Dairy farmers seek greener pastures

MESA, FRANKLIN COUNTY — For a while there, Tim and Travis Thomasson farmed together in Enumclaw, father and son, working the cattle, the same loud, lasting laugh. They had a nice rhythm going back then, a way of reading each other without words.

But that was before Travis left for the wide-open spaces of Eastern Washington. Now he works cattle in this tiny town, 200 miles from Enumclaw, with plenty of room to grow.

"I just see so much more potential here," said Travis, 33, who co-owns Thomasson Double T Dairy with his wife, Sasha, and his parents.

Dairying has always been a tough business to take on. But the rising cost of fuel and feed has made it worse for farmers in Western Washington. Not to mention the pressure of suburbia bearing down. Last year alone, 57 dairies shut down in the western part of the state.

More than 340 dairies remain, compared with 145 east of the Cascades. But with the fast pace of development, many farmers face a choice: leave family and head east, or hold ground and tough it out.

On the east side of the mountains, in the sunshine, it's easier to grow feed for cattle, cutting the high cost of hauling hay. There's more land on which to spread manure. And there are fewer complaints about the smell.

All this makes Travis optimistic. On this land, where fields stretch far and wide, and the nearest mall is almost an hour away, there just might be a chance to grow Thomasson Double T Dairy, in a way he can no longer imagine in Western Washington.

Decades ago, when Tim Thomasson set up his farm in Enumclaw, there were nearly 140 dairies in King County. By the time Travis graduated from high school, the number had dropped to 83.

Now it's at 29.

"We're turning into an endangered species, is what we are," said Tim Thomasson, 54, a dairyman since his Enumclaw High School days.

Western Washington weather makes it hard to meet some state regulations — it's tougher to keep manure from seeping into a nearby stream, for example, when the rain is coming down. There's also the cost of caring for cows during wet winters, with the building and maintaining of barns.

But in South King County, where most of the county's dairies remain, the big challenge is dairying next to development. Several years ago, Tim got a new neighbor: the White River Amphitheatre.

He could head east. But four generations of Thomassons live in Enumclaw. The farming may be easier elsewhere, but family is here.

It's one of the reasons Tim picked farming in the first place — to keep close to family. With five employees on his farm, he can duck into the house for lunch with his wife. When the five kids were growing up, he could sit down for dinner nearly every weeknight. No boss to control him. No traffic to keep him away.

Cows are a Thomasson family tradition. Tim's grandparents were dairy farmers, and his parents had their own small herd, pasteurizing milk for meals every day.

Tim took to it early, a 4-H kid who named his first cow "Gorgeous George." In those days, milking was his reward for doing the dishes.

Senior year, his parents started him in business, buying him 15 cows. The boy was a natural. Had the sharp eye for cattle and the hard work ethic. And he loved the job enough to make it his life. Just like Travis.

"You've got to love it," said Tim's father, Arnold Thomasson, 84. "Or get the hell out."

Right now, dairy farmers are getting $1.72 per gallon of milk, thanks in part to a drought in Australia. But Tim knows the luck won't last.

Just last year, the price of milk sagged to 95 cents per gallon and stayed there for months. The national dairy collective sponsored a buyout, and plenty of people took it. Tim considered it. He always does.

And then he got back to his 400 cows. Because for all the rising costs of fuel and feed and transportation, farming still feels like his life.

"Gorgeous," Tim said the other day, walking through his milk parlor, admiring the black and white Holsteins. "Wonderful."

There is a refrain among the Thomasson men: I couldn't do it without her. Tim said it just the other day, his arm around his wife.

Cathy Thomasson, 53, does not touch the cows. She saw them as a girl growing up in Enumclaw. But she is not that kind of farmer's wife.

She's taken on the finances of the farm instead. And the new corn maze designed to draw visitors to part of the 100-acre property — that family project was hers to direct. Anything to make more money for the farm.

Some years, the farm does well: The 100-year-old house has had some renovations, and outside, on the porch, with the cows grazing several feet away, the Thomassons put in a pool.

Other years, savings are spent feeding the calves.

It takes a certain kind of spouse to support it. Cathy is teaching her son's wife now, about how to track the finances of the farm, about how to live this kind of life.

There's nothing from Sasha Thomasson's childhood that would make it familiar. She grew up the only child of a locksmith and a Boeing employee. She trained to become an emergency-room nurse. She thought she'd marry a fireman.

But Sasha took to the heifers right away. As soon as they moved to Mesa, she made it her job to feed them. More than once, she helped a cow through the birth of a calf.

She does it less now, as the mother of her own two toddler sons, 7 ½ months pregnant with her third child. But Travis never tires of the story of how his wife, five months pregnant, pulled a calf at 3 one morning, just after her shift at the hospital.

"I told all the neighbors what she did," he said.

The milker was new that night, and he was struggling. Sasha could see it from the kitchen window. And Travis was sleeping, a sick son beside him in bed. So Sasha pulled sweat pants on under her nightgown and headed out there to help.

For Travis Thomasson, the dark before dawn is the best. Nothing but farmers moving for miles. A spattering of stars in the sky. The sound of a train 10 miles away.

"Nobody out there but me and the cows," he said.

It's a seven-day workweek, with days that can stretch 18 hours long. But there's freedom in this kind of labor. Travis can play plumber one hour, welder the next. He can bring his boys to work, swing them up on a tractor seat, as his father once did with him. He can watch where their fingers point, and answer their whys.

He still talks to his father several times a day, getting advice and giving some of his own. Working together, they cut feed costs on both farms: Tim sends his heifers to Travis in the winter, Travis sends his heifers to Tim for the summer.

Occasionally, there's tension — Travis wants to buy more cows; his father doesn't want him to buy more cows. But mostly, Travis is free to run Double T Dairy as he sees fit.

Tim originally bought the dairy for his oldest son, Gordon, to farm. But in the end, Gordon didn't want the dairying life. So five years ago, Tim made Travis an offer: Head to Mesa, turn the dairy around, and we'll sell it when the time is right.

Everything was exciting in those early days. Travis could hardly sleep.

Then came winter in a town with one grocery, a post office, and a population that, at last count, was little more than 400. There they were, a young couple, surrounded by elderly neighbors, 45 minutes from the nearest mall, in Kennewick.

Travis made friends through farm work. But Sasha worked only part-time. And when the children were born, there was even less chance to leave the house. Last year, they joined the volunteer ambulance service so Sasha could meet people. But she still makes monthly trips to play the dice game bunco with her Enumclaw friends.

"It's still hard," Sasha said, tears in her eyes, sitting across the kitchen table from Travis. "And it's been five years."

Family is what they miss most. Sunday breakfasts at the Enumclaw farmhouse. Saturday lunches at the cattle auction.

They could go back home anytime. The Mesa farm is turned around now. Tim and Cathy would be happy to sell it — for the right price. Bring back the grandkids. Focus all the family energy on the Enumclaw farm.

But for now, Travis and Sasha will not budge. Good things could be coming. They want to see how far this life will stretch under strain.

They're not asking for much. A bigger house for Sasha. A larger herd for Travis. The freedom to show up at every son's game. Maybe, milk prices willing, they could have it all, somewhere down the line.

Cara Solomon: 206-464-2024 or csolomon@seattletimes.com