GENTRY — Looking around his property at the 600 head of beef and dairy cattle that roam the pastures each day, Bill Haak focuses on one thing - a spring heifer set to give birth at any moment.
"That is just beautiful. If you want a picture of what this farm is all about, there it is," Haak said. "Isn't it just beautiful to watch this?"
With days that mostly begin well before dawn, his hands have become calloused from the years of hard work he has poured into making the dairy farm work.
Haak does not get snow days, and he cannot call in sick when he feels a little under the weather, or if he needs a mental health day. Each cow counts on him to be there each day.
Growing up in Arizona, Haak learned the business of dairy farming from his father, and Haak knew that, when he grew up, he wanted a dairy farm of his own.
A few years later, he and his wife, Delia, saved $10,000 and bought 60 cows with the money.
Those 60 black and white spotted cows became the foundation of the farm he now operates, Haak and Sons Dairy, outside Gentry, on the same land he and Delia bought in 1979 when they came to Arkansas.
"When they became grown milkers, we mortgaged them and bought some more," Haak said. From there, the farm continued to grow. Haak, Delia and their two sons, Luke, now 30, and Jake, now 29, worked day and night to make the farm successful.
"We came here when Luke was 7 months old and Jake was still in the bread basket being made. They have been through it all, the good and the bad," Haak said.
One of the proudest moments for Haak was giving both of his sons, when they graduated from college, 5 acres of the land for their own families, Haak said, noting that even with successful careers of their own, Luke and Jake both still help him around the farm.
"They are still a very vital part of everything I do," Haak said.
Each cow is a labor of love, a two-year investment in care, before she begins to make money for the dairy. At 2 days old, the cattle are bottle-fed each day until they are old enough to be turned out to pasture, where they graze on the land until they are old enough to breed, become a dairy cow or be shipped off to a meat-processing facility.
There are few places where the circle of life becomes more evident than on a farm such as this, where, for Haak, the hard work and determination pay off each and every day.
"For me, personally, I really love the challenge. Obviously, it was something I was raised on in Arizona," Haak said. "When things are going well, I really enjoy just watching the cattle grow, watching the grass grow and bailing hay."
Together with two ranch hands, Jessie Griffin and Billy Gregory, Haak starts the day by milking 80 cows, while Gregory bottle-feeds the calves, and Griffin does, well, anything that is needed.
After milking, Haak can be found hauling shavings for his sawdust business, giving vaccinations, feeding the cattle and tending to the odds and ends that pop up daily on the farm.
Each night, before calling it a day, Haak milks again. Each day for Haak is about the details.
"Details, details, details. If you do not take care of the little things, (dairy farming) will never work," Haak said.
Those details, he said, include keeping up with each cow's vaccinations, making sure that their udders are healthy and that the cattle stay happy.
"I feel very strongly that my cattle get well taken care of. They get fed well. They get the best care they can get. If I do not take care of them, they will not give me their best performance," Haak said.
If performance measures how well Haak is caring for his cattle, then the cattle are getting the very best of everything.
Each of the 80 cows that are milking give an average of 7.5 gallons of milk each day, enough to fill Haak's 1,200-gallon milk storage tank every other day, he said.
Even with the success Haak has enjoyed, he knows that tough times are ahead, with the economy leaving nothing untouched on its downward spiral.
"This next year is probably going to be one of the toughest years dairymen are going to experience," Haak said.
"There will be a period where the selling price (of milk) will not meet what it costs to make it," Haak said.
"We do not know how long it is going to last. Last year, we had good milk prices because New Zealand and Australia had droughts, which caused a milk shortage," Haak said.
"A lot of our milk, 10 to 12 percent, was being exported," Haak said.
As milk prices began to rise, many dairies took the opportunity to expand.
"Now the shortage is becoming a surplus. In November, we were getting $19 a hundredweight (100 pounds of milk), and we are expecting to see $11 to $12 in February," Haak said.
It costs around $16 per hundredweight to produce the milk.
"It is going to be tight, and it is going to be tough. A lot of us dairymen are going to have to re-evaluate during this time, and a lot of us are probably going to close," Haak said.
Add the decreasing value of milk to the dropping values of the cattle themselves, and dairymen have a problem.
"Making it (through the current recession) is going to depend on the borrowing power a lot of men have," Haak said.
Now, cows that were worth $2,000 each are worth $1,500 each, so if a farmer had 300 cows at $2,000 each, he had $600,000 of equity to borrow against. With the market decreasing, that same farmer now has $450,000 to borrow against, meaning that each of the 12 remaining dairy farmers in Benton County have already taken quite a hit financially, Haak said.
"The question here is, how long do some of the dairy farmers have to make it?" Haak said.
For now, Haak is doing what he loves. He enjoys the 12- to 15-hour days he puts in for the sake of his cattle, and he understands why he works so hard every time he has a couple of minutes to look around at the business he, his wife and his sons started so many years ago.
"It is just beautiful, isn't it?" Haak said, looking out into a pasture with young cattle mingling and playing.
For more information see Monday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.