Mrs. Rivers’s kids took to milking right away. Once they learned how to pull the milk out of the udder, they milked on a daily basis. Mr. Rivers also enjoyed milking the cows. After long days at the office, Mr. Rivers’s favorite thing to do was to come home and milk a cow. As the boys grew, Mrs. Rivers asked her husband to breed their dairy cow. Each year the Rivers did this, they started increasing the size of their herd. When the amount of milk they were collecting each day got too large for the family’s own consumption, Mrs. Rivers began distributing the milk in town. She would take milk to both sides of her family. The Rivers dairy milk was prized for its quality and became very popular throughout Pickerville. The milk got so popular that it is sold in the grocery market, and it is served to the town’s schoolchildren for lunch every day.
After the two brothers are finished milking, they place what they collected into a large refrigerated tank that stores the milk at the preferred temperature. The two brothers go back up to the large cabin-like farmhouse to get some rest. They know they have to get up early the next morning to pull Wayne’s car out.
The Rivers Brothers
The two rise before the sun is up and, once again, make their way down to the old milk barn. This trip to the barn is not for milking but for the farm’s tractor. Wayne grabs a chain as Quail fires up the large green tractor. It’s obvious the two brothers have done this before. Wayne recalls a memory.
“Hey, do you remember that time Mom and Dad held a New Year’s Eve party out here?” Wayne has to shout over the tractor’s engine noise.
“Yeah, almost everyone got stuck trying to leave because of all the snow,” Quail shouts back to answer his brother.
“I think we ended up pulling out about ten cars that night,” Wayne comments.
Quail flips the lights on and drives out through the front doors of the old barn. Wayne holds on to one side of the tractor as they roll out into the cold predawn air. Before heading toward the road, they roll over the cattle guard that separates where the family lives and where the family farms. Quail puts the tractor into gear as the two brothers ease by their parents’ house so not to disturb, as they connect with the drive leading to the main road.
There was still plenty of snow on the ground from before, which reminded Wayne of another storm on its way.
“Do you think you’ll finish the new barn in the next few days?”
“I should, yeah. Why?” Quail answers.
Wayne leans in closer to Quail as they both look forward, still having to shout. “There is a big snowstorm coming to town, and the temperature is supposed to drop too low for the cows to stay outside.”
Quail briefly looks at his brother. “Really?” He turns his attention back toward the road as Wayne explains what he saw the night before on the news.
“Yeah, said we should expect more than a foot of snow the first two days of the storm followed by another couple of days with single-digit temperatures.”
This seemed to alarm Quail, and he actually speeds up the tractor. The storm was supposed to arrive in the middle of the following week, which meant Quail needed to get a move on the new barn if he wanted to finish insulating it and get the cows in before the change of weather.
The old barn was actually too small to fit all their equipment plus the cows now that the herd was larger than ever before. In past years, if the weather got bad, the family would move the farm’s equipment outside and put the cows in the barn. They would also set up heaters in the old barn. This would keep the cows through the night, but during the day, the cows needed more room to move around. So the Rivers would leave the barn doors open so the cows could come and go as they please. Well, this worked for the cows but caused several problems for the Rivers.
Heaters would go out constantly from overheating or just wearing out. The cows constantly used the barn as a bathroom, so any waste the cows dumped would need to be cleaned up. If the mess wasn’t taken care of, the milk production could be contaminated or the cows could get sick. When the herd was smaller, the cows had plenty of room. Mr. Rivers built the old barn after the family purchased its first dairy cow. The old barn was originally built to hold around fifteen cows and any equipment. Dalton purposely built the barn larger than what was needed, thinking they wouldn’t ever have more than a couple of cows.
The section of the old milk barn where the Rivers do the milking and store the milk was separate from the cows. As the herd grew, the Rivers found themselves having to come up with more ways to keep the cows protected during the colder months. The past few winters have been harsher than normal. The harsher winters and increasing herd size were becoming too strenuous for the Rivers to deal with. So Dalton decided to build a larger barn. This larger barn would not only keep the thirty heads out of poor weather conditions but it makes more room for the dairy operation and equipment. The addition of space will make the operation run smoother, accommodating less time needed to accomplish the same amount of work. This was also necessary to keep producing milk for the town.
Two days a week, Jud Hastler drives his milk truck out to the Rivers dairy farm. The truck has a large tank on the back where the milk is stored. The Rivers old barn has a tank or reservoir similar to Mr. Hastler’s truck. The Rivers tank is smaller in size, but both tanks share the same refrigerator components that keep the milk fresh at the preferred temperature. The Rivers milk reservoir is inside the old barn near the front opening up against the north wall of the old barn. After the milk is pulled from the cow, the milk is then poured into the Rivers tank. The family’s milk is kept separate in half-gallon bottles and placed in an actual refrigerator next to the old barn’s tank. The dairy truck visits the Rivers farm every Monday and Friday. Each visit, Mr. Hastler empties the Rivers reservoir from the outside of the old barn. There is a pressure-release valve connected to the reservoir tank on the exterior of the barn. The truck pulls up next to the barn underneath the main valve. Jud Hastler climbs the side of the truck to connect the valve to the truck’s tank. When the valve is sealed, Mr. Hastler moves down to the control panel on the side of the old barn underneath where the main valve extends out of the wall. This control panel shows the amount of milk in the reservoir. Jud pulls down a lever on the control panel that releases the milk, emptying the Rivers reservoir into the truck’s tank. He watches the level of milk on the control panel go down.
Once the reservoir is empty, Jud pushes the lever back up and disconnects the main valve from the truck’s tank. After this, Mr. Hastler stops at the Rivers house before his departure from the farm. He must deliver a report sheet showing how much milk was collected, and he does this every collection. Then at the end of every month, the total amount of milk collected is paid to the Rivers. The Rivers have been doing business with Jud Hastler since the farm started producing enough milk to distribute in town.
So the two brothers shout to talk the next couple of miles as they get closer to Wayne’s car. It’s still dark outside when they arrive, so Quail aims the tractor’s lights at the car.
“Man, you weren’t kidding. That’s stuck.”
Wayne stares at his brother for a split second after his comment then climbs down from the tractor and walks over to the car. He walks back for the chain and says, “I’m going to latch it to the back axle.”
Wayne secures the chain to the front of the tractor and drags the rest toward the back of his car. Before connecting his end of the chain Wayne pops his trunk and retrieves a small blanket he keeps for emergencies. He spreads the blanket out then positions it up underneath