Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 8, 1990 TAG: 9007080189
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ED SHAMY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: OTTER HILL LENGTH: Long
Jim Bob remembers how, as a boy, he loved to follow his dad through the barns at the Turner dairy farm south of Bedford. He'd watch his dad move through the chores, he would pet the cows and clamber around on the heavy wooden slats of the stalls.
He's 17 years old now, a strapping young fellow who in September will begin his senior year at Staunton River High School.
And for the past week, at the time some teen-agers are getting to sleep - about 2 a.m. - Jim Bob has been getting out of bed, stepping into his blue jeans, and making his way through the dark to the barn where he used to frolic.
Even though his dad, Jimmy, is at his side; even though he is being passed the mantle of adulthood at the three-generation farm, Jim Bob finds precious little to crow about in the foggy hours just after midnight.
"I didn't volunteer," he says dryly.
He has been recruited for milking duty.
The father and son shared the task last week while the Turners' two hired milkers took time off. Year-round, Jim Bob and Jimmy share the chore every other weekend to give the milkers a break.
"That's why I usually sit at the back of the class on Mondays. It catches up to me," says Jim Bob. It's hard to pay attention - or to stay awake - on five hours' sleep.
By 3 a.m., Jim Bob and Jimmy Turner are milking the family's Holstein cows - about 160 at this time of year, nearly 200 by late fall.
They do not see the sun rise or the farm begin to stir at first light. Together, they are inside the milking parlor, ushering cows by the dozen into their positions, hosing and drying teats, attaching the suction claws of a milking machine, and shooing the cows back outside to make way for the next group.
Father and son exchange few words inside the humid, brightly lit parlor. A box fan whirs but doesn't manage to move much air. The milking machine's vacuum thrums.
On this morning, Jim Bob doesn't feel too bad. He was in bed at 9 o'clock the night before and managed about 5 1/2 hours of sleep.
"I did it when I was his age," says Jimmy Turner. Thirty years ago, he took over the milking duties for his mom. Jimmy and his dad, Ray, milked cows until the herd grew in number and the Turners hired milkers.
But Jimmy never questioned his role. Your dad farmed, you pitched in and eventually ran the place.
But for 200 years, that truth has been unraveling. At the time of the Revolutionary War, 90 percent of Americans lived on farms. Today, it has slipped below 2 percent.
Jim Bell, a Virginia Tech agricultural economist, says the old saying is true. You can't keep the young people down on the farm.
"The economic pressure is probably even greater than the lifestyles," he says. "Agriculture really took its lumps in the 1980s. In the mid-'80s, we had the lowest farm income since the Depression. That has accelerated the exodus."
Young people just don't see themselves earning the amount of money in farming that they would like to earn, says Bell.
Jim Bob hasn't thought much about what he'll do next summer, after he has graduated from high school. He doubts he'll go to college.
And Jimmy won't force the farm on him.
"He knows it's here if he wants it. If he don't, well . . . " he says, and he hustles to tend to a milking cow.
Jim Bob's mind isn't made up.
He'll graduate high school next June, and he says he enjoys carpentry a lot - enough to pursue it as a career, maybe.
It's not that he doesn't like the farm. He does. He likes the animals and he is treated like an adult before most teens - driving tractors and heavy equipment and playing a vital role in a family operation.
"The hours aren't so bad," says Jim Bob. "It's just there's so many of them."
He had a taste of off-farm work last summer, when he earned $400 in nine days assembling school lockers in Bedford - more than he's paid for these early morning milkings.
The last group of cows comes through the milking line. It is 5:50 a.m.
Jim Bob gathers the rags used to dry the cows' udders and puts them in a washing machine in the milkhouse. Then he mixes fortified powdered milk to feed the calves. Then he carries the feed to the calf barn, where he is greeted by a cacophony of bellowing.
The Turners are tearing down an old barn, and will build another in its place. Jim Bob is expected to work on that project for the rest of the day. And feed cattle. Scrape the feedlot.
There will be no nap.
The sun is up. A tractor-trailer has arrived to haul away the farm's milk.
Ray Turner, Jim Bob's grandfather, comes to beckon the men for breakfast.
Hundreds of acres of corn surround the homestead, glistening with dew.
Jim Bob likes the lifestyle. He's just not sure yet if it's for him.
"If the economic situation were better, I think lots of young people would stick in farming," says Virginia Tech's Bell. "You begin to wonder who's going to be the last farmer in Virginia and turn the lights out."
by CNB