A few nice dairy cattle images I found:

Victor Fay Wimer


Image by angus mcdiarmid
On September 26, 1946, Victor Fay Wimer was sentenced to a month in jail (or three days, if he paid a 0 fine and costs) for being drunk in charge of a motor vehicle. This might not have been his first inebriated run-in with the law, as he lived on his dairy farm a few miles out of New Castle — if he wanted to go out to a bar, he had little option but to drive home drunk.

Maybe Victor would have been happier if he’d lived in town. Life on a farm can be hard at the best of times, but Victor had suffered more than most. In 1932, just as the depression was beginning to bite, his house burned down, which wiped out his savings. He hadn’t recovered financially when, two years later, his barn burned down, taking with it all his pigs, his tractor, his ploughs and his stores of corn and oats. The loss of his seven-month-old grandchild in 1947, when a car driven by Victor’s son collided with a semi-trailer truck, can’t be blamed directly on the farm but, on the other hand, if Victor’s son hadn’t had to drive up that twisty farm road to visit him, his car would never have met the truck.

Perhaps that was why Victor wanted to get out of the farm business as soon as he could. He turned 50 in 1951, and seems to have spent the rest of the decade trying to raise enough money to move to Florida. Every couple of years throughout the 50s, he posted ads in the classified section of the New Castle News announcing closing-down auctions of his farm. One ad ran: "Sale of 14 head of Ayrshire cattle and all dairy machinery. Reason — quitting farming." Another, announcing the sale of 60 assorted cows, declared: "Terms: Cash. Quitting the dairy business". However, he doesn’t seem to have been able to find a buyer until 1958. (The list of goods in that year’s ad included a collie pup, which might have been what clinched the deal.)

Victor moved to Maitland, Florida, where he lived for the rest of his life. He kept a summer home near New Castle, though, on the edge of the abandoned strip-mine wasteland of Muddy Creek valley, and that’s where he died at the age of 66.

The White House on the Hill


Image by dbnunley
I was out this afternoon as the thunderstorms were moving in and met a local dairy farmer. This very nice man stopped his tractor to talk with me about himself and his farm. He’s in his fifties and was born on the farm. He told me he’d been working the land all of his life. He raises brown and white gurnsey cattle for milk. He was nice enough to invite me onto one of his fields at the crest of a hill with a beautiful 360 degree view. He said it was one of his favorite places to run the tractor because of the view. I had a great hour up there taking pictures and watching the storm come in.

This should be viewed in the light box (press L) or large on black.