Statisticians Spend a Day Discovering Farm Life

Ayleen Stellhorn
Southcentral Pa. Correspondent

TANEYTOWN, MD — Their goal was to show a handful of statisticians from the big city what a day on the farm was really like.

But when Karen Hobson and Joanne Weant, two farm owners in northern Maryland, extended the invitation to the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) in Annapolis, Md., the RSVPs started rolling in from the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) in Washington as well.

"It just blossomed," Hobson said. "Five people turned into 10, and now we're expecting 35."

Hobson and her husband, Lou, own Cowlick Farm, a 107-acre dairy business that they converted to greenhouses in 1981.

Weant and her husband, Todd, operate Weant-Haven Farm, a 117-acre dairy farm that also supports egg-laying hens.

In addition to their farming responsibilities, Hobson and Weant also work for NASS, distributing and filing surveys about local farming operations.

"We noticed there was a big disconnect between what the statisticians were entering and their frame of reference," Weant said. "Many of them knew about farming, but few had ever spent time on a farm."

To bring the two closer together, Hobson and Weant decided to host a farm tour last weekend of their farms and Feeser Genetics, a commercial swine farm, all located within five miles of Taneytown.

Bryan Butler, Sr., area fruit specialist for the University of Maryland Extension Office in Carroll County, offered an introduction to the three-farm tour.

"We have a cheap food policy in the United States," he said. "That's good for the people, but if you're a producer it makes it hard. Every time you go in the barn, you're losing money."

He told the group of statisticians and supervisors to imagine going to work every day and paying $20 to just walk in the door.

"That's what farming is like these days," he said. "Farmers here are being as efficient as they can, but many of them, especially dairy farmers, aren't making any money."

Butler continued to explain that many of the farmers in his five-county area are still in the business because they love farming.

"They are eternal optimists," he said. "They keep telling themselves it will get better. And it will, but not before half of them, unfortunately, are ground into the dirt."

Butler stressed that Carroll County is unique in its variety of farms.

"We have more kinds of agriculture, soils, and farms here than anywhere else in Maryland," he said. "Our biggest farm is more than 12,000 acres; our smallest is less than an acre."

He also mentioned that farmers aren't afraid to take a chance when times get tough. He pointed to both the Weants and the Hobsons as good examples.

Todd and Joanne Weant's Weant-Haven Farm, which they operate in partnership with Todd's parents, Carl and Grace, was the first stop on the farm tour. The 117-acre property has been in the Weant family for six generations and the rubblestone farmhouse dates back to the Civil War.

Today, the Weants milk 100 cows, predominantly Holsteins, and last year, they shipped more than 1.9 million pounds of milk. They raise 500 acres of crops, including corn, soybeans, wheat, barley and hay, to feed their herd, and they do their own planting and harvest work.

"We are being as efficient as we can, we're producing the same amount of milk as we did a year ago," Joanne explained, "but we're getting less money."

Grace's 125 hens are a recent addition, and their eggs are sold at the farm.

Todd and Joanne's daughters successfully show some of the farm's registered Holstein, Jersey, and Guernsey cattle at local, state, and national competitions.

"The cows are the kids' bread and butter," Joanne said. "They show them, they do 4-H with them, eventually they'll bring in scholarship money."

The second stop on the tour was Karen and Lou Hobson's Cowlick Gardens.

The Hobsons moved to their farm in 1971 from Ellicott City. Neither had any significant farming experience, but they were advised to move into a working dairy farm rather than start their own business from scratch.

"We were city people, but we moved in and began milking that night," Karen said. "Without help from the Weants, I don't think we would have made it, especially when it came to calves being born and sick cows to take care of."

The Hobsons put up their first greenhouse in 1993. Six years later, frustrated by severe droughts and the potential for falling milk prices, Karen and Lou sold their herd. Today, they sell spring bedding plants and vegetable plants from Good Friday to Father's Day and reopen in the fall to sell mums and other fall plants. About 50 percent of their sales are wholesale; the remainder is retail and fundraising.

After lunch on the Hobson's lawn, the tour made a final stop at Feeser Genetics, a nationally recognized purebred and commercial swine operation managed by Frank Feeser. His wife, Julie, raises hay and manages Carousel Angus, the couple's black Angus cattle farm, in northwest Missouri.