Towards the end of my Junior year of high school, I determined that I needed to tell Rawl of my plans. I knew that Rawl depended on me. I knew that he had more cows in his herd because I was there the help him. I wondered whether or not he might retire when I left. I wondered if he would find someone else to take my place. These were questions that I contemplated and weighed heavily on my mind. Given the potential for life altering events for him, I felt I needed to give him a good year or so notice regarding what my intentions were.
In sort of an akward way, I asked Rawl and Virginia if I could take them to dinner. I asked them if they wanted to pick a restaurant. We went to a Chinese restaurant, somewhere in Layton. I don't recall the name. We hustled through evening chores so we could get home, clean up, and go out to eat before it was too late.
I don't recall the dinner being all that memorable in and of itself, but I told Rawl and Virginia that my plan was to leave Farmington in September of the following year and go to school in Logan. Rawl had a fairly narrow window in mind of when I may leave, but he was imagining a different scenario. Rather that going straight to college, he wondered whether or not I would work for him until I went on a mission sometime the following Spring. That was not my plan, and he didn't work too hard to convince me otherwise. All in all, both he and Virginia were appreciative of the heads up on my plan.
As time passed, Rawls intentions became clear. He intended to sell his dairy herd when I left. As my last summer working for him came, he began shopping around his cows and heifers. Farmers from within 100 or so miles came to see his cows and to bargain with him. Towards the end of the summer, Rawl had determined to sell his herd to a dairy farmer somewhere in the North Ogden area. Before I went to school, he sold his heifers. The rest of the cows would be sold over a few weeks.
I agreed with Rawl, that I would come home from Logan on the weekends and help him milk the cows and care for the remaining herd as long as he had them. That went on about another four or five weeks. I would hurry home to help milk the cows, while Rawl and his son put corn silage up in the pit silo. On Sunday evening, I would drive back up to Logan for school.
It was a sad transition for me. I was concerned that my leaving Rawl's farm would cause him to want to sell his dairy. His dairy was a permanent fixture in my childhood life, recollections, and mind. I felt a twinge of guilt, as if I were somehow responsible for the demise of his means of earning a living.
One weekend I came home, and all of the cows were gone. The only stock remaining were the steers left over from previous calvings. My heart hung low. Rawl was happy though. Ultimately, he thanked me for the timing. There was a bubble on dairy cattle prices that summer that fell off towards the spring when he had hoped I would leave. He also was able to get out of the dairy farm schedule rut that so many people detest. He was able to ease into retirement in good health and reasonably financially secure.
It was an end of a very important era in my life. I learned much from Rawl, his cows, and the experiences I had on his farm. As I learned more in my later life, I came to realize just how forward thinking Rawl really was. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to him. He was not a parent to me, but very much like a second parent, or a very involved grandparent.
I still have dreams of working on Rawl's farm, to this day. The experiences are permanently etched in my mind.
