Dairy dilemma: Area farmers fight an uphill battle

[ Originally published on: Friday, November 20, 2009 ]

Recorder/ Paul Franz

Conway dairy farmer John Wholey, in his cow barn.

The pitch-black darkness is as thick as the mud along Wholey Road as Conway dairy farmer John Wholey starts up his Massey Ferguson tractor and heads a few hundred feet downhill from his house to the cow barn. There, his herd of Holsteins, Jerseys and mixed-breed cows are waiting for their morning milking.

It's about 5:30 a.m. and raining lightly. Minutes before, the 53-year-old Conway farmer had slipped on his black rubber boots and a work jacket to start the day at Wholey Cow Farm.

Now the tractor roars against the early morning silence, with only the brown, black and white faces of the cows in the open-sided barn awake and lively.

Wholey's been doing farm chores since he was in kindergarten. His father, who died when he was 5, taught him to milk by hand at the family farm just down Bardwells Ferry Road and across the bridge in Shelburne, where his brother, Jim, still lives.

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