It has always been Eric's dream to own his own farm! I've really wanted to own a farm someday as well. After working in Maryland for three years and saving as much money as we could, we sold our truck and everything else we could, took our savings and bought a few cows to get us started in Annville, Pennsylvania. This was a decision we didn't come to without hours and hours of hashing out the pros and cons, budgets, and what our future would be like. We knew that we were making a great sacrifice at least for the first few years so we could make a better life for ourselves.
The situation we entered into seemed to be perfect!! It would take us 5 years to buy all 55 cows on the place and then we'd be in charge. Within that 5 year time span of buying all the cattle we were "phasing out" the dairy farmer, Barry. So for those 5 years, Barry was boss. We made 15% of the milk check from all the cows that we owned in the barn, which we used for farm expenses (medications, vet bills, surgeries, and we were using all of that to buy more cows) The rest of the money from our cow's milk checks went to Barry for the expense of housing, feed, and labor. On top of that all, Barry was paying our family a base salary for the 5 years. The sacrifice came in the form of putting countless hours in...... Barry is still the boss and they go till the work is done.
The first couple months of this transition almost one year ago exactly was great!! Eric seemed to be thriving as a dairy farmer. It was fun to be living right on the farm too that we could visit him anytime we wanted. It felt good to us to own something of our own (the cows) and the area where we live is wonderful. I can't even tell you how awesome teh ward is that we're in!!!!!!! I love this ward with everything in me!!! It really seemed like our dreams were all coming true. Then reality set in.
Truth is, Eric never spent time with us. We came in teh midst of crop season and they were out there from before sunup to sun down. I felt so grateful to be there and was excited that we were doing something wonderful for our future, but at the same time I was counting down the days till winter started and Eric would get to be in the house more often. Well, winter came and went..... and Eric was out there working just as many hours as before.
I'd like to think I'm a strong person but 90 hour work weeks are basically single parenting for me. Eric would come back in for dinner at 7 or later, exhausted from a long day of really hard work, he'd sit down after dinner and be asleep in less than 5 minutes. He was home, but he was never "really home." After a few months of this, it was really wearing on me.
We had made this transition so we'd have our own cows, we'd be our own bosses so that we could go to our children's extracurricular activities as a family, have family time, help each other on the farm, etc etc. This was all we wanted. Night after night I'd ask Eric to remind me of the light at the end of the tunnel. I was getting more and more sure that "the light" we'd been hoping for, was a fantasy for a dairy farmer. Even after Eric did own all the cows and had the last say in everything, the harsh reality is that he would still have to put in however many hours of work there was to do. And there is a LOT of work to do on a dairy farm!!!!! Just milking alone..... Eric starts at 4 in the morning and ends at 6:30...... there's all the work around the farm in the middle of the day (field work if it's crop season) then they start with milking all over again at 4 in the afternoon.
Of course I could go out and help him when we own all of the cows as well, but I wouldn't be 100% reliable because my first and foremost responsibilty was to our children. We are hoping to have a couple more kids so I will have tiny little children for quite a few years..... farms aer dangerous..... I didn't want them to traipse all over the place without me. Anyway, bottom line is that Eric would be left with most of the work after all is said and done.
Farmers have done this for centuries, they are a good hard working lot. And my husband is among the hardest working of them all but we're starting from nothing. We haven't inherited a farm like so many other farmers out there. We're going in completely green and essentially penniless. A farm is a 2 million investment at least. I will admit that part of the light at the end of the tunnel was the income Eric had projected for us. He had done the figures and after the five years, we figured we'd be making quite a hefty chunk of change. That def sounded alright with me! Even after the farm mortgage and everything, the numbers came out quite well for us. It wasn't too long into this venture that we realized how dumb we'd been about all that. There are bills ALL the time for stuff you'd never even think about in the first place. Machinery breaks down, have to pay bills for that. You're milking equipment, hauling of animals to auction, unforeseen surgery on cows, infections, medications, feed prices go up because of weather (drought), etc etc etc. The list truly goes on and on and on and on........ There are so many crazy bills for everything that our 5 year plan to purchase all teh cows has lengthened steadily just because the money we thought would be there to buy a cow went to a bill for something else.
I'm just draggin this on and on but I just wanted to get all of the background details across. I understand that this is our life, and I've become ok with this. Somedays when I just think about time and how this is a forever thing for us, I'll tease Eric, "Why can't you just go back to school to be a lawyer or something." I mean for pete's sake, they probably work less than half the hours Eric does and actually get paid something while doing it. He laughs and shakes his head. Our family time consists of going to cow auctions with Eric, or doing anything for an hour or two in the evening (has to be cheap and we have to get home early so he can go to bed)
Somedays I feel like I just can't do it anymore. Eric will never get to go on vacations with us, he'll always be in a permanent sleepy state, we'll have to do soooo many things without him, and we'll always be poor. It just seems so unfair!!
On these really really hard days when the kids are crying all the time, I just can't get any work done, and everything is just so overwhelming, I turn to the one person I know that understands exactly what I'm going through. He's felt what I've felt, he knows what the light is at the end of the tunnel, and He can bolster me up until a good day comes! I've prayed for sooo many different things. Patience with my children and husband, strength to get through a day, courage to do airplane rides all alone, an understanding and sympathy when Eric falls asleep when we're in conversation, empathy when he can't keep his eyes open during ANY of churhc, and most of all.... I've prayed that one day it will get better for us.
The funny thing about prayer is I've had such tunnel vision when I ask for things to get better. Better for me was hoping Eric could get two days off so we could all fly out to Utah for my brother's mission homecoming. Better was hoping to one day be able to afford extra workers so Eric could get one whole day off sometime. (He hasn't had a full day off in over a year now) Better was hoping he could make it to our kids little league games. The Lord has had a better plan for us than we've had for ourselves and I'm so humbled.
A month ago out of the blue, Eric came to me one day and said, "Bre, I've applied for a job in southern pennsylvania." Talk about coming out of right field. WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT>>>??????!!! Our dream, our years of prepping and saving, working hard...... gone? I had been praying for things to get better for so long for things to get better but had never thought to think of anything outside of dairy farming. Because that's all Eric ever wanted.
It all comes down to this....... Eric loves dairy farming a lot! But he's realized over the past year that he loves something even more...... his family. It hit him like a ton of bricks when I was in labor with Sadie. I had started laboring and we were going into the night.... Eric knew that he would never be able to make it for milking in teh morning so he called Barry. Barry let him know plain as day that that was unacceptable. Eric WOULD be there to milk come morning time. Eric kept arguing his point that he needed to be there for me when I had the baby. Barry wouldn't have any of it. So finally Eric just told him that he'd do what he could to be there and they hung up. By the time we were taken to the maternity wing it was 4:30 a.m. Milking was already going on, so Eric slept for 2 hours then went back to work. I stayed all alone at the hospital.... having to call complete strangers in to help me get up and out of bed just for the restroom. My stay at the hospital was really lonely. When Peyton was born Eric had helped me up and down, he'd helped me through the night so I could have breaks to rest, and when the baby would cry he'd hand him to me. I was left all alone this go round.
During Peyton's hospital stay for his intussuseptcion... I was all alone. Being a dairy farmer's wife is lonely.
There are a few nonconsequential things that happened as well from Barry's side that cemented Eric's change of heart. Barry was not completely honest with us from the beginning about certain things.
After applying to a few jobs we've found one that has me weeping everytime I think about it. It's a job still in the dairy industry. They would provide a house, an increase in pay, weekends off, two weeks paid vacation...... I could go on and on about how wonderfuol this job is!
My husband gets to sleep in for once........ and I'm sooooo excited for him!!!!! He gets to go to Utah with us when we go, he gets off early enough in the evening that he can eat dinner with us, he can take me on a date, he will stay awake while we're talking.
Heavenly Father knows us, he wants what's best for us and He really wants us to be happy!!! I'm soooooo grateful for the Spirit and the way it touched Eric's heart to want to change his lifelong dream.
