With milking done as darkness settled, cows nestled down in sawdust beds Monday night in the barn at Kay Ben Farm in Gorham. Coyotes howled in the distance when the barn lights were shut off at 7, ending a typically long day at the farm on Plummer Road in White Rock.

“You have to work hard for every dollar,” said Eddie Benson, 49, who had snapped the lights on that day at 5 a.m.

Benson, a third-generation dairy farmer in Gorham, owns one of the five remaining dairy farms in Gorham – down from 41 at one time during the 1960s. Smiling Hill Farm is the only dairy farm left in Westbrook – down from 30-50, longtime residents estimate. Buxton, a town that once was home to nearly 50 dairy farms, now has none.

The dairy business has been a way of life for generations of Maine farm families. But tough economic times on the farm are rapidly changing all that. Since 2000, the Maine countryside has lost 150 dairy farms. The current total is now 351, according to Maine Milk Commission statistics.

Dairy farmer Carroll Young, 82, patriarch at the Flaggy Meadow Farm in Gorham, remembered when there were dozens of dairy farms in Gorham in the 1960s.

“You can count them on one hand now,” he Young.

Dairy farming is not only a part of the heritge of Maine, but also the land provides residents recreational opportunities, such as hunting, hiking and snowmobiling, said Mike Phinney, chairman of the Gorham town council, whose family farmed in Gorham.

Survivors have diversified to beef up farm income. Benson, who milks 60 cows, markets bulls and embryos from his top cows worldwide. He also has a local compost business.

Benson and other Maine dairy farmers are squeezed between rising costs and low milk prices. In September, Maine dairy farmers received the federal milk order price for the Northeast Marketing Area of $13.43, down from $15.92 in September last year, for each 100 pounds of milk produced.

They get paid the federal price, said Stan Millay, executive director of the Maine Milk Commission, plus an additional 97 cents per hundredweight federal subsidy, as well as some extra money as a bonus for quality from the dairy processor.

Dipping into the state’s general fund, Maine also subsidizes its dairy farmers, trying to keep producers afloat.

Small farms like Kay Ben, which produce under 2.1 million pounds of milk a year, are guaranteed $18.68 by the state for each 100 pounds of milk produced, while medium and large Maine producers receive even less. The state pays the difference between what the farmer gets through federal and dairy payments.

“It’s the average, break-even price,” Millay said.

Benson said the price paid to farmers is the same as it was in 1972.

The total money small farmers receive comes to about $1.59 a gallon. In a cooler in a local market this week, a store brand gallon of 2 percent fat milk was priced at $3.79.

Kay Ben produces 4,250 pounds of milk each day. A recent milk commission report said at current prices, Maine dairy producers will be “forced to reduce inventories or liquidate farm assets” to remain in operation.

Jenn Grant of Fineview Farm, on Mighty Street in Gorham, said there’s a surplus of milk in the west. “It can be easily shipped in,” she said. “That impacts our price.”

Fineview Farm, which milks about 40 cows, markets homegrown beef and vegetables in a farm store to augment the milk money.

Low prices of milk and spiraling costs spell trouble. Grant pointed to costs of fertilizer, grain, parts, equipment, and fuel that have increased. “Fuel impacts everything,” Grant said.

Benson said his dad, the late Alton Benson, bought a 100-horsepower tractor in 1975 for $8,000. Now, he said, the same tractor could cost $80,000.

Kay Ben Farm needs big equipment to harvest hay and corn for its 150 dairy animals. Benson has three full-time and one part-time farm employees. If he hadn’t diversified, he wouldn’t be able to hire help.

Benson and his wife, Becky, have three children. A daughter, Kati, is a journalism major at the University of Southern Maine; Erica is a senior at Gorham High School; and Eben is in the eighth grade at Gorham Middle School.

A shrinking work force hinders local farmers in expanding production. “Its hard to find people who are qualified,” Benson said.

Affordable housing for workers is an added problem. “They can’t afford to live in Gorham and work on a farm,” Benson said.

As farms have declined in the area, the number of farm suppliers have diminished, too, creating a strain on dairy farmers who are left. There’s only one dealer in the state to service Benson’s brand of milking equipment.

“If I have a problem, it’s a nightmare,” Benson said.

Benson said he knows of only one veterinarian willing to work on dairy cows on a limited emergency service.

“If a cow gets sick in the middle of the night, you can kiss her good by,” he said.

Weather can be a costly adversary for farmers. Benson said too much rain this year delayed planting and harvesting, which harmed feed quality. Corn quality and yield are down, according to Benson.

“That’s going to hurt production,” said Benson, who plans to harvest hay “until snow flies.”

Besides hay, Benson grows 80 acres of corn that he chops to feed his herd. In addition to the farm’s land, Benson rents more land, some plots as few as 2 or 3 acres, to raise corn.

“I jump onto very acre I can find,” he said. “You can’t afford to buy land in Gorham.”

Towns in Aroostook County have contacted Benson, trying to lure him to relocate. “To create a farm that is profitable, you would have to milk 250 and have a land base of 1,500 acres,” Benson said.

The town of Gorham recently passed a development-rights program to preserve farmland and open space. Under the proposal, a farmer could raise capital by selling development rights to the town. Norm Justice, a Gorham town councilor who has 60 Angus beef cattle, said similar programs have aided agriculture in other states.

Justice, a former dairyman, believed some Gorham dairy farmers might take a look at the Gorham program. “I hope it helps, if it can,” Justice said. But, “There’s a bigger economic picture.”

To offset expanding his herd to increase production and income, Benson has focused on marketing bulls born on the farm. “You can’t grow in cow numbers,” Benson said.

Benson has purebred Holstein cattle. He’s been improving his herd’s genetics over the years and has marketed cattle to France, Germany. Japan and Cuba.

“We have gambled in purebred genetics,” he said.

Some foreign buyers are looking for embryos, not live animals, which are costly to export. A broker for Japanese customers visited Kay Ben Farm two weeks ago to see his cows.

“We take pride in our facility. You never know when you have foreign visitors,” he said.

He uses a computer in a barn office to track pedigrees of bulls and cow families along with their milk production records. To improve his herd, he matches his cows, which are inseminated artificially, with bulls he selects from around the world.

The farm has showed its dairy animals as far away as Louisville, Ky., and at Eastern States Expo in Springfield, Mass., besides Maine fairs. One of his cows once produced 238 pounds of milk a day. She was the top cow in Maine, he said.

Benson collects cows. “I seldom sell cows,” Benson said, always looking for quality cows to buy. “I’m trying to build a really good herd.”

Young fears that dairying is a forgotten industry today.

“They’ve got to pay us more for our milk or we’ll be out of business,” Young said.

Cutline (farm 6) Cutline (farm 12) Tough times for local dairy farmersTough times for local dairy farmers

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