Farming
By
Loren Kantola
Summer 2004
Farming is away of life. The work at times was very hard and the days were long. The work was always there. You never questioned it. You just did it. When I first started to milk cows, I milked them by hand. We then progressed to the surge bucket type milker. When I began to milk more cows we bought a pipeline milker which carried the milk directly from the cow to the bulk milk cooler. Every other day the milk hauler came and drained out the bulk milk tank. It went from the farm to get processed into manufactured milk products. When I first started the dairy business our milk went to Palisade Co-op creamery. Later, they were bought out by the Associated Milk Producers, a nation wide Co-op who could offer the dairy farmers a much better price and a more secure future. The milk then went to different processing plants throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin. We were only a small farm with 18