Many Lights Have Gone Out

Across the Fence #321

The nights are long in the winter. When I go to work in the morning, the sun is just peeking over the horizon and it’s dark when I head home. It doesn’t leave any time to travel the back roads and enjoy the scenery. We do a lot of that in the other seasons of the year. Now it’s dark if we go out.

When I do travel back roads of this county at night, it’s very evident that the lights have gone out on many farms. There was a time when the countryside was dotted with the warm glow from the windows of farmhouses and barns. It made the cold nights of winter seem a little warmer. Each cluster of farm buildings was like a welcome island in a sea of darkness. You knew farmers were busy milking cows and the barns were full of life, noise, and activity. Nearby a warm glow also emanated from the kitchen windows of the house as supper was being prepared.

I thought about this the other evening as I drove home from work in the dark. As I passed the house where I grew up, there was no light, no warm glow, no sign of activity, no path or tracks in the snow leading to the door. The old farmhouse looked cold and lifeless. It has joined the ranks of so many other old farmhouses that are no longer lived in. Those drafty, uninsulated, old houses have not improved with age. The only source of heat for the upstairs in our old house was a small register in the floor of one room. Even that room was so cold by morning that frost and ice covered the windows and windowsills. You hated to put your bare feet on the cold floor when you had to get out of bed.

At the time, that was all we knew. Most of the people we knew lived in the same type of winter conditions as we did. We had no idea that some people lived in houses that had heat in every room. For those of you who lived in houses like ours, remember the wonderful designs that Jack Frost left on the windows each night. You had to scrape a hole in the heavy frost to see outside.

They may have been cold in the winter, but there was life in those old houses. The warmth came from old woodstoves and oil-burners, but the life and light came from the families who lived in those houses. Now so many farmhouses that once lit up the evening countryside are dark.

I hauled milk for over a year back in the early 1960s. All the farms I stopped at were small, family-run, dairy operations. Today, only a handful of those farms still have cows that need to be milked twice a day. The lights and life have gone out in most of those barns. At several places, the barns are gone, and in some cases, all the buildings have disappeared. I’m very aware that life has changed a lot since those days, but there’s a sadness about the loss of a lifestyle that was the norm for so many people at one time.

Farming involves long hours, seven days a week, in every kind of weather. It’s hard work, involves a lot of investment, and it’s hard to make a profit when milk and crop prices go down and gas, seed, fertilizer, and equipment prices keep rising. According to the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, the average dairy farm in the state lost about $100 per cow per month last summer. Meanwhile, large food companies are making hefty profits and consumers are paying higher prices. Something is very wrong with that picture. Is it any surprise that so many lights have gone out.

Farmers are a tough, special class of people. I have a lot of respect for them. Farming was, and still is, one of the few businesses where a family can work together. That’s special. Unfortunately, many of us didn’t appreciate it at the time.

I left the farm after high school, but no matter where I went or what I did, the experience of growing up on a working farm had a big influence on me. The majority of people raised on farms have a work ethic that’s hard to find any place else, and it generally follows them no matter what they do in life. Even when I was in the army, the subject of farm boys came up. After we completed basic training, our platoon sergeant told several of us, “When I found out I’d be training guys who would be going to Vietnam with me, I told them I wanted Midwestern farm boys. They know how to work, they know their way around the outdoors in all kinds of weather, and they know how to shoot.” He got his wish. Most of us were Midwestern farm boys.

Times change and fewer and fewer kids have the opportunity to grow up on a farm in the country. Those of us who had that experience should consider ourselves lucky. There are many good memories to look back on. That warm glow from the windows on a cold winter night, as you walked from the barn to the house, with the sky full of stars above, is a great memory for many of us.