Red barns, Popsicles, and the Electrification of Our Countryside

Our Cooperative Heritage

1985

The Wisconsin I grew up in was dotted with red barns, Holsteins, local groceries, implement dealers, post offices, and farms that had only recently been electrified. 


1972 - Cows out in pasture

 The barns were the workplaces of families, but also the place kids swung from ropes into piles of hay or built hay forts.

Lead cow bringing the herd in

The Holsteins were known by name and eccentricity; their milk hauled to the dairy by the man whose daughter I went to school with; and when their time came, those cows, their names thankfully inscribed in the herd register when successfully born, then played with as calves, were sent solemnly sent off to slaughter.

The local grocer would let us kids start licking on our popsicles long before we laid our coins out on the counter.  When the baler broke down; we’d send someone out to a town whose name I’m no longer sure of. There's been no reason to go there since the implement dealership closed.  The post office was attached to the grocery store and run by the same family, a family we saw in church on Sunday.

I drive to the family farm these days and wonder:  where have all the red barns gone?  Gone are the Holsteins that used to dot the hillsides.  The local grocery closed long ago.  The implement dealers are in the cities now, what dealers are left.  There’s still a local post office - the next town over, although its local grocery closed a few years ago.

Only recently electrified farms?

1951


An interesting story that; one that reminds me of the decisions my generation must face.  In 1925, just over 3% of farms in this country had electric service.  In 1935 President Roosevelt established the Rural Electric Authority (R.E.A) by executive order, making electrical service affordable for farms throughout the country.  Fourteen years later, the R.E.A. began financing telephone cooperatives, making telephone service available to our rural areas as well.

All the while, during which our rural areas began to see such appliances as refrigerators, the undertaking was said to be too expensive and opposed by groups arguing that the federal government should not be involved in the business of electrical power; that the government was unfairly competing with private enterprise.

Nowadays, almost all of us have electric and telephone service. Our manufacturing industries that produce products that generate, distribute and use electrical power still employ over 370 million of us.  And I, for one, cannot even remember not being able to plug in a toaster, an iron, or a refrigerator.

What I wonder about is: what would it be like if my parent’s generation, and the one before it, had not chosen to undertake the projects that made health care, rural broadband, a smart electric grid, green energy, energy efficienient lifestyles rural electric and phone service affordable to so many Americans?

References
http://naldr.nal.usda.gov/NALWeb/Agricola_Link.asp?Accession=IND43893747
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/malone.electrification.administration.rural
http://newdeal.feri.org/tva/tva10.htm
http://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag335.htm