Posted on 01/22/2010 8:37:54 PM PST by Free ThinkerNY
did the cows reject his advances?
wow.
Trying to run a farm in NY state must be horrible.
Taxes on cows.
Sounds like an udder catastrophe.
“...but one of the men said these are hard times to be a farmer.”
That’s pretty much what I would have figured. Too bad he couldn’t have given the cows to a neighbor first. But, they were probably costing more than what they were worth. I like how he left the note outside in an attempt to be considerate.
Years ago when I would think of suicide (a permanent solution to a temporary problem) I figured doing it in the back lot by the police station would be good. Of course then the cops would be traumatized I suppose.
A terrible story.
“Sounds like an udder catastrophe.”
Milking the puns already?
Fine, you take them down to the slaugherhous and they make hamburger and stew meat and or dog food out of them. You don't shoot yourself over cows. You don't shoot the cows either, unless you are running the slaughter house of course.
Clearly, there must be more to the story.
Probably in the middle of a divorce and going to make sure the wife didn’t get any of the assets.
A very sad ending. So many people need but lack the necessary help of friends and family.
Yeah, but it really is a tragic story. One of my uncle’s lost a business he’d worked to build up for thirty years, and looking back on those times, well, it was very hard on him.
Sounds like he went bonkers. Sad.
It sounds as though he knew quite well what would happen to his dairy cows if he were not there to take care of them: they’d be sent to slaughter. He probably figured that a bullet in the head was a quicker and less painful death than a trip to the slaughterhouse. They could have been nothing but an expense to his wife. Meanwhile he left the profitable heifers and calves alive so they could be sold.
Poor man. Poor wife. Poor cows. What a horrible tragedy.
Or thinking that nobody would be able to take care of them. Some people kill their children for the same reason.
Probably, he was in debt so badly that even if he sold all the cows, and everything that wasn't nailed down on the farm, he still couldn't meet the payments.
Farms are important to farmers.
When my wife's grandfather began to suffer dementia, and had gone to live in town with my in laws, he'd sometimes wake up, know he wasn't on the farm, and in his confusion would think he must have lost the farm to the bankers and cry like a hysterical teenage girl.
This was a guy that never went into excessive debt (like any business farms have to use credit, but you can get carried away, buying more land or expensive machines) and made money, not much but never went into the red, through the whole Great Depression. He became the regional blacksmith and "Mr. Fixit", and often that was the difference between a year in the black and one in the red.
But the fear, and the nightmare, was still there, just waiting for the strong man, and he was strong both physically and mentally, to weaken.
It's almost always a tough time to be a farmer, but.. until WW-II we were a nation of farmers. Mostly independent farmers living on their own land. It shaped our whole national identity.
Small operation. The dairy farmer is getting screwed still. Costs are high and what he gets for his product is low. Two milkings a day, every day all year long. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was in deep debt. Sad, nonetheless.
That poor soul. We should start building up our farms; manufactueing; etc again in the US.
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