Living Jackson Magazine

The More Things Change

By Priscilla Daves

I remember the quiet mornings through the prism of a happy child’s memory: My grandfather would carry the cleaned, covered buckets to the barn as I stepped carefully behind.

In the warm, pleasant barn, he would sit on a stool and wash the udders with warm water he had brought with him. Then he would bring in another bucket and milk the cows. He would talk to me about the cows and their personalities. Some would be temperamental: My grandfather had to watch to see that those would not switch their tails in his face or try to step in the bucket.

Then he and I would reverse the process, and he would carry the milk out of the barn, through the pasture and the yard and then into my grandmother’s pristine kitchen. The milk was poured into churns and covered until churning time, which seemed to come sometime while I was napping. My grandparents would wash buckets and my grandfather would take yesterday’s milk, rich on the top with cream and chilled overnight in the refrigerator, to customers in Commerce.

Those good memories came back to me when I read the Mayfield Dairy Farms story in this issue. There are still the similarities between my grandparents’ kitchen and Mayfield Dairy: the same hurried calm to protect the milk, the same commitment to safety and good taste. But the changes between that small, literally mom and pop operation (Grandmother and Papa, if you please) and the mega-factory of Mayfield Dairy can be compared to differences between Jackson County 50 years ago and today.

We still do the same kinds of things, but the scale is so much bigger and the pace is so much faster. My grandfather would be delighted by the Mayfield Dairy, but I doubt he would enjoy the trip to get there, considering both the volume and the speed of the traffic.

I suspect that the equipment would be intimidating although the process still starts with a cow. Milking machines were not something my grandfather would have had a chance to work with—but I’d be willing to bet he would have liked them if he had.

We still have people with small farms working to make a little extra. Few small farms these days can support an individual, let alone a family. And the pressures that new houses and industry and more cars and businesses bring are direct challenges to the family farm.

The response of many has been to work with the growth—providing stable room for horses as north Atlanta gets too expensive for horses, or growing gardens using other people’s fields to make enough of a crop to sell on the roadways. But all of us can see the future: And if it is not a powerhouse enterprise like Mayfield, it will require education, thinking ahead and just plain luck if there is to be survival. I believe farming will always be dirty, sweaty, hot or cold work that creeps into your heart and never lets go of you.

Mayfield started out small and changed with the times to survive. We can copy our neighbor’s example—or we can go under.

Jackson County has more farms now than all but one county in this state. I hope we can continue to hold on to some of them. They are not parks, but they do provide green space we increasingly need as the world heats up.

Already we’ve proven we can change. I remember riding along the roads of Jackson County to see deserted house after deserted house that had been left behind in the 1920s, and 1930s and the 1940s. In the 1950s, poultry saved the people who were left. The chicken houses supported new brick houses and college educations for two generations. Today, I have been told, you cannot get a loan to build a chicken house in Jackson County. I hope that’s not true—but it does provide a lesson about how things do change.

Farmers are learning to adapt. If you live near a farm, I hope you work toward a little understanding of the pressures on farmers—and remember that you are privileged to see the last of a disappearing world as you adapt to your neighbors.

We at Living Jackson hope you enjoy this issue on agribusiness, and perhaps some of you will close this magazine understanding the world of farming a little better. After all, we promised to help build bridges between our people, and we are committed to you and to this county.