Another person from the Badger State (more west, less south) checking in. I tried to look this question up the other day, but I was unsuccessful for some reason. Is the Eau Claire Rule still in place or did it finally get thrown out?
Oh, thank god! I had someone at school ask me once if I could bring some manure back to school with me the next time I went home, because her mom wanted it for the flowerbed. No, honey, I’m not going to haul twenty pounds of manure two hours across the state for your mother’s flowerbed. I’ve learned to answer questions very carefully when they’re people asking for “farm stuff.”
I’m still leery of the colostrum pudding, though.
Perfect. Just perfect.
Your mom is an excellent bull hitter.
“See Rock City” got at least as far north as central Indiana, though one sees a lot more of “Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco.”
Being from Spain (and currently living in Spain, yay!) I haven’t seen those ads.
But I’d like to give you a World of Warcraft joke I saw recently… if you don’t know what it’s about, just google images of tauren
Good cheese comes from happy cows.
Happy cows come from Thunder Bluff.
In Spain, us non-farm-people divide cows into “meat cows”, “milk cows”, “fighter cows” and “ugly cows” (the local models are good at surviving winter in the mountains, but not very photogenic). Do your cows like to run after stuff like fighter cows do? The ugly cows around here are curious but not very much into running, I haven’t met the other types.
Hey another Cheesehead checking in, I used to work every summer at my great-uncle’s dairy farm just outside of Boscobel, so maybe we ran into each other at the Grant County Fair or something. Now I’m over on the other side of the state.
I don’t really have a question for you, I guess. Ummm, did your dad ever consider getting a few Jerseys to increase your butterfat %?
I would be wary of colostrum pudding as well. Blech!
Whoa, the Eau Claire Rule. Talk about controversial.
For anybody who doesn’t know what the Eau Claire Rule is, it’s a federal guideline that bases the minimum price paid to the farmer for liquid milk on how far away from Eau Claire, Wisconsin it was produced. The closer you are to Eau Claire, the less you are required to be paid. It was established in the 1960s and things in the dairy industry have changed a lot since then, with distribution of milk production and how the milk itself is being used. In the 1990s, dairy farmers in the upper midwest (Wisconsin and Minnesota) started really pushing for the Eau Claire Rule to be rescinded and to establish a new pricing system, because farmers close to Eau Claire were barely getting enough for their milk to stay in business, while farmers in other parts of the nation were able to receive much more for their milk. Enmeshed into the whole struggle over milk pricing is a whole mess of federal regulations and dairy compacts and any other number policies, programs, and plans that are considered necessary by some and evil incarnate by others.
The Eau Claire Rule was thrown out by a federal judge sometime in 1998 or 1999, in a case brought by Minnesota dairy producers against the USDA. For the life of me, I cannot remember if that ruling stuck or not, but then again, I was only 14 when it happened. So, I turned to the USDA. The link leads to a page with a series of PDF documents discussing the current pricing system of the dairy industry. If you read it, it might help to know that “cwt” stands for hundredweight, which is a hundred pounds of milk. A pound of milk is about a pint in liquid measure. Milk is generally measured in pounds (weight), and you get paid per hundredweight.
For those that can’t be bothered, new regulations for milk pricing established by the USDA were supposed to go into effect in 2000. (That was part of the 1996 Farm Act, which called for the elimination of a lot of agricultural programs whose legacies lay in the Great Depression.) In 1999, however, Congress extended the dairy subsidy programs by two years, at which time they were phased out, but replaced by entirely new subsidy programs. It also authorized the Northeast Dairy Compact, which a lot of people consider bad news (it’s the only dairy compact allowed in the nation). I think this might have included the Eau Claire Rule, but the USDA didn’t really tell me. No big surprise there.
So I turned to Russ Feingold, that awesome guy. He proposed a bill that would eliminate the Eau Claire rule in 2000. He re-introduced it in 2005. It’s last action was being referred to Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. We’ll see what happens there.
It looks like the Eau Claire Rule is still going, but may not be soon . . . hopefully?
I’ll ask Dad tomorrow and see what he says. I’m guessing the answer will include long sighs and lots of diagrams drawn on scrap paper.
I was pretty young while most of this was going on, so if anybody knows better or would like to correct me, please step in and do so. It’s all endlessly complicated and political enough that it could a backdrop of a novel, if anybody outside of the industry really cared anything about it. If you’d like to understand a little better why the whole situation of milk pricing reform was so controversial and made a lot of people very angry and upset, this ranscript of a report done in 2000 from NewsHour might help you. It wasn’t that any farmers were greedy. Changes in the milk pricing system have a direct impact on their lives and the lives of their families. Sink or swim.
I see See Rock City bird houses in Michigan every so often. Not barns, but the gimmicky tourist stuff. And I wants a See Rock City bird house in a most covetous manner.
Cracker Barrel sells the birdhouses.
If you want to see one, here’s one on YouTube. Meh. Stupid things.
The cows don’t really, unless you do something to piss them off like getting between them and their calves or look like you’re threatening them. Mostly they ignore you or try to eat you. Bulls will, though, since they’re territorial and protective of their ladies. I guess our cows would be ugly milk cows.
Not that I’m aware of. We’ve had Holsteins as long as anyone can remember.
I’ve never been to the Grant County Fair, sorry! I’m an Iowa Country girl, through and through.
Just dropping in to say “Kudos to you, Miss Purl”. You’ve done a remarkable job of explaining things in a manner that the city folk can understand.
I’m a beef cattle farmer, not dairy, but I do know enough to tell that your answers are spot-on.
Thank you very much, John Carter. By the way, your Sour Honey thread is one that re-read periodically. It never fails to crack me up.
RogueRacer, I got a chance to talk to Dad today, and he said that the Eau Claire Rule hasn’t exactly been knocked down, and the price of milk in a geographic area is still based slightly on the criteria established by the rule–cost of transportation and cost of storage. So it still sorta lives. Milk pricing is based more on the market prices of Class III milk (the stuff that goes to cheese and butter) now than it was in the past.
I’ll talk to him tomorrow about Least Original User Name Ever’s question about large-scale/industrial dairying and smaller operations like ours tomorrow when we’re cutting down trees and tearing apart old outbuildings. The plan this summer is to build a new holding barn for the cows to be in before they get milked and during the day in the winter, and there’s a lot of scrub trees and brush to be cleared before anything can done. Oh, we’re building a new house for us, too. The builder has titled it “The Dad McKnittington Project.” I keep telling Mom we should start a band. 
She rolled her eyes.
I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to everyone for all the very many typos in this thread. Ye gods, it never rains but it pours! If any of my professors saw this, they’d probably ask me if I’d been drinking while I wrote.
Okay, A.R. Cane, I’ve been thinking about family history and funny stories for the past couple of days. Your request was not forgotten, it just needed thinking over. I hope the little ones I’ve been dropping in the thread have held you over until I got to one especially for you. I don’t know how funny you’re going to think it is, but it’s become family legend.
I have two younger brothers, whom we will call Wulf (because looks like a dark-haired German knight and he’s strong but wiry) and Eric (because he looks not unlike an Irish–did I mention we’re Irish, too?–version of Eric Estrada in all his CHIPS glory). The fence that borders the cowyard needed to be fixed. It was one of those things that was on the to-do list, but you never really got around to it, because there was so much other stuff to do. The cows liked to lean against and scratch themselves on it, because it was a wooden fence and the scratching was excellent. One morning, the unavoidable happened, and the cows broke out a panel of the fence.
Mom really wanted it fixed, because she had to deal with getting the cows in and out the barn, and had had to chase them back up the hill that was on the other side of the fence many times before. It’s a really steep hill and it ends in a creek. Not a pleasant place to be chasing cattle–they head straight for the creek and then jump over, but don’t want to jump back over it to get to the cowyard again. So you end up chasing them to a place that’s shallow enough to walk them across, which makes the route about eight times longer. And you still have to get them up the hill.
So, Mom goes to Dad and says, “The fence needs to be fixed today and I want it to be sturdy. And I want it to be fence panels–none of this electric crap. I’m not going to help you, because I just spent last week helping you mend fence, and if I dig another posthole, somebody’s gonna die. Either do it yourself or get someone else to do it.” Or words to that effect. People sometimes ask me how I learned to be assertive and I tell them my mom taught me. Then I tell my mom and she laughs and laughs. The view some people have of farmwives as mousy, retiring homemakers puzzles me. Brass balls, every one. To quote my youngest brother, “they bring their guns to the gun show.”
It fell to Wulf and Eric to make this fence, because they are big strapping lads and Dad was busy in the fields. They’re both over 6’3" and are strong as hell. Wulf has something like negative body fat and his muscles have muscles, while Eric is built more on the lines of a Mack truck. My parents like to say “we grow 'em big on the farm,” and I roll my eyes, because my sister and I are just barely 5’2". I guess we don’t count.
Dad’s instructions to the boys were pretty simple: 1) It has to be the strongest fence they can make, using the supplies on hand. 2) It couldn’t move from the position it was in now, because it was already on the edge of our property and the gate still has to reach. (We rent the pasture on the other side from the neighbors.) 3) Above all, it had to make Mom happy, because it was a special request.
Anyway, the day they built the fence was in midsummer, so the temperatures are in the high 80s and the humidity is so high you’re basically swimming when you walk. A wise person would be huddled inside around the A/C. The fence can’t wait though, because hello! Cow escape hatch in a very bad place.
So, they get done tearing up the old fence–ripping down the old boards and the line of (completely ignored) barbed wire on the top–except for the fence posts, which a were proving difficult. They tried to pull them up, but they all snapped at the ground. It was an old fence, and it had been pretty wet the past couple springs, so the posts were all rotten at the groundline.
Wulf reacted in the only satisfying way when you’ve been trying to pull up fence posts when it’s nearly 90 and you’re working on a time limit. “Christ! Goddammit! Son of a bitch!” He ordered Eric, because he’s the youngest and has to run all the errands, to grab the pickaxe, the crowbar, and anything else that looked useful out of the machine shed.
They spent a very long time digging out all the rotten fenceposts, and they still have to dig postholes, because the new fenceposts were bigger around and needed to be buried deeper. So they get to digging and discover . . .
A layer of rock. They aren’t through the topsoil, oh no. It’s a layer of compacted gravel from god knows when–maybe the original layer from the 1840s. After all that digging, they have to dig some more and some more and some more. Fencing is hard, but it’s not supposed to be that hard. It was like they were being taunted by fate at every turn.
By the time they’re done, they’d spent all afternoon building about fifteen feet of fence and got done just in time to start chores. They were tired, thirsty, and hot as Hades. But it’s a really nice fence: three wooden posts buried eighteen inches in the ground, a strong wooden crossbar across the top and bottom, woven wire panels nailed at every cross-section of wire, and a healthy dose of barbed wire. They even found time to rehang the gate properly. There’s no way a cow is pushing this fence over any time soon. In its wake: a couple hammered thumbs, some blisters, and two very disgruntled teenagers.
Mom went down to the cowyard to see the new fence and make sure her sons are still alive.
“Pretty nice fence, innit?” Eric said to Mom, absolutely soaked in sweat and dog-tired. He propped his elbow on her shoulder, as he is wont to do, because he’s a tall bastard. “I hope you’re happy now, Mom, because I’m never building you another fence again.”
“Eric,” she said very solemnly, “I have never been happier in my life. Thank you. It’s a beautiful fence.” And she was! She is unreasonably proud of that fence. She looks at it now and points it as “the fence that my boys made me.” Some people have toddler handprints in clay. My family has the world’s strongest fence and toddler handprints.
Now, whenever he’s done something naughty or can’t think of a present for Mom or Mom needs a pick-me-up, someone is sure to say, “Jeez, Eric, why don’t you just build her fence and get done with it?”
Related story: My dad was once chased out of the river that flows through our pasture, where he was mending a flood fence, by an angry wild goose. The goose had a nest nearby, and decided Dad probably had dreams of roast gosling. Dad got pecked good a couple times. My dad’s not a small guy, so I giggle every time I picture him running for his life from an angry mama goose.
And now, a small piece of wisdom my dad shared with me the other day: “Purl, you’ve got to be so good at washing and drying cows you can do it in your sleep. Or when you’re hungover.” Then he winked at me and grinned.
[sub]For those who don’t know, “washing and drying” a cow is when you use a dip cup to apply iodine solution to the teats of a cow, and then wash it off with warm water and a cow towel, while doing a little sensual massage. After that you dry with a paper towel, and the cow is ready to be milked.[/sub]
The Eau Claire Rule (IIRC) is that if you drop your Eau Claire on the kitchen floor you may eat it safely if it has been on the floor for less than five seconds.
A couple of questions,
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Why do I never see horses and cows in the same pasture?
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Is it important ‘To Save the Family Farm?’ Why? Or is that just an election-year thing?
I have some cow questions:
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Will cows float , like in a lake? Do they need to swim in order to stay afloat, or are they endowed with a natural buoyancy?
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Can people ride cows?
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I one hiked part of the Snake River near the Utah/Wyoming border, and I encountered wild cows. Why doesn’t anyone try to capture these cows?
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Is it true that dairy cows will die if they aren’t milked? Is it true that cows won’t run away if the barn catches on fire, because they don’t know any better?
Thanks for the great thread, I’m really enjoying it.
Thanks Purl, good stories, I really liked them. The goose story reminded me of my own experience. I was dating a woman a few year back and often visted her mother’s country place. They had an old tom turkey who, for whatever reason, took a dislike to me. I always had to keep an eye out, or risk getting attacked. Several times I had to jump in my P/U or run for the house when old tom came after me w/ a vengance. Crazy assed bird.
Has the farm been in your family for a long time?
Yeah but are they single???
Wisconsin Farm boys are the cutest, and I need some fence built!
Barrels
(Hey I only live a little over an hour away!)
One thing I’ve wondered for a while is: where do the excess calves go? If the cows are bred every year, you must get quite a few more calves than you need to replace those that are retired, not to mention all the male calves who aren’t very useful to you. Do they end up in dog food?
What makes you think their wild?
What makes you think no one tries/has tried to capture them?
Free range cattle are raised througout the West, not only on private land but also on BLM and National Forest land where ranchers pay for grazing rights. This land can be remote to start with, and it takes a lot of land to support a cow in rugged or semi-arid terrain – so cattle will wander far from any sign of civilization.
The cattle are rounded up periodically for branding (and castrating) of calves or selection of animals to be sold. (Incidentally, brands can be very hard to see, even from fairly close up, after the hair has grown over them.) They’re may also be moved from winter to summer range. These cattle can seem pretty wild because they don’t have much human contact, and when they do it’s not a very pleasant experience. Typically, these ranching operations are in business to raise feeder cattle. Once the calf gets to a certain size, it’s sold off to a feedlot operation that brings the calf to a saleable weight.
Weird One, I can’t answer specifically for Miss Purl’s operation, but in general the male calves are castrated (making them steers) and sold to a feeder operation which brings them to market weight before selling them to a processor who chops them up for your table. I believe the females (heifers) that don’t have a future dairy career meet much the same fate.