Barn full of memories: Roger Halverson

Roger Halverson
Verona, Wisconsin

Within this feature the Dairy Star  catches up to retired farmers to talk about the ups and downs they had when dairy farming. The feature includes how each individual farm changed throughout the farmer’s career and what each has been doing since they hung the milkers up.

What year did you start farming, and what year did you retire? I started here in 1998 and retired in 2021. Prior to 1998, I farmed in Grant County for three years. Before that, I worked for my brother on his dairy farm. I spent a total of 37 years milking cows.

Tell us about your farm when you started and describe what it looked like when you retired, including how many cows did you milk when you retired. I rented the farm, and the farm itself did not change that much through the years. I milked 50 cows in a 50-stall stanchion barn and raised calves in a converted hog barn. We had a couple of loafing sheds for dry cows and older heifers. There were three stave silos on the farm — two for haylage and corn silage and one for high-moisture corn. I farmed 165 acres, which included 149 acres at the farm and another 25-30 acres of rented hay ground.

What were some of the big advancements you made during your career? Deciding to cross-breed my cows was one of the bigger advancements I made. I had Holsteins, but after 10 years, I started crossbreeding with Jersey and Brown Swiss to get a little color in the barn and help improve the butterfat and protein in the milk. I did all my own breeding and was successful in getting cows pregnant. When my semen supply guy looked at my breeding book and saw the low number of repeats, etc., he said, “When you quit farming, I’d hire you to breed cows.” I made little upgrades throughout the farm here and there, such as buying a newer skid loader and a newer, larger hay rake, which helped me be more efficient. I went from feeding high-moisture ground ear corn to feeding ground shell corn. I would run haylage and corn silage from two of the silos at the same time into the barn or bunk to feed a “poor man’s total mixed ration.” I thought the cows ate really well. I also went from doing small squares to making big round bales.

What did you love about milking cows? I enjoyed being my own boss. I did things the way I wanted, and nobody told me what to do or how to do it. You went about it your own way.

What was the highlight of your dairy career? There were 2-3 years when milk dropped to $9-10 per hundredweight, and I survived. It didn’t shut me down or kick me out. I did what I had to do to survive, and to me, that’s saying something.

What is the biggest challenge you faced in your career and how did you overcome it? Surviving the lower milk prices was probably the biggest challenge and accomplishment in my career. When the milk price is $9, that doesn’t leave you much. You tightened your belt, went without and did what you had to do to get through.

If there is one thing you wish you could have done differently during your farming career, what would it be? I would have started on my own earlier and bought a farm for myself versus renting all those years and working for somebody else.

What piece of equipment or technology has been introduced that you wish you had for your dairy career? Auto steer on tractors would have been nice. It seemed like I was always turning the wheel on my International.

What do you miss most about dairy farming? There are a lot of things I miss, such as being my own boss, running my own business, the smell of drying hay, tilling the ground in the spring and the smell of earth that it produced — I used to love that. I also miss the smell of corn silage. In the winter months, when the cows were in the barn and we fed silage, I thought the aroma of cattle, manure and feed was a nice smell. What I don’t miss, though, is the stress of farming.

What advice would you give to a young farmer today? Keep your options open for somebody to lean on. When I was younger and farming, times were tough. It’s hard mentally. There are days you’re going to want to pull your hair out, and you’ll wonder, “Why the heck am I doing this?” It’s nice to have someone to lean on during these times. Don’t turn away help.

What is your tie to the dairy industry today? At my current job, we serve not only crop growers but also dairy farms for their crop fertilizing and chemical applications. I am not an applicator, but rather, I drive tender trucks filled with dry fertilizer and liquid chemical applications like herbicides. During harvest, I drive trucks to the farms to pick up grain to bring back to the elevator. In winter, I haul corn to ethanol plants and pick up fertilizer to bring back to the different co-op locations for the spring.

Was retiring an easy or hard decision/transition? The hard part was that it wasn’t my farm and therefore wasn’t my decision to get out of farming or to quit when I did. It’s a major life decision, and I was forced into it when the owners decided to sell the farm for development. The Verona/Madison area is not a farming community anymore, and there are now houses being built on the land. It’s upsetting to see the development. It was such a nice farm.

What have you been doing since you retired? This is my third year working at a cooperative in the agronomy department. I milked cows for so long that I slipped into a funk and thought, “What am I going to do now?” I was 57. After the first spring, they wanted to retain me as a full-time employee, and that worked out well. I am also able to get away every summer with my family to go up north for Father’s Day. My son is 26, and we’ve been going up since he was 6 or 7. But, while farming, it wasn’t a guarantee we’d have that trip. Now, it’s more of a guarantee we’re going, and we can stay longer than we used to.