Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 18, 1994 TAG: 9409200044
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER NOTE: above
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
J.B. Clayton knew he had a decision to make on the morning of Sept. 2.
The dairy herd that he and his partner, Galen Brubaker, had spent years nurturing was going on the auction block.
The cows, 150 strong, were being fed before the sale. Then, one by one, they would enter a large blue and white tent next to Clayton's Franklin County farmhouse.
Farmers began to fill up metal bleachers inside the tent. Some came to buy, others to see the spectacle: another prominent Franklin County farm leaving the dairy business.
A restaurant set up a smaller tent next to the auction area so buyers could take a break to grab some barbecue. There were handshakes and back-slapping. There was laughter, too.
But a festive atmosphere didn't make it a festive occasion for Clayton. The sale was the culmination of the most trying year of his life.
Clayton's brown beard is riddled with gray - gray that wasn't there just months ago, he says.
Could Clayton stay and watch as the cows he had come to know like family were bid and sold, or would he occupy himself somewhere else until the auction was over?
The events leading up to the sale began last year in the darkness of a November morning.
Clayton, 34, was milking a cow at Gale-Ru Dairy Farm, the Franklin County farm owned by Brubaker, his father-in-law, when the animal kicked at him. To hear Clayton tell it, the kick triggered a reaction to months of mounting frustration over the travails of operating a dairy farm.
Although the dairy farm was not losing money, a problem with hired help and the strain of working long hours for little profit took their toll on Clayton.
He started to cry that morning, and was still crying about five hours later.
He was despondent for days.
"I wanted to get up and do what I'd always done, but I just couldn't," he says.
Brubaker and Clayton's wife, Brenda, knew something was wrong.
Clayton's pastor came to see him and brought a pamphlet that listed 15 symptoms of depression.
"I found out I was batting a thousand," he says.
Clayton, with help from family and friends, sought medical treatment and counseling for severe depression.
He tried to go back to work at the farm several times in the next few weeks, but the emotions kept rushing back. Additional counseling and medication were needed. At times, Clayton contemplated suicide.
"You only have to lose that argument once, and I felt like I'd been run over by a bull," he says. "I was doing what I always wanted to do. I knew who I was, but I placed too much emphasis on what I did."
Farming was J.B. Clayton's life.
He was following in the footsteps of Brubaker, a respected leader in the farming industry for 44 years and a member of the Virginia Milk Commission.
Both Brubaker, 69, and Clayton are Franklin County natives. Farming is in their blood. They're religious, conservative men who believe in tradition.
But they are of two different generations, two different eras in farming.
"Things just aren't the same around here as they once were," Clayton says. "Deals were made with handshakes. That's not the case any more."
Clayton's respect for tradition made it especially hard for him to face Brubaker about his problems.
"I felt like I had failed Galen" and Brubaker's wife, Ruby, he says. "I had always set high expectations for myself. I guess I set them so high, you couldn't do anything but fail."
But Brubaker understood. He says he knew Clayton was struggling to keep the dairy business from overtaking his life.
"J.B. went on vacation [in the fall of 1993], and when he came back, he told me he felt like he'd never left," Brubaker says. "He just couldn't relax and get the business out of his mind.
"The thing about dairy farming is that it's a seven-day-a-week job. The cows still have to be milked on Christmas Day. That can get to a lot of people."
In late November, J.B. Clayton made up his mind. He and Brubaker decided to sell the herd.
Brubaker readily admits that the rules of the dairy business have changed over the years. But he remains an optimist. He's seen farmers come and go and still believes hard work and tight management can make a farmer a good living.
But, he says, it costs more to get into dairy farming, and the profit margin isn't as high as it once was. The lowered margin makes it hard for farmers to hire quality help, which, in turn, keeps many family farms from increasing their herd size.
Clayton says, "It's a vicious cycle."
Brubaker says, "The biggest problem we've had is that we've made enough money to stay above water, but if you look at the return on our investment, it just hasn't been there."
In Franklin County, multigeneration dairy farms are disappearing at an average rate of four a year. Some fold under the financial pressures; others are sold when older farmers die or retire without a family member or a buyer to take over.
In 1950, Brubaker says, the county had close to 300 dairies of all types. That number has dropped to about 100, according to Louis Schiemann, the county's extension agent.
Statewide, there were 1,297 Grade A dairies in October 1990. Three years later, that number dropped to 1,207.
The dairy business, however, is not fading in Franklin County, even though the farms are sold. The number of cows in the county has remained constant as larger dairies incorporate cows from other farms into their herds. Franklin remains the second in the state - after Rockingham County - in total number of dairy cows.
Schiemann says he sees a day when a few large, corporate dairies will own most of the cows in the county.
Clayton agrees, pointing to the hardships a young farmer faces just to get into the business.
"It takes at least $500,000 to get started, and that's with the bare minimums," he says. "If a man gets into the business with a lot of debt hanging over his head, he'll be out in five years. I'd bet on it."
There are other ways to get a start in dairy farming, though, including lease agreements and inheritance.
Brubaker said he was aided by his father's cosigning the loan when he purchased 400 acres in Franklin County for about $17,000 in 1950.
"Things have changed, but they haven't changed as much as people think," Brubaker says. "It's definitely harder for younger farmers to get a start, though."
With that in mind, Brubaker decided to keep more than 100 heifers for breeding in the coming months. Brubaker says he hasn't decided for sure what he's going to do with the cows next year.
"If the right fellow came along, I might give him a chance to get into the business," Brubaker says.
Brubaker says he's going to go into semiretirement but will complete his current terms on the Milk Commission and the National Farm Cooperative Bank board.
"I always said that when you reach 70, it's time to let younger men do the thinking on some of these boards and commissions," he says.
It was cloudy the morning the Gale-Ru Dairy Farm prepared for auction.
As the sun peeked through the clouds, Clayton sat inside the tent, watching as the auctioneer got ready.
Clayton had planned to leave the farm and go to Roanoke to see a movie while the auction was taking place.
The movie would have to wait.
Brubaker introduced Clayton at the start of the sale, saying, "It may not be usual practice to hold a prayer before an auction, but I think it's appropriate today."
As the first cow was sold for more than $1,600, Clayton remained in his seat.
About halfway into the five-hour sale, he left the tent for a barbecue sandwich and a Coke and to reflect for a minute.
"I didn't think I'd be here," he says. "But it's not quite as bad as I thought it would be."
For several weeks before the auction, Clayton had begun concentrating on the future.
"My wife and I are going to do some traveling," he says. "We're going to visit some of our family that we haven't seen in a while."
Since November, he had compiled a folder of magazine articles and other information outlining problems farmers are facing across the nation. One article dealt with the increasing rate of suicide among farmers.
Clayton says he knew a farmer in Franklin County who killed himself. Clayton made a different choice.
He was looking for a job at the time of the auction, and he was hired the week after the sale by a Roanoke Valley company as a truck driver. He will be delivering and installing automated teller machines across the United States and into Canada.
Clayton is excited about the new chapter in his life.
"I'm looking forward to it," he says.
Clayton will still come home to the farmhouse in Franklin County that he and his wife have lived in for nearly 15 years. But he'll be looking at life from a different perspective.
"Before I decided to leave the dairy business, farming was first in my life," he says. "Taking care of myself fell about seventh on the list. Luckily, I've survived.
"Now I'm ready to get on with the rest of my life."
by CNB