How We Lost the Family Dairy 

In his new book Barn Gothic: Three Generations and the Death of the Family Dairy Farm (Island Press, 2025), Dennis tells the story of how his family’s dairy farm in Canaseraga, New York, started by his great-grandfather during the Great Depression, fell apart amidst the economic upheavals affecting farmers everywhere. He writes:

At times, I was tempted to see this memoir as a eulogy project. Most family farms have disappeared in the United States. To save those that remain is going to take a significant shift from the type of thinking that got us here, and time is short. To forfeit the American dairy industry entirely to factory production, however, is to turn our backs on not just the small farms that still persist, but also those throughout history who have resisted that understanding of agriculture as long as they could.

In this excerpt from his memoir, Dennis describes the first conversation he had with his father about trying to tell the story of why their family lost the family dairy.

“So what do you want to know?” my father asked. His voice was deeper than usual. He sank back, stretched his legs, and stared ahead. He wasn’t reticent or gruff, nor did he fit any of the other stereotypes of farmers. Instead, he shaved every day and dressed well in public, always in an open button-down over a T-shirt and a brown Syracuse Orangemen hat. The mason jar in his hand was left over from a winter, long ago, when my mother thought she would try canning. It was full of water and gin.

At first, I was surprised that my father would talk about what had happened. However, he clutched the jar, steeling himself against the memories. My father was from the last generation of farmers to be told they were the backbone of the nation. Government policy encouraged low milk prices, which allowed manufacturers and retailers to prosper—but not farmers. Part of what my father lived through was a failing industry, and part of it was what that does to people. Even though it was summer, the porch had firewood stacked under the eaves. In New York State there is no way to know when the last cold day will be, and so no one thinks to carry the remaining chunks back to the pile at the end of the lawn. Because we tended to split the wood in front of the porch, often only as it was needed, the lawn was littered with splinters and the holes the dog made whenever it heard the axe hit the timber, giving in to a strange compulsion. Also on the front porch was a grill that my father used all year round, going onto the concrete in his socks with a spatula in his hand, because he usually cooked in our family. There were tools from various projects left around us, as well as toys from my sister’s children. We saw these objects every day but no longer realized they were there. 

My father sat in a wooden rocking chair with handles the dog had chewed on. I sat in another one. My mother had probably found them both at a yard sale. I drank my gin out of a coffee mug, straight. 

I was in my mid-30s and thought I had a sense of how to lead an interview, even if it was with my own father. I asked him about the dairy industry in America and all the changes he had seen in his lifetime. I figured it was best to get him talking comfortably first, even if it wasn’t what I was after. For all the conversations in the past where I knew I was supposed to say something to him but didn’t know how to do it, at least this time I had a script. 

Also, however, the question wasn’t disingenuous. A lot about farming had changed, and that had consequences. Between 2002 and 2019, the United States lost over half of its dairy herds. Agribusiness grew quickly, but during these years the average dairy farm only made a profit twice. As a result, a whole subculture of America disappeared in two decades. It was a quiet violence that affected tens of thousands of families, and no one outside of these households seemed to be talking about it. My father never said this, I but think he would agree: Those who make up that statistic have the right to see what happened written down, and they deserve for everyone else to see it, too.

“I don’t miss it,” my father said, suddenly. “I don’t miss it. There’s a new chapter in my life.” He took another swallow and set the glass on the concrete. “I’ve moved on.”

As a school bus driver, my father thrived being around people. For the first time he was in the public and had an audience for his wit. He had time to visit friends and go places. Every summer he invited the staff at the bus garage to our pond. The year after he quit dairy farming, my parents went to the Grand Canyon. Still, this wasn’t the first time he said that he didn’t miss milking cows. At first, I thought he was trying to convince himself. Until then, dairy farming had been everything he had done. However, later I started to wonder if he wasn’t saying it for my sake instead. Maybe he didn’t want me to question the choices I had made.

I knew, without asking, that my father couldn’t have moved on. He drove bus because he still had debt to pay. The rhythms of farming—of dairy farming, specifically—stay inside a person long after the last cow is milked, telling them when to feed, when to start the night milking, when to get up in the morning, and all the time reminding them that they’re not farming. More troubling, the organs on the right side of his body bulged out of his torn abdomen and he had a metal rod in his back. Every movement hurt him, and it got worse every year. He refused the lifetime prescription of painkillers the doctor had given him, but increasingly self-medicated with gin towards the evening, so he could fall asleep for at least a few hours. While my father said that he had moved on, he carried the pain of the dairy industry with him wherever he went.

At one point, when the time was right, I asked about the story of our farm. He knew what I meant. Because a farm is its own center of gravity, it determines how the people on it live and die. 

Every farm has two histories. One is the version given to visitors, whether 4-H’ers, members of a Future Farmers of America club or distant cousins dropping by. It is sanitized, protective and delivered in bullet points. It includes what changes were made on the farm and when, and how many cows were milked at the time. Occasionally, while leaning forward on his knees, my father answered questions like he was being profiled in a farming magazine. He made grand statements about how the registered cow business “piqued a farmer’s interest” and how there was a time when the harder a person worked, the more money they got. He talked about how the way farmers fed cows changed through the years, and the difference in having hill ground. Eventually, though, he gave me the second story: what happens to people on a farm when that farm struggles.

The sounds of the cattle chewing above us made the type of white noise that the evening could settle into. The dog sauntered by, and my father grabbed it and patted its ribs briskly. He was probably glad to give his hands something to do. The dog was a rescue Aussie my parents had gotten a few years earlier. The dog half-yawned, its teeth grinning.

My father was, above all, a man of stories. There were times he had little else, so he knew the value they had. Our story, as he saw it, was the gift I asked for. In offering it, he showed that he believed in my ambitions as a writer and the decisions I had made, despite what it cost him. Maybe he thought I could get the story right.

My father’s eyes grew watery as he stared into the past again. At one point he pulled the top of his shirt up to rub his cheeks.

Whenever I returned home, my father set my boots out on the corner of the porch. The first few days I dwelled too much on small assurances. I enjoyed seeing again how big the two walnut trees were in the lawn. They were at least 200 years old, and at that size looked the same as they always had. I appreciated all the birdsong that surrounded our family’s house. I had never realized it was there until I first left for college. I have travelled much since then and never came across anything similar. I mentioned the birds to my parents every time I came back.

“What about Grandpa?” I said. “Do you regret anything?”

“Just a second. You probably need a refill too.”

I handed him my mug. What I didn’t have the courage to say was, What about us?

The sound of the faucet came through the open window behind me. Because I’d seen it before, I knew that the water foamed at the top of the jar once it was filled, already having gin in it. If my father had a lime he would use it, but usually he didn’t. He screwed a cap close. Then he came back onto the porch and handed me the mug and lowered himself into his chair again.

He sat there for a long time. A red squirrel ran up the walnut tree in front of us. It moved in short bursts and then froze, its nails clicking against the bark. The cattle had started to circle, which meant that was probably where they would bed down. A car passed, but neither of us looked to see if the person waved.

“Just make it a happy story,” my father said.

From Barn Gothic: Three Generations and the Death of the Family Dairy Farm by Ryan Dennis. Copyright © 2025 by the author. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington, D.C.

Ryan DennisMore by this author →