Dairy Farm Adventures: Building the big barn

by Lee-Rae Jordan-Oliver
Special to the Houlton Pioneer Times
    According to the Maine Milk Commission, there were 5,100 dairy farms in Maine in 1945. The number of dairy farms dwindled to 304 by 2010. At a time when dairy farms were shutting down, Matthew and I were building a dairy farm from scratch. The sixteen by forty-eight foot barn we built to shelter our first ten cows was not equipped to milk them. Knowing we could not make a living milking cows tied to John Deere lawnmowers and telephone poles, Matthew and I hired Rick’s construction crew to build us a thirty-six by one hundred foot gambrel barn. The foundation was poured in August 2007.
    Rick told us he’d never built a barn as big as the one we had planned, but he was confident his crew could tackle the job. Once the foundation was completed, the men set right to work. They knew we wanted the barn completed before cold weather set in so they didn’t waste any time. The crew worked on the barn every day, weather permitting and stayed past 5 p.m. most days. They even worked a few weekends to stay on schedule. On the weekends, I always made muffins or cookies for the men to show our appreciation for their efforts.
    Rick rented a Lull forklift to put up the enormous trusses, which measured thirty-eight feet long by sixteen feet tall. He operated the Lull while two guys stationed twelve feet in the air caught and lowered each truss into place. Setting the trusses in position was a precarious task. He guided his crew through the process carefully. Steady progress was made every day and no one was hurt. While Rick had the Lull on site, he took the time to give our three-year-old son, Walker, a ride. Walker loved watching the giant forklift maneuver the heavy trusses with ease.
    The barn was completed well before winter. We still had a tremendous amount of work to do inside the barn before we were ready to milk and make money, but we had taken a step in the right direction.
    Walnut, the first bull calf born on our farm, attempted to explore every inch of the new barn one day. At seven months old, he weighed a healthy 700 pounds and had not been steered yet. He broke through a barrier we had leading into the utility room and promptly fell into a six-foot pit we had built into the foundation for a future milking parlor. Matthew heard loud bellows in the barn and went to investigate. He peered into the pit to see Walnut glaring back, hollering with all his might.
    Matthew lowered himself into the pit with the bull. Thankfully Walnut’s temperament was like his gentle mother’s. He did not move an inch while Matthew tied a wide ratchet strap around his belly behind his shoulders. Matthew drove the Chinese Taskmaster tractor into the utility room and hooked the other end of the strap to the tractor’s bucket. He raised the bucket as high as he could trying not to tip the tractor on its front end and lifted Walnut out of the pit. Matthew thought for sure Walnut would be permanently injured from the trauma. Walnut lay in a heap breathing as if he’d just finished a marathon. After a few minutes, Walnut stood up and give his body a giant shake and took off outside as if to say, “Phew, I’m never doing that again!” Clearly, we had much work to do to our big barn before it was cow-proof and ready for milk production.
    Editor’s Note: Lee-Rae Jordan-Oliver and her husband Matt are former educators who own a dairy farm in Hodgdon. Her column, discussing life on a farm in 2011, will appear on a semi-regular basis in The Houlton Pioneer Times.