NORTH WILLISTON, Vt. (WCAX) – On a misty morning at the North Williston Cattle Company, owner Onan Whitcomb and farm hand Larry Holmes are in sync.
“He always has to be the first one in the barn in the morning,” Whitcomb said.
It’s 5 a.m. and the milking has begun. Holmes leads the Holsteins to the milking parlor. The cows are unfazed as the automatic machine pumps away, as they feed out of buckets of grain. “Like someone hands you a Hershey bar and says, ‘You got to stay here while you eat it.’ And you’re going to say, ‘Sure!’”
“Some of them want to keep coming through just to get the grain,” Holmes said.
The two have been working side-by-side for over a quarter of a century. “I’ve never seen him lose his temper in 26 years,” Whitcomb said.
“I like people, but I work better with cows,” admitted Holmes.
Unfortunately, the milking days are numbered. Whitcomb’s son has decided to sell the bovines and strictly grow crops. They were milking up to 240 but are now down to just 27. Eventually, all the cows will be gone.
Holmes has worked for four generations of the Whitcomb family. He’s an expert on artificial insemination of the heifers. “They have been a very successful dairy here,” Homes said.
Reporter Joe Carroll: Is this going to be hard to walk away from?
Larry Homes: I think it’s about time. I don’t do it every day.
Holmes will turn 81 in the fall. He grew up on a farm on the other side of the river in Essex. “My dad had a small dairy, 35 cows,” he said. “I was interested by the time I was 11.”
He and his wife, Donna, also had a dairy operation. When they sold the herd, Holmes thought he would become a mail carrier. That’s when Whitcomb gave him a call. “We’d been without help for a year and my wife and I had been milking in the mornings. My wife is not a morning person. There was no conversation before 7 o’clock,” Whitcomb said.
Holmes stepped in. It was supposed to be temporary, but now the end is near. “I look at it more that we are starting something new and it’s another chapter. Nothing stands still,” Whitcomb said.
And that includes Homes, who effortlessly climbs over the stalls. “I think that you get up every day knowing that you’re producing a quality product,” he said.
The cows may be leaving the barn, but the friendship between Whitcomb and Homes will not go out to pasture. “Happy to be here,” Holmes said.