09/04/2026
In just one generation, the view out of a typical rural home window has changed from this to a new house, strip mall, or coffee shop. Before COVID, GA was selling about 10k cows a week with over a million head in the State. Currently sales are back up to about 6k, but this view is disappearing from America, and with it, the values farm life teaches, the lessons about life and death, or the dedication to feeding a newborn baby calf every two hours for days because she was born to weak to nurse, hoping the little heifer will live to be the most annoying cow you have. I didn't really grow up on a farm, I did grow up around them, but now I know, every day when I check for rain or fertilizer prices, or wonder did that storm last night push a tree down on a fence, or scrambling to get your gun when a coyote howls in the middle of the night and you know a baby calf dropped yesterday, what I was seeing back then, and how it does impact the way I view things today. I have taught over 1000 kids to date. I have known only one kid who sat with her dad all night to help a calf be born. Very few of this new generation have lived on a farm or come close to experiencing the true life skills you learn doing this. It is unfortunate, farming is life, and so very, very few do this anymore. The price of progress.
