Five Lessons From Growing Up on a Dairy Farm
Growing up on a dairy farm is a different kind of lifestyle, and it’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t lived it. There are things that seem completely normal to me and completely strange to everyone else. Over the years, though, I’ve picked up a few lessons that have served me just as well away from the farm as on it.
1. Keep going until the job is done
There really isn’t such a thing as “quitting time” on a dairy. There’s only the moment the work is finished. Some days that’s swathing hay, some days it’s paperwork, some days it’s a project that decided halfway through to become a bigger project.
One of my jobs was weighing trucks. That sounds relaxing — and maybe somewhere it is — but the way our scale house works, every truck meant getting up, entering the information on the mounted system, and printing the ticket so the driver never had to get out of the cab. By the time I sat back down, another truck always seemed to be pulling onto the scale. Add one more to the day’s squat count.
The funny thing was that when the trucks stopped coming, I never got excited about the break. I got worried, because it usually meant something had gone wrong somewhere else.
That’s the thing about working until the job is done — the job decides when it’s done, not you. The upside is that you go to bed with a real sense of accomplishment, because there aren’t many things on a dairy that can wait until the next day.
2. Plans are really just suggestions
You never know what the day, week, month, or year is going to hold. You can plan all you want, but you can’t depend on the weather, you can’t depend on cows staying where you put them, and you can’t depend on dependable equipment.
The weather changes its mind and rains on the one clear day of the week. You go looking for a cow and find her three pens over with a brand new calf. Something breaks, and it breaks on a Friday night, never during the week when the parts store is open — though sometimes that temporary repair ends up lasting years.
When all is said and done, plans change and you change with them. And you don’t complain about it… most of the time.
3. Always pack a snack
I have learned the hard way to never leave the house without a snack. I don’t know if this one counts as life advice or survival advice, but it’s important either way.
Nothing is more dangerous than thinking you’re only going out to do one thing. What starts as a quick trip or a simple project can turn into 3 p.m. very quickly. There have been plenty of times I’ve had to accept that lunch wasn’t happening and start digging through the cab for anything that could tide me over — a piece of gum or a stale piece of candy. To this day I’ve got something stashed in my pockets, my car, and every bag I own, just in case.
4. There is a place for everyone on a dairy
When I was younger, I thought I would feed calves forever. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve helped with just about everything else.
A dairy isn’t just a barn full of cows and a guy on a tractor. Besides the managers, mechanics, and equipment operators, it also takes accountants, HR, nutritionists, IT, marketing, and recruiters — and on a farm, there’s a decent chance you’ll wear all those hats before lunch. That’s one of my favorite things about the ag industry. We take everything the rest of the business world is already doing and add cows.
5. You can always come home
Even while I’ve been away at school, I still get plenty of calls that include some variation of, “It sure would be nice if you were here to help with this.”
No matter where life takes you, a dairy farm has a way of pulling you back. Not because it demands it, but because it welcomes it. The door is always open, there’s food on the table, and there’s almost certainly a project waiting for another pair of hands.
Growing up, High Desert Milk seemed like a completely different world from our farm. It felt large, corporate, and far beyond anything I understood as a kid. After spending time here, I’ve realized the scale is different. The values are not.
Looking back, I’m grateful for the lessons I learned growing up on a dairy. They shaped who I am today and helped me appreciate the people on both sides of the industry. Whether it’s on the farm or at High Desert Milk, these lessons still apply.
