It was one of those evenings I’ll always look back to.
Recently, I flew back to western New York, where I grew up, to launch my memoir Barn Gothic: Three Generations and the Death of the Family Dairy Farm. The book follows our family’s experience trying to keep a farm running under difficult conditions, while also attempting to trace the political decisions that led to the country losing half of its dairy farms in the first two decades of the millennium. Canaseraga Central School, where I graduated in a class of 24, lent me its old gym. Getting to return to the community I was raised in – and reading from a book that included some of those in the audience – felt like something had come full circle.
The event had to be postponed a day due to a snowstorm, but despite the late change of plans, the bleachers were still full. Some passages I read were about the state of the dairy industry and what it had done to rural communities like Canaseraga. Others were about my relationship with my father. Because some of those individuals were in the audience, I read excerpts of how many people helped our family when my father was hurt in a skidsteer accident. My father passed away while I was writing the book, and everyone in the crowd knew him, so it was a way to honor his memory and everything he faced. I saw my sister crying out of the corner of my eye and knew that if I looked directly at her, then I probably couldn’t go on.
After the reading, I sat at a table and signed books. It was a chance for people to say hello and get their copies personalized. There were the usual kind remarks and sincere congratulations, and they inquired how I was doing abroad. Still, one particular comment was offered over and over again, “That was my story, too.”
Of the crowd size speculations for the evening, 80 was the highest figure I heard, so that’s the number I repeat. Of those 80 individuals, only a few of them would have ever been to a reading before, and many of them wouldn’t call themselves big readers. However, a lot of people, if I was judging them right, were genuinely surprised to find themselves inside a book – perhaps not directly mentioned and maybe not from the town of Canaseraga – but to see the type of things that they experienced written about. Sometimes in rural America I think we forget that we’re the stuff of books, too.
A lot of the farmers in the crowd were from my father’s generation. As a child or teen, I would see them at shows, club sales, the feed store or 4-H events. There was a certain banter at these encounters, and from it, a sense of community formed. It was somewhat surreal to see them sitting together in the bleachers of the school and to see them so quiet. It might have been the first time they had seen each other in a long while.
There was a time when I couldn’t imagine myself not farming, only to be wrong later. Unfortunately, that was an experience shared by many in the audience. Between 2002 and 2019, the U.S. lost over 40,000 dairy farms. Someone that evening said that one generation ago, there were 12 farms in the modest township of Canaseraga. Now there are only two. All other townships in the area have similar statistics. A friend of the family, one who also milked for as long as he could, followed me into the parking lot afterwards. “That was the last gathering of the old farmers,” he said.
It’s difficult to sort through everything it means to lose a farm or what a farm takes from a person who struggles to keep it running. Still, it’s no good for anyone if there isn’t conversation around it. One farmer, at another reading I gave later that week, jumped out of his seat and declared, “It’s true. This is all true!” Others shook my hand with pale faces and mumbled something about how hard those times were, or maybe they said nothing at all but made it clear that the book touched them.
Something terrible happened in the American dairy industry. No matter how certain industry figures try to redress the last two-and-a-half decades, some people paid a high price to try to sustain the life they knew. The fact that it didn’t have to happen – specifically, that family dairy farming could have remained viable under different policies – only makes it more heinous. In the very least, these people deserve to have their story written down and talked about. I hope Barn Gothic starts to do that for them.
