> I must give all of the credit to his French teacher who
> shares with me a love of oxen
Hi Folks,
I never had a day of doubt about being a dairy farmer until I was past 55
years old.
The first thought that I remember from my earliest life was a burning desire
to carry milk.
At that time, 1950 probably, we milked in a stanchion barn with Surge belly
swingers.
My Dad poured the milk from the Surge milkers into what we called
"tote"
buckets.
Then my Uncle or Grandfather carried the "tote" buckets to the milk
house. I
still have those same two tote buckets in my milkhouse.
The first possession that anyone ever gave me in my life (that I know about)
was a milk bucket. It probably held less than a gallon but it carried a lot
of milk for me.
My grandpa built a little wooden platform for me to stand on, so I could pour
the milk into the milk filter on top of the milk can.
Very soon, I became, probably, the smallest person ever in Homerville, who
could lift a full can of milk down into a recessed waterbath milk cooler. At
least that is what everyone said at the time.
We shipped from 35 to 50 cans on ever-other-day pickup.
In the early 1950's a Hoard's Dairyman cover picture was taken in our
milkhouse, and that wooden platform was in that picture.
I milked or helped, from that day onward for over 50 years with very few off
days.
So there was the commitment to dairy farming. I never had a day of doubt
about milking cows until now.
----------------------------------
But I did have some unique advice about going to The Ohio State University.
Here is how that actually happened.
When I was a very small boy, I was at the Ohio State Fairgrounds, and under
the railroad viaduct, studying the Bottema Farms show herd. It was in the
early morning on the Holstein show day.
That show herd was mostly carrying the Cash-Mar prefix (in their names), and
was owned by Cash Bottema. He was located near the Indianapolis, Indiana
airport at that time. I previously had read about him and knew a lot about
some of his cows and his great show bulls.
Anyway, there I was...a very small boy. I was standing there studying Cash's
show herd under the railroad viaduct in Columbus, OH.
He happened to have 21 head along at the Ohio State Fair that week.
Heading the line was the fabulous and cruel Boone-Tuck Ormsby Pat, later
All-American aged bull. (Later he flattened the show ring fence at Waterloo,
Iowa, he scattered the crowd, and he went up into the box seats.)
Next in line was Cash-Mar Jerry Delight (All-American 2 yr old). Third was
Cash-Mar Jerry Speckled Lassie (Aged cow Ex-93).
And 4th in line was Cash-Mar Lovely Lady (Aged cow Ex-96). I probably can
name all the rest if pressed.
Later that day, Lovely Lady was to be the Grand Champion cow at the Ohio State
Fair.
That same evening she calved with twins and was never quite the same again.
Because of that, fate passed her by. Her name might have been a household
word on dairy farms around the world, as was Harborcrest Rose Milly.
But as she stood there in the moment, under the viaduct at the Ohio State
Fairgrounds, early in the morning before the show, Cash Mar Lovely Lady was
possibly the best show cow that ever was or ever could be again.
And, small as I was, I KNEW it.
And somebody else knew it too.
Prof Harold Kaesar happened to walk up next to me, at that exact moment, also
there to observe and study Cash-Mar Lovely Lady.
At that time, Professor Harold Kaesar was the Cattle Superintendent at the
Ohio State Fair. He was also herd manager at Ohio State University where his
herds in several breeds were carrying the highest herd average (milk
production) in the United States regardless of herd size.
He was also a world renowned dairy cattle judge having judged all the Five
National shows here in the USA, and most state fairs, as well as major cow
shows around the globe.
He was also the coach of The Ohio State University inter-collegiate dairy
cattle judging team.
At first, after he walked up, we stood there in silence, both thinking about
Cash-Mar Lovely Lady.
I think he took me for a city child that just happened to be passing by. I
was a scruffy boy and always looked a little bit neglected.
But soon, I noticed that he was noticing me. At that moment, I didn't yet
know him.
We chatted about Cash-Mar Lovely Lady. Then I proposed that, as she stood
there in that moment, she was the greatest show cow that had ever lived.
And I clearly stated my reasons for my conclusion to him.
He had a suit and tie on. I didn't know who he was, He could have been
anybody, but I told him what I thought anyhow.
He immediately agreed in principal and explained fully just how he saw the
cow.
He would not, at first, say she was the greatest ever, without qualifying his
statement slightly.
He was thinking that some of the great characteristics that she had, could be
thought of as excesses.
For example her awesome depth and width of body. And that she was as big as a
big aged bull. Dispite all that size, she was refined in the extreme. It
looked like her neck was too long and much too thin to hold up her head.
In the back of his mind, He was also thinking "Jane of Vernon" who
was a
pretty good Swiss.
I wouldn't buy fully into his "excesses" argument. We debated, and
agreed to
differ on a few minor points. Rebember, I was less than 10 years old.
I told him that he was too influenced by the fact that she was hugely
pregnant, and that several other cows that I knew about had more depth of
body and spring of rib, if the stage of gestation was considered.
---------------
Professor Harold Kaesar was a smart man that knew a lot of people.
Somehow, within moments, he was able to place me in the Registered Holstein
world that existed then in Ohio. He was somehow able to come up with my last
name. He called me "Owen". He shook hands and he introduced himself
in a
formal manner.
---------------
Standing under the viaduct, behind Lovely Lady, this is what he said to me:
He said that, "You are going to Ohio State University, and you will be on
my
Judging Team".
Being small and inexperienced, I took it as a statement of fact. He probably
meant it as a rhetorical. But I accepted it immediately as a fixed point in
the future.
Ever after, I never doubted that I would go to OSU and take up Dairy Science.
--------------------
Years later, I was under great pressure from my family to become a Doctor or
Lawyer, or something, "anything", worthwhile, except a farmer. The
thought
was that "anything" else would lead to a better life.
At one point, one of them thought they saw piano player hands on me, and I had
to endure years of music lessons.
They would not allow me to be in FFA or Vocational Agriculture. It was
college prep only for me. I just wanted to learn how to weld so I could make
better gates and stalls for our cows.
When the time came, My grandmother wrote off for college catalogs from
everywhere.
I was primed, in their minds, for years, to be something great and definitely
not a dairy farmer. But, I never gave anything but dairy farming a single
thought, all else was meaningless noise to me.
I had the grades, and I had the highest ACT scores ever recorded in
Homerville. I also took some kind of state scholastic scholarship test, and
came out with the highest score in Ohio in Biology, and a 2nd and a 3rd in
two more subjects.
What they never understood was the motivation. I had got to the point where
they knew (and I knew too) that I could go to any college anywhere and
succeed.
And that's all that they saw. They didn't "get" it.
With me, all that was meaningless background noise. That potential they
claimed I was wasting wouldn't have even existed without the motivation.
I had got where I was, so that The Ohio State University would allow me to go
there, and be on the dairy judging team, and beyond that to be a great
breeder of Registered Holsteins.
They, my family and teachers, did not understand that in any way, shape, or
form. What I was saying was not heard.
But I also had the money.
I had sold my wonderful show heifer, "Owen Magician Ideal Korndyke",
for
enough money to pay for 4 years of college (and a new car it the end of that
if I had wanted it).
She went to Chambric Farm, Rockford, IL and later anchored an All-American get
of sire.
Also, in their minds, I was going to be the first person in many generations
of my family ever to go to a college. I was also intended to fulfill all
their personal disappointments, arising from the depression era followed
closely by the War. They wanted that for them not for me. It was a very big
deal for 5 or 6 close relatives.
And I was to be the first ever to escape the drudgery of a lifetime of dirty
cows, low milk prices, and of hauling manure. To their credit, they wanted
that for me.
But the whole time this was happening, not a single soul at high school or at
home ever heard me say anything except Ohio State and Dairy Science.
I never wavered once. But nobody was hearing me.
They thought they could crowd me hard enough that I would do as they wanted.
But I had that money.
Even after I got to Ohio State, I was pressured heavily to NOT declare a major
in Dairy Science, so as to delay a full commitment to farming.
The thought, both by most teachers at OSU, and at home, was that I would
eventually come to my senses and, at the very least, go to Vet school instead
of farming.
But regardless of all kinds of family and teacher pressure, it all turned out
just as Professor Harold Kaesar had indicated.
------------
Back at that earlier moment, back at the fairgrounds with Professor Harold
Kaesar, I was a small boy and had never heard of Ohio State University or any
other University.
The only outside knowledge I had of the world, at that point, came from the
pages of The Holstein-World and the Canadian Holstein Journal.
I taught myself to read before I went to school, so I could read the Holstein
World and the Canadian Journal.
I figured it all out by asking my mother to read the cow's names under the
pictures. She wouldn't do it very long at a go, so it was hard to get the
clues.
Before the 1st grade, I could tell people facts, for example: the name of the
4th place bull calf, in 1949, at the Regina Holstein show in Saskatchewan,
Canada.
Before the 1st grade, I knew every cow name, and every fact written in either
of these magazines going back several decades.
I knew every word ever written about old Dunloggin, Mount Victoria, Pabst,
Carnation, The Wisconsin Reformatory at Green Bay, and all the other great
breeding herds.
Because of this, before I was in the 1st grade, I had a pretty good idea about
what defined a "great" man and a great cow.
No one ever listened to any of this. Meaning the things I learned from the
Holstein World and the Canadian Journal.
It was all for me. I would have been happy to share but no one ever asked.
Not once.
Other than the cow magazines, my mind was a complete blank, I did not know
anything else that was useful to me.
I had no other knowledge about anything. No TV and no books that I could read
as my vocabulary was so specialized.
At school I couldn't see the blackboard so I couldn't learn anything there.
The only things I learned in the first and second grade was taught to me by an
Amish girl during recess.
For years, I thought to be just big and stupid in school, but I just needed
glasses. But I couldn't get them because I didn't even know it was possible
for a child to buy glasses. I was also the youngest in my class by a year
and a month, which did not help.
Life was not going too good at that point.
But when Professor Harold Kaesar explained the judging team, I was hooked
forever. It eventually motivated me to learn everything about everything so
that Ohio State would accept me.
-------------
....a lot of time passed from that day at the State Fair.
...Now I'm finally getting around to the oxen.
Years later, unfortunately, I irritated Professor Harold Kaesar in the
extreme.
As he predicted, I was on his Ohio State University inter-collegiate dairy
cattle judging team. We were at the Eastern States Exposition in
Springfield, Mass.
We were locked in a titanic struggle with Penn State, Cornell, and Maryland.
We had been practicing together (with them) for weeks, at farms all through
Pennslyvania and New England. And it wasn't that long until the National
inter-collegiate contest.
Winning the inter-collegiate judging contest at Eastern States Exposition
meant a lot.
But there was an ox pulling contest going on not 200 feet from where we where
judging.
Unfortunately, I became bewitched by the ox pulling contest.
There wasn't a cow there at Eastern States that year, that could have held her
own at either Wayne or Medina County Fair in Ohio. I wasn't impressed with
the judging contest classes.
This was before Tara-Hills (later morphed into Hanover-Hills) became a show
ring force in New England and NY.
I judged each of the contest classes in just a few moments, mentally fixed the
cows into my memory (for oral reasons that night), and ran back to the ox
pull until the next class was ready.
Prof Harold Kaesar acted like he was pretty upset with me about this, at least
in front of the rest of the team.
Privately he knew that it would make no difference. Since he had known me, I
always had placed a class of four cows within seconds, and had never
willingly changed my mind.
But I dropped the ball anyway.
I won the Brown Swiss Bell, and we won a few more breeds, but I dropped 1st
place for the team on my oral reasons,
I happened to draw a stubborn guy from Maryland whom I could not bring over to
my way the thinking. To this day, I don't believe that character could see
that class of cows in his mind's eye. His mind didn't have an "eye".
Of course, second place, is just as bad as last.
But, it wasn't over, the National contest still lay ahead at the Jersey
All-American, as did the Chicago International Livestock Exposition.
That was a year that there was no National Holstein Show following the demise
of National Dairy Cattle Congress at Waterloo, Iowa, and prior to the rise of
the World Dairy Expo at Madison.
After the awards dinner, at Springfield, the team all packed shoulder to
shoulder into Prof Harold Kaesar's automobile, and he drove through the night
across New York and back to northern Ohio. That's a long drag.
All the way home, I slept and dreamed of ox pulling contests. All night it
was the clang of the ring dropping onto the hook, and the oxen surgeing
forward against the chains at the sound of the drop.
When I woke up, Prof Harold Kaesar's car was sitting under a tree here at
Owenlea Farm.
Before I opened my eyes, I recognized the sound of our own home vaccum pump
running.
Prof Kaesar and my Dad where both shaking me awake, both telling me that it
was time to milk.
--
Kindest regards,
========================
F. W. Owen
Owenlea Holsteins
9430 Spencer Road
Homerville, Ohio 44235
e-mail fwo@bright.net
home page http://www.bright.net/~fwo
voice & fax 330.625.2369
cell 330.635.2287
========================
