU ! God bless
This family is such a blessing to know...and my heart breaks over this. It was hard to watch the interview and watch Mr. Beahm struggle with the emotions of all of it...but his faith....so strong always.
Best of luck to you, and your family.
Thank you,Amy! You are such a blessing to so many people. Just so sad,though
Thank you for sharing. Tears streaming down my face.
Beautifully captured but, such a sad story.
I'm so glad you did this video ❤ I hate that the industry has changed so much that it's forcing so many families such as this one to give up their dreams because they can't afford to live. It's truly so sad. My grandparents a dairy farm when they first got married and I would've loved to have been there to watch and learn from them.
Thank you for making and sharing Chester's transition. It's a story too often repeated.
I’m glad to see this 👍🏼
Went through the same thing 3 yrs ago even progressed from staunton to parlor to robot but had to stop the bleeding no fun but there's life after cows can live on a whole lot less money with less Bill's nothing left for retirement after 33years everything I sold paid debts off good luck keep your eyes on Jesus for comfort
I returned home after spending 2 years in the Peace Corps in Liberia Africa. 1978 to 1980. I started looking for a farm. I was then age 25. Found 160 acres In 1990 our cow herd was around 25. Then increased to 45 in 1995. We still used the bucket milkers with a strap......until 2006. Switched from small square bales in 1992 and went to 4x4 round bales. Went to Pipeline in 2006. The only income was what came from that 160 acres. There were 120 tillable acres. In 2016 I sold the dairy herd ( Then I was age 60 ) Now have stock cows and their calves with corn and soybeans to sell......bale hay for the stock cows. Raised two kids... and we could retire anytime. But Im active and enjoy farm life !
My question is..... ??? Why do so many farmers have such a difficult time making it in farming ??? My own son just started his own dairy farm two years ago. Hes doing just fine. The bigger problem is........ ???? Finding a place to market the milk ! They want to get rid of all the small producers ! My son.......he wont be able to continue long.........only because of no place to market his milk ! Rather sad !
😭 so sad , prayers for the family.
Change or die, and right now, The Dairy Industry is going to need some really good direction. Unfortunately, more often than not, businesses fail to adapt. Even massive companies fail. Only 71 companies remain today from the original 1955 Fortune 500 list. The fact is, The Dairy Industry is currently producing a product that is no longer desirable to consumers. (The tea leaves have spoken.)
All I can say is times change we change with it or go under. We quit row cropping after farming cotton, grain sorghum, corn, and soybeans on our family farm for over 100 years. By 2003, we were simply not making enough to justify the risks and input costs. Cotton was averaging 60 cents a pound when I was still in diapers in the early 70's, and it was still averaging 60 cents a pound in the early 2000's when we quit. Costs in the meantime had multiplied over the years like everything else. Cotton seed went from $15/bag when I was a little kid to $45/bag when I was in high school to $250-350/bag by the time we quit. Fertilizer that used to be $60/ton back in the 70's went to $160/ton in the late 80's to over $400/ton in the 90's. Diesel fuel, oil, parts, machinery, and all the costs of living went up commensurately. When I was a kid in the early 70's Dad, mom, and I could go eat a chicken dinner and feed all of us for under $2... now for my wife, daughter, and I to eat out anywhere runs a minimum of $30 for fast food. Just goes to show how worthless our money actually is compared to days past... We had quit cotton a few years before and went all grains, since they're cheaper to grow, but the inputs are still too high and the prices too low for grain compared to how everything else has gone up in price. I wasn't interested in trying to force my way into the land rent wars trying to find more farm ground that is constantly being sold off for suburban sprawl and mini-ranchettes and 5-10 acre hobby farms for ridiculous amounts of money, and battling the already much bigger and land-hungry remaining few big farmers in the area desperately fighting for the fewer and fewer scraps of land remaining, in a never-ending battle to try to get a few more acres to make a few dollars off of to enable them to stay afloat... We already had one farm 90 miles west that was unsuitable for row crops due to the soils and rainfall patterns that Grandpa had put into cattle back in the 60's, and we were making more off it with 1/5 the labor and 1/10 the input expenses than we were making on the row crops, cotton or grain, doing 5X the work and spending 10X as much, and having less to show for it at the end of the day. So we switched both farms over to all cow/calf, and set aside part of our cropland for baling our own hay. It's the only thing that's kept us afloat.
It was VERY hard to leave row crop farming... my Grandmother, who owned the farms and I operated them for her, couldn't conceive of NOT planting cotton-- after all she'd been born on the farm and died a few years later on it, and they had ALWAYS grown cotton... but just because you've "always" done something doesn't mean that it makes SENSE to continue doing so. After a long heart-to-heart talk with her where we sat at the table and looked at the expenses and inputs and costs versus what we were making, and prospects for the future, she finally saw what the numbers had been telling me (and that I was reticent to accept myself for a long time) that cotton and grain farming, unless you have hundreds of acres and are willing to battle to rent thousands of acres more) is simply unprofitable now. So we made the necessary changes to stay in business, one way or another.
Thing is, I don't see ANYTHING on the horizon that makes me hopeful... we're constantly under assault by everything-- weather, the markets, government, society, everything. I don't place my faith in cow/calf operations, either... idiot politicians looking for money wanting to tax "cow farts" and other such stupidity could quickly make livestock farming completely unprofitable as well... I've pretty much resigned myself that I'll be the last farmer in our family-- there's no future in it for my daughter or her eventual family... Biogas might be a potential bright spot, but it doesn't seem to be gaining much traction and isn't expanding like I'd hoped... Raising switchgrass and baling it as hay to feed biogas power plants could be a tenable proposition, BUT it's an industry that is highly dependent on transport costs and location/proximity to the nearest biogas plant... IOW you have to have a biogas plant close enough nearby to make producing switchgrass hay for feedstock into the biogas plant and transporting that hay to the plant affordable enough to be feasible. If the biogas plant is too far away, transportation costs simply eat up all the profits and make it untenable for the farmer to make a living that way. I'm afraid that until we have some famine and hunger that society and government isn't going to pull their collective heads out of their @sses and figure out that farmers are important and that we have to make enough to actually make a living in order to keep doing this.
Later! OL J R :)
Nobody can compete with big corporation they get tax free they have every contract you name it I mean they run this country but god help these people I don’t know what to say I really felt their pain so sad😭😭😭
We are still going but it’s a struggle. Really sad to have to see a video like this😕
I am all done also. had a bad summer asked dairy inspectors for YEARS don't put inspection report on bulk tank it some times blows off on the floor. well it happened again july 9th and I left it well the morning of july 10 I figured I would be the better man and pick it up I slipped fell into the vacuum pump knocking off the guard and getting my hand in the fan. I called Wisconsin milk marketing board farm first to try to help me and no such luck. I am FORCED to pay these people to represent me but then some one causes me harm and NO ones there to help. go figure. besides almost half of the stuff the inspectors write us up for has NOTHING to do with quality of milk. so here I sit with a cut open hand broken finger and knuckle and all these companies I am FORCED to pay to represent me will do nothing.
@Weaver Cattle Company Yep mandatory checkoffs and associations are the biggest rip-off in history... if they were SO GOOD they wouldn't HAVE to be "mandatory", everybody would be glad and willing to chip in their fair share to support them, IF they were actually doing the farmers any favors.
Personally I don't see any reason to be hopeful about anything agricultural related... we're just trying to survive. I don't see anything changing for the better, only getting worse as time goes on. I think this country has been SO blessed, SO far removed from famine and hunger and unmet basic needs for SO long that entire generations of people have grown up thinking that government or the grocery store will just ALWAYS *automatically* meet their needs regardless of what happens or HOW STUPIDLY they act or enact stupid laws, regulations, societal "values", or whatever... BUT the day is coming when there's gonna be a reckoning, when the stupidity and nonsense catches up, and big corporations go broke and can't function, big gubmint fails and can do nothing but print worthless scrip that you can't eat and throw it at the problem, and when there is simply nothing left to be had, and THEN people will wonder how it all happened... When they FINALLY have to worry where they're gonna be able to find food to keep themselves and their kids alive another day, THEN *MAYBE JUST MAYBE* they'll pull their heads out of their @sses and start figuring out the difference between reality and FANTASY...
I think that's what it's gonna take to actually begin to turn things around... Stupidity has a price but so far nobody has had to pay it, so they think it doesn't... but it doesn't mean that price isn't sitting there growing and drawing interest for the day when it becomes the reckoning, and will only be that much worse.
Later! OL J R :)
Damn man
Worked at hedgebrook over in winchester va they shut down in 2019
Got a lump in my throat
So sad. The knowledge and skill this man has will not be a benefit to anymore generations. Our neighborhood dairy that rents pasture from our farm has just sold the last of the calving heifers. It is the saddest thing when you drive by everything is closed up and lights are off.
Sad to see the sell out.....
💔💔💔
Yeah, a hard working man can no longer make a living on a farm these days. It takes
corporate cash to cover the farms operating expenses. You have to clear $1M to be
left with $50K take home to cover your personal living expenses. Its a brand new world.
Farming is a big dollar business.
!
my herd of brown swiss and Holstein are for sale in Wisconsin. IM DONE!!!!
So sad
First.
This is what happens when you subsidize poverty.
Exactly... but nobody gets that... Shame. Oh well, the reckoning will come. Stupidity has a price whether you believe it does or not. Later! OL J R :)
zero pity. leave the cows alone.
they're hamburger as soon as the farm closes lol
@@skeetorretard more likely dog food 😣
No organic greek yogurt for you, Andrea