Is there any sight lonelier than an empty barn?

Back when my mother was a little girl growing up on a dairy farm out near Dotyville, the rural landscape was dotted with a number of working farms. Today you can drive down those same roads and see countless barns standing empty – devoid of any sign of life or activity.

Gone are the days when you could make a living on a herd of 35 cows. Now the average farm has at least 100 animals and growing all the time. Just 10 miles north, south and west of Grandpa’s farm are three “mega farms” that milk hundreds of cows three times a day.

The latest herd count by the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture indicates the number of people leaving dairy farming is slowing up a bit. According to their numbers, Wisconsin only lost nine dairy herds last month during the first week in January. Currently there are 14,396 herds milking in the state.

As I pass by those barns that were once a hive of activity during the harvest and milking time, it’s hard not to feel a bit of sadness for the passing of a way of life: the small family farm with its small herd of cows, handful of pigs, a flock of chicken and a large garden out in the backyard. Grandpa’s red barn is long gone, but I can still see my cousins doing somersaults off of the thick, hand-hewn beams into the loft filled with loose straw or us kids trying to coax a tune out of the dusty, old player piano that was stored in the old granary next to Grandpa’s old Edsel.

That old barn was a treasure trove of fun for us city kids. And it was a great place to go if you needed time to think. Today I still love to escape up into the haymow of our old barn or spend a moment sitting in the manger of the old milking barn, listening to the cows contentedly chewing their cud. It’s such a peaceful, unhurried place (after milking time, of course) in this hurry-up world. Unfortunately these once-stately icons of rural America are falling into disrepair or simply disappearing.