Judy’s Blog

   On a Saturday evening in late January we went over to the school to watch the “premiere” of Dairy Farms of Andes, an Andes Central School Production of The Cinema Class.  The pre-show music was provided by a bluegrass-type band (teacher Ed McGee is a member–wish I could remember the band’s name) which also played the sound-track. Very fine picking and playing.

   The film featured interviews with the farmers operating the remaining 8 farms in the Town of Andes, a town whose identity for a century at least was derived from dairy farming.  The interviews felt totally authentic and conveyed the personalities–known to most in the audience–of the subjects.  The skillful editing interspersed still photos–some with considerable age–with the footage.

  A telling moment came after the screening when school superintendant John Bernhardt asked everyone who had ever lived or worked on a farm to stand up.  Virtually everyone in the aduience rose.  Then he asked only those currently living on or working on a farm to remain standing.  Very few did.  A dramatic demonstration of the change in these hills, for sure.

   The film was not about the history–recent or long-term–of daily farming in our area.  But I couldn’t but help remember the strong encouragement given by FmHA and other farming agencies in the 1970′s to farmers to modernize, increase their herds, go way into debt with huge new tractors and other machinery,  barn extensions and the very pricey Harvestore silos.  A decade later the whole price structure was against the small dairy farmer, and the federal buyout, devastating as it was to those who valued their heritage and way of life, seemed the only way to go.  Far as I know those Harvestore silos, some of which had cost upwards of $100,000,  were a drug on the market.  Very sad.  (NOTE:  see Buffy Calvert’s article in the February Gazette on the evening presentation.)