From: Fred Hearne <fthearne@sweetwaterfarms.com>
To: Bill Hearne <wrhearne@nasa.gov>
Thanks for the note. Alice has a right to be worried about the farm situation.
So far we’re doing fairly well. The boys are doing most of the farming these days, them and their kids, especially now that the schools are all closed down. It seems weird that most of the grandkids are the age we were when we started doing a man’s work around this old place. Of course that was back in the days when it was just the old home place, not six different farms and five thousand head of cattle, plus row crops and fodder.
The milk truck has been hit and miss, and we’ve had to dump milk as often as it gets picked up. But Janice figured out how to rig a home pasteurizer, so at least we’re able to salvage some of that milk. That’s a good thing, because the dairy case at the store is empty more often than not.
However, we have adequate fodder for the herd, although concentrates could get a little tight if the feed store doesn’t get deliveries. I’m glad Dad and Grandpa always insisted on keeping the silos and the old barns with the big haymows.
A few years ago, Dick McCall switched to the new style of dairy barns and contracting to have hay and silage trucked in every week. It let him run more cows on the same acreage. Now he’s looking at having to put his whole herd down if he can’t get fresh supplies. Not something a herdsman wants to do, but the alternative is slow starvation, and you just don’t do that to an animal.
We’ve agreed with him that, if the worst comes, we’ll buy his breeding stock, with the understanding that we’ll sell it back to him when he gets back on his feet. Bob’s uncertain about it, says it feels shady, but the lawyer says it’s legal, and Dick’s helped us through some rough patches.
As far as the sick itself, we’ve been lucky. But then we’re pretty isolated up here, and as soon as things started going bad, stores went to having delivery drivers drop off product without any contact, so that eliminates one channel of infection from the city folks. I’m hearing that Madison and Milwaukee are a complete disaster area, and the governor’s up at his summer residence up in Green Bay. We see him on TV, giving his daily briefings, but for us it’s all pretty abstract compared to the land and the crops and the cattle.
Sometimes I feel so helpless with all this going on. You were always the strong one of us, the smart one, the resourceful one. There are days when I wish you could’ve come back up here when you had to retire from flying. But then I think how at least you’re safe up there, and I’ll go out and look up at the Moon and think that maybe you’re looking back down at me. I know that’s silly, that you’re over there on the Far Side, but it’s still a comfort to know that one branch of our family is off this rock.