By
Fran Alt
Philip Wright looks at his watch, and says he can spare a few minutes. His time is limited. Today he has promised to spend some of that time with his son.
The sounds of the busy farm interfere with my tape recorder. Is there an office? Philip points to a door a few yards from where we are standing.
"I'll give you fifteen minutes, then I really have to go," he says.
Inside the long narrow office, we barely begin talking when phone rings. "That's my son," Philip says, before picking up the phone. He talks into the phone explaining he is doing an interview and will be there shortly.
"It's always like this," he says, putting the receiver back on its' base. "On a daily basis, your family gets pushed back!" Philip's voice doesn't skip a beat as he echoes the proverbial promises he makes to his family. "I'll be there. I promise you. I'll be there. I gotta take care of one more thing and I'll be there . . .That is it. That is what I tell my family everyday." Shaking his head, he sighs, "My wife understands, but she is not happy. It's a lot of stress."
Meredell Farms Inc., a family corporation that Philip manages, has been in his wife's family for years. The corporation includes Philip's mother-in-law, Iris Meredith, her three children and their spouses - David Meredith and wife Andrea, Jim Meredith and his wife Beverly, and Philip who is married to Iris's daughter Teresa.
All but Philip work off the farm. Philip manages the farm full time, and David, who has a degree in business administration, keeps the books in his spare time.
The all Holstein herd at Meredell Farms, include 600 milking head, and 550 head of heifers. Philip says they use some AI services and, 'We run bulls in groups past that.' There are five bulls at Meredell Farms'.
Meredell is strictly a dairy operation. All the farming equipment has been sold and they now use the services of a custom operator.
"We have 300 acres that we own and rent. The operator comes in and plants it, cuts silage and puts it in the pit. We pay him monthly. It's a matter of cash flow. You know how much silage you are going to use every month and you cash flow it out. This method is safer, compared to planting the crop, taking the gamble and then getting nothing some years," Philip said.
The milking herd does not graze and there is minimal grazing on the heifers.
In 1993 the family found themselves needing to make a decision - get out of the dairy business or expand. "We had 200 plus cows and a free stall barn of 110 to 115. Sometimes we'd push milkers up to 225 - the land, pastures just got sloppier and muddier. We knew we either had to get out, cut back or build free stalls that would accommodate them. We also had a computer feeding system. I chose to build two free stall barns, push the herd up around five hundred cows and go to total fenceline feeding.
"We tried to expand our farming at the same time and even purchased farming more equipment. Within about a year we realized this was a bad decision and we were sinking fast. We decided to sell farm equipment, then we just went out and started buying herds of cows. We gradually built the herd up. That was probably one of the toughest things, getting the cow numbers up to produce at the level we are at today. We are milking three times a day and the double-8-herringbone parlor is completely full 24 hours a day. Some days we lose an hour two so we don't really have a schedule."
Meredell Farms has no immediate plans for further expansion. The situation of dairy today seems too precarious to Philip. "If we could just get a little better price for our milk -- it would all work. But it is really depressing when you try to do everything efficiently and still come up short for the bills."
There is a much stress throughout the dairy industry because milk prices often do not meet the costs of production. For Philip, a second rationale for stress is the loan structure. The loans that were available to Meredell were very short term. "We needed more time to get a cash flow going."
Philip says he can be optimistic, and that he has been hearing, 'if you hang on a year or two, the demand will be there, and the way you are structured things will work out.' But, he says, the way milk prices are now, even in his most optimistic moods he has difficulty seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.