While interviewing Tom Gerrits of Country Aire Farms, I challenged him to choose one question he most wanted me to ask his sons. He didn’t mention herd size, technology or milk markets. He said, “Ask them this: Do you think you’ve had hard times yet?”
It wasn’t meant to challenge effort or minimize pressure. It was meant to spark perspective.
Because dairy farming has never been easy. But the nature of its challenges has changed with every generation.
As Tom and his brother Mike could recall, they once milked 80 cows alongside their parents in a stall barn near Greenleaf, Wis. Physically, the work was hard. And as the two brothers choose farming for their own career paths, their father Budd Gerrits taught them not only how to roll up their sleeves, but to operate with excellence and to think strategically.
These lessons prepared the two brothers in ways they didn’t know yet would be necessary for the challenges their generation would face as they took over the family farm.
Tom and Mike entered the era of growth and expansion. A trip to the Southwest in the 1990s opened their eyes to new ways of dairying. Over the coming years, Country Aire Farms would lead the region in technology, with a rotary milking parlor, while growing the herd exponentially. And with this came its own “hard.” A more complex business, more volatile milk markets, reliance on outside labor. Work ethic was still a necessity, however, business management became equally essential.
Today, the next generation has stepped into management and leadership at Country Aire Farms. Tom’s sons Nick and Craig, and Mike’s sons Matt and Jon, carry forward the acumen for both work and business they learned from their fathers and grandfather, as they now milk roughly 6,000 cows on their home site.
To build up their managerial skills and their grit, each took a turn managing a 600-cow dairy at a second location. “Hard” during that training phase became learning what it was like to have full responsibility of cows, equipment and people, to manage employees and even to jump in the parlor if someone didn’t show up for a milking shift on a Saturday night. And that “hard” built the character and the skills for the challenges these four face today and going forward, whether its tight margins, social pressures, or government regulations.
Each generation tends to define hardship by its own experiences. But the reality is this: dairy farming has not become easier. What’s hard has just changed.
So when one generation asks the next, “Do you think you’ve hit hard times yet?” the question isn’t about comparison. It’s about continuity. And on hard days, these reflections on the past may serve as a hopeful reminder that those who came before us had some pretty tough days that they were able to rise above too.
Because every generation in dairy is called to face the “hard” of its era—and to build something strong enough to carry the next one forward.
