A death in farming
Late last week the Associated Press reported the suicide of a Columbia County farmer, who had shot and killed his 51 milking Holsteins before shooting himself next to them in his dairy barn. He left over 50 young cows that don’t require the grind of twice-daily milking.
The Albany Times Union reports on Dean Pierson’s burial in today’s edition. A big John Deere tractor led the procession to the grave-site in what reporter Paul Grondahl calls “a cortege of a vanishing slice of Americana.”
It’s a sad, sad story, particularly in dairy country, and there’s really no certainty offered about what was in this man’s mind. He left no note of explanation, just a warning on the barn door not to go inside, just call to call 911.
Grondahl’s report raises the inevitable questions about the pressures dairy farmers have been under this year: a crash in milk prices, with rising costs. Talk about underwater. He quotes the vet for Pierson and his father before him, Dr. George Beneke:
“Dean grew up being taught if you got up at 5, took good care of your cows and worked hard, you’d be successful,” Beneke said. The current situation, he said, is more akin to laboring at a grinding toil and being told after a 12-hour day to open your wallet and pay out $100 for the aggravation.
The large-animal country vet has witnessed several peaks and valleys in farming across four decades. “But none as long or as low as this,” he said.
Dean Pierson was 59. He was the son of a first generation Swedish immigrant and took over the farm after his father died at 92. He’s survived by his wife and four children.
