Barn full or memories: Curt Anderson

What year did you start farming, and what year did you retire? I started milking cows after working as a milk tester for seven years and working for a Surge dealer, putting milk machines in for three years, before I rented a farm outside of Oelwein. I started renting that farm in 1967. Then moved to Waukon in 1976 when I bought my own farm. I milked cows there until 2019.

Tell us about your farm when you started and describe what it looked like when you retired, including how many cows you milked when you retired. When we started, it was a 40-stall tiestall barn I rented. When we moved to Waukon, we bought a 38-stall barn with freestall housing. At the most, we milked 80 cows, switching three times to get them all in the barn. When I retired, we were back down to about 50 cows.

What were some of the big advancements you made during your career? We were always looking for the next thing. We started using better bulls and kept increasing our herd size. We wanted to keep building that herd and see the change year after year.

What did you love about milking cows? I loved building pedigrees and seeing a better cow as the generations grew up and went on. I was always trying to improve our genetics and keep a productive herd.

What was the highlight of your dairy career? I had really good production with my herd. Our cows were really good with type as well, and I appreciated having those good-looking, good-producing cows.

What is the biggest challenge you faced in your career, and how did you overcome it? My biggest challenge was buying the farm in Waukon and having to move from Oelwein. When I rented the farm in Oelwein, it was a spoken agreement that, one day, I could buy the farm, but that never panned out. After seven years, I decided to move and buy my own farm, and that’s when we moved to Waukon.

If there is one thing you wish you could have done differently during your farming career, what would it be? We bought our farm in Waukon, and it had a hilly area. We never really had a place to build or add on. We built a freestall barn, but it took a lot of dirt moving to do that. It was a drawback of a hill farm. We were landlocked in there, and it was tough to expand.

What piece of equipment or technology has been introduced that you wish you had for your dairy career? There’s so much technology working in barns since I quit, the management of it, adding parlors or carousels. Adding technology is something I would have considered, but we couldn’t build on it anywhere because of the terrain around our farm.

What do you miss most about dairy farming? I’m not sure. I used to get Hoard’s Dairyman, and they had a judging contest in it, and I would do that. The further I’ve gotten away from it, though, the less interested I’ve been in it.

What advice would you give to a young farmer today? If I were starting a dairy now, I would maybe go with an organic herd with pasture. It would be a small herd with not a lot of expenses.

What is your tie to the dairy industry today? My son still uses our farm for a beef herd, but for dairy, I’ll use my tablet to watch all these sales. You still get to sit around and watch the cows; you can observe the pedigrees and see what they’re going for. I got my tablet for that reason, so I can watch sales on Facebook and watch Cowbuyer.com.

Was retiring an easy or hard decision/transition? It was a slow process, so I didn’t really just go one day and do nothing. It was a slow deal.

What have you been doing since you retired? I go for coffee every afternoon, spending time at the Village Farm & Home Store. I’ll also go out to the farm and see what’s going on. We have a good bunch out at the farm store, and we go clear in the back.