TRR photo by Charlie Buterbaugh Donald Zylstra will sell his 141-acre farm along Route 52 in Lake Huntington, NY after 46 years of family ownership. (Click for larger image)

In search of solace, Zylstra sells his family farm

By CHARLIE BUTERBAUGH

LAKE HUNTINGTON, NY — Donald Zylstra straightened his tired body and walked barefoot across the shaded porch to the screened door. He had mentioned Parkinson’s during our conversation, and his steps showed signs of tremor, though he was happy to leave the comfort of his porch swing to find the map of his dairy farm in Lake Huntington.

Zylstra’s father bought the 141-acre farm in 1967. He had previously owned a small farm on the northeast polder in the province of Zeeland, Holland, where Donald spent the first 11 years of his life. He speaks English, Dutch and Frisian, a surviving regional dialect influenced by both Dutch and German.

When Zylstra took over his father’s Lake Huntington farm in 1980, he bought animals and equipment that formed an enterprise that would become a dairy farm with 180 head of cattle.

“Two or three years ago, everything was going really well. One hundred fourteen of our cows were in prime milking condition,” he said.

His adopted Korean son and three Romanian daughters helped him carry out the daily work over the past few years, but many of Zylstra’s hired hands quit last summer, and milk prices have fallen steadily since 2001. Further, many of his cows developed an intestinal illness from a magnesium deficiency in the grass. The increasing limitations of Parkinson’s disease made matters worse, and Zylstra realized that he could not withstand many more long and hard days of dairy farming.

He said milk prices were the best two years ago.

“We had 1977 prices for over a year, and then the bottom fell out,” he said.

Zylstra remembered earning roughly $17 per hundredweight of milk in 2001 and only $11 per hundredweight in 2002. Increased production of milk on large farms during 2001 caused a decrease in demand and thus a decrease in prices paid to smaller northeastern U.S. farmers, according to an October, 2002 article in Grassroots: The Voice of New York Farm Bureau.

Here, Chris LaRoe explains that milk prices come from blending four different classes: “the region where the milk is produced, percentage of butterfat and protein within the milk, and old-fashioned supply and demand.”

LaRoe writes, “As wholesale dairy product prices drop, federal milk order prices fall as a consequence,” though he admitted it is always difficult for farmers and agricultural specialists to determine the exact causes of falling prices.

Farmers bear the brunt of frustration, especially when they are forced to decide between waiting out periods of deflated prices and selling cattle. Zylstra took the last resort in January of 2003 when he sold most of his cattle and advertised his farm for $10,000 per acre or $1,000,000 for all 141 acres.

“We would have had to remain a functioning farm because we couldn’t afford to pay full property taxes. January was hard to take, especially when I watched my animals leave, but I think it’s the best for the town and for me. This is more or less my retirement,” he said.

Brookside Homes of Monticello made him an offer, and if all goes as planned, the sale should close on October 1, Zylstra said.

“As far as I know, they want to buy the whole property and subdivide it into five-acre mini-farms,” he said.

Again, he stood slowly from the porch swing and went inside, this time to find the local newspaper published in New York Mills, MN, where he and his wife plan to buy a small house and enjoy their retirement. His wife has family there, and his son and two of his daughters will move with them.

“My son plans to buy ten or fifteen acres, and I have decided to help him. My kids have made my life more happy, and I am very thankful to have them around,” he said.