John M Ramsay: The Dancing Dairyman

Choices and Chances: The Dancing Dairyman

I've been organizing my papers, including those my mother left for me. I found this drawing today at the bottom of a pile of mother's collection:

John Martin Ramsay (age 7) crayon drawing dated April, 1937.

Today, I am amazed because I had no idea that my interest in dairying went back that far! I have no recollection of making the drawing.

In reading through the other letters Mother saved, it has been instructive to follow this interest in dairying over the years. It makes one wonder how many of our interests are formed very early in life and what impact these early interests then have on the subsequent directions of one's life. Here are passages from other actual letters which trace this interest of mine in cows:

Registration today and tomorrow and classes begin Friday. I made almost 100% in all my math tests, high in social science, good in geography, and very low in reading rate but fair in reading efﬁciency. So, I put my foot in and wanted to know whether I should major in math or agriculture. This is a life decision so I am making it sure. I will ﬁnd the results of my interest test [Kuder Preference Test] tomorrow. If I take agriculture, I have no electives. If I take math, I can take French, something else, and work in the dairy. I get up at 4:15 every morning to milk!

JMR (age17) to Daddy and Patty in Lithia Springs, Georgia on Sept. ~11, 1947 on Daytona Beach, Florida hotel stationary but sent from Berea College.

When I got the results to my interest test, I was shocked and at a loss to ﬁnd that I, very strongly, preferred music and art to clerical and social studies. About midway were mechanical and scientiﬁc studies. My advisor and I talked to a few of the other teachers and wound up in my majoring in an A. B. toward math course....Maybe I will get an agriculture subject in next year. The violin lessons are $10.10 for nine weeks. Is that OK? I get two lessons a week and practice periods in the music hall every day. All the teachers said I should take German even though I had a year of French and were surprised at my record in the math tests.

By the end of my sophomore year, I had to declare a major. Math under a temporary teacher, Ms. Porter, did not excite me. She was a lovely person but quite elderly and hard of hearing. I really wanted to major in agriculture and found the work at the College dairy to be worthwhile. Letters, for the next four years, often advised Mother and Dick, who were at home on the farm in Lithia Springs, about how to manage the cows and farm. Country dancing also became a special interest. I was already becoming a dancing dairyman!

I am sorry I haven’t written very often but I have been reading for semester tests, practicing for an orchestra recital this Sunday, and going on a trip with the Country Dancers. I just have so much homework I don’t see how I’ll get it all done...Get some wheat germ oil and feed a couple of cap-fulls to the cows that aren’t breeding. It’s supposed to help them.

I went square dancing tonight. Now I know the names, music, and steps of a lot of dances and really have fun. I’d like to teach the kids down there [Georgia] some of the dances—they’re so much fun….Maybe you ought to consider selling Blackie and Buttercup if they keep coming in heat...If I get the soil [samples] in time I’ll tell you what fertilizer [the ﬁelds] need.

I am thinking about changing my major to agriculture. It may mean an extra semester or a summer, but I do think I want to be a farmer.

I like all of my courses...I have some good competition. Willis is in Breeds and Judging. Soils is my easiest course and I am enjoying it especially. I also have Social Science, Botany, and Livestock Production….I must go to Berea Christian Youth Council to help plan Christian Emphasis Week. I will continue my letter later….Now, I am back again. This last week I worked at the dairy. I got in about 13 hours each day, 3 hours for eating, 8 hours for sleeping; total 24 hours in a day; so you can see that I earned about $30.00….I was thinking about buying a tractor. [We had a farm Jeep with a three point hookup for plowing.] If you should decide

to do so, I would sell the Jeep now while prices are high. I feel a drop in prices is due this summer.

I know I will never forget this last birthday—not because it was my birthday but because it happened to be the ﬁnal day of the Mountain Folk Festival. I danced Thursday night, all day Friday, and Saturday—a total of 12 hours. Some of the nicest people I have met were here and altogether everyone had a super time.

Saturday night, we (all 269 of us) performed for the public. We did all the way from the Gisburn Processional, Morris Dances, Sword Dances, and Square Dances, to Gathering Peascods.

An excellent hog pasture is rye grass or barley plus crimson clover. If Daddy is coming up this way, I would like to get a young boar—a bacon type Minnesota #1 —very thrifty and easy keeping hog. They make excellent meat cutting down on lard. This is good with meat at 18 cents and lard at 16 cents / lb.

I guess you see how I keep thinking about the farm and really wish that I could be at home to do some of these things but I will stay here for summer school.

JMR (age 20) to Mother and Daddy in Lithia Springs, Georgia on February 19, 1951.

Again, I have two courses under Mr. Wolford. They are going to be my grave, yet. We are required to work two semesters in the Ag. Dept. I got three in at the dairy.

But Mr. Wolford (he heads the Dept.) is now unofﬁcially expecting that all good ag men will work in his department for all four years. He can see no use in my working at the Tabernacle [theatre] and said that he could not recommend me for a teaching job. He said that he was raised on a farm and has been teaching ag the rest of the time. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with him. Of course, I don’t need his recommendation as the registrar handles that but still it irks me. In talking to one boy he mentioned “those ag majors who work at the Tab and don’t even look like Ag majors.” Well, I guess that I won’t be as dull and narrow-minded a teacher as he is. This is my last semester here and then I have one [practice teaching) at the University of Kentucky.

Bill, John, and Dick (4, 5, 9 men clw. from foreground) were all three in the Country Dancers in 1951

JMR (age21) to Mother in Lithia Springs, Georgia in October, 1951; sent from Lexington, KY.

I have been teaching quite a bit. Yesterday, I taught about keeping records on a dairy herd and used a “magic lantern.” Our teacher wasn’t there so I let the boys have some fun by sticking comic books, ﬁngers, and what not under the magic

lantern. Towards the middle of the class they settled down and we had a good lesson….Besides teaching, the only other enjoyable thing is folk dance twice a week.

During my years as a college student I had a student deferment from the draft. There had been problems with the draft board. Now, with the end of my student days and the student deferment, I was facing a call for induction. I had already told the draft board that I had conscientious objections to war as a means of settling human problems and had religious objections to carrying a gun. I decided to prepare to be an agricultural missionary as my way of tackling one of the human problems—food. I enrolled in the Kennedy School of Missions at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut and applied for a job with both the Methodist and the Presbyterian Boards of Missions.

JMR (age22) to Mother and Daddy in Lithia Springs, Georgia May 1, 1952; sent from Hartford, CT.

I don’t get a job with them [board of missions]. It’s not much of a shock because my hopes began to wane two weeks ago because they didn’t answer my letters. What is disturbing though are some of the reasons Mr. Williams gave…. “we are concerned that you work into your best ﬁeld of work….in the direction of drama, art, music, and folk dancing. It is consequently a very serious question with me as to whether we would be doing right to send you overseas for three years as an agricultural missionary.” This disturbs me. It is the same attitude as Dr. Wolford at Berea had, “You don’t even look like an Ag Major.” I know that there are enough ﬁelds in agriculture that I do belong in ag. And my talents and certainly not my education do not lie in art, music, etc. I am musically sensitive but not talented. But, I also enjoyed working in the dairy at Berea and, in addition, do have a talent to have a good producing dairy. I know I am not wrong.

When it turned out that Uncle Sam would not let me leave the country until my draft status was resolved, the Presbyterian Board of National Missions came through and offered me the position of Dairy Manager and Agriculture Instructor

at Warren Wilson Junior College in Swannanoa, North Carolina. I accepted and arrive on the campus June 7, 1952.

JMR (age22) to Mother and Daddy in Lithia Springs, Georgia June 22, 1952; sent from Swannanoa, NC.

I’ve been milking with my two boys so as to learn the cows. This herd used to be a very ﬁne one but has suffered from too many changes is herdsmen. But it’s all here and just needs developing. It’s a huge job for me and will be a couple years before I can feel sure where I want to go with the herd. There is no pasteurizing here. Extra milk goes to the pigs. The cows aren’t milked properly, feed is bought instead of raised and the students don’t have any interest in dairying. I don’t even have a tractor to haul manure with or to mow pastures….We all eat together and have fun. But during the day everyone works building, painting, farming, etc. I’ll get to go to the Craftsman Fair [as a dancer, in Asheville] and Bill’s wedding….It depends mostly on how dependable the students working for me are. If I can leave them in charge, I can go.

July 4 is vacation for [most of] the students….My milk crew are milking by themselves. I got up with them this morning cleaning up the calf stalls. I think that the barn is clean enough to have curtains in it now. All the old manure has been hauled out, the ceiling painted, the walls scrubbed, the cows washed, the calved bedded and the barn washed every day, the whole business sprayed three times, and some of the boy’s practices changed. Besides, we’ve been cutting and splitting fence posts and doing many odd jobs. I’ve been having a ﬁne time with the boys. We work together, talk, and become friends. All isn't perfect though.

JMR (age21) to Mother, Daddy, and Rose in Lithia Springs, Georgia on Nov. 21,1952

School life continues to be busy and I have become resigned that it will not slow up. My day begins at 4:00 AM and ends at 11:00 PM every day now. We are having a grand time at the dairy talking about the individual cows, speculating on them, and squeezing them for all the milk they will give. The highest producer milks 67 lbs. a day or over seven gallons. This is two gallons more that she gave last year. I attribute it to better milking, heavier feeding, and fattening up while she was dry. It is fun and interesting. The boys are almost as interested as I am and thus make the work enjoyable…..The other day, a student in my college [ag] class brought the new Iranian boy with him. That evening, someone told me that Max [the new Iranian student] said that he went to a class and sat around talking for two hours waiting for the teacher to come! One reason he was misled is because he couldn’t understand our conversation which was quite technical and another is that I don’t lecture but just talk with the boys as friends, which we are.

In the three years I spent at Warren Wilson College, we were able to shift the cows production cycle to match the school year. This gave us a surplus of milk during the “base” period and the opportunity to establish a premium for the surplus which we began to sell to Biltmore Farms instead of feeding it to the pigs. We then were able to sell all of our milk to Biltmore and buy pasteurized milk for serving our students in the dining hall. We also produced a state record when Blossom Hill Amanda Dunloggin produced 27,000 lbs. in 300 days.

The Buncombe County Health Department was pressuring the College to improve the Milk House. The College was not eager to invest more in the dairy. There had always been tension between the farm manager and the dairy manager. I had married Winona and we were looking for a vacation. We decided to leave and the College decided to close down the dairy. The students objected so effectively that the College changed its mind. Winona and I had already made other plans. The

College put Gene Hileman, one of my students, in charge of the dairy but by the end of the summer, they sold the herd.

I spent ﬁve years starting my own dairy, starting a family, teaching public school to make ends meet, and joining Celo Community Inc. in the high South Toe river valley with Mount Mitchell brooding over our efforts.

I went back to school from 1960-1966 earning an M. S. and a PhD. in Animal Breeding. From there I become the Director of the John C Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC where dairying and folk dancing were happily combined. I was able to apply my education in dairying to improve the herd substantially by crossbreeding the Jerseys to the best sires in the United States. When I left the Folk School, my days as a dairyman were over and I was left with dancing. Dairying had its attractions to a young man wanting to make a difference and wanting to employ his muscles as well as his mind. Dancing is more suitable for me today at age 83! But, I wouldn’t change the choices of vocation I had made in any way.