SEQUIM — Dan Smith is a gruff guy. He doesn’t flinch when a cold wind blows across his fields.
But this week, he came close to admitting that he was feeling some pain.
And at least one of his cows bugled a bluesy tune while the dairyman explained the reasons for the herd’s departure.
On Monday, Smith shipped his last 67 Holstein cattle off to Wendell, Idaho, emptying his pastures of the animals for which he’s cared for more than three decades.
“When a lifetime dairyman sells out, it’s kind of an emotional thing,” he said, watching deep-blue barn swallows swoop just above the grass.
Only two dairies left
Smith’s 115-acre farm at the end of Cook Road was one of the last of the Dungeness Valley dairies.
Now there is only Gary and Janice Smith’s Maple View Farm off Schmuck Road, and Jeff, Debbie and Sarah Brown’s Dungeness Valley Creamery on Towne Road.
Smith, 57, left the farm for a while when he was a young man, to study engineering at the University of Washington.
“I found out that wasn’t what I wanted to do,” he said.
He came back to his family’s farm in 1971, and devoted himself to the dairyman’s life. At his herd’s peak a decade ago, Smith shipped 2.2 million gallons of milk a year.
Now that the dairy is shutting down, “we’re exploring some options. There may be some synergies’ with other farmers in the valley, he said.
Fellow dairyman Gary Smith — no relation — has asked if the pair might “work on some projects’ together.
“I’d like that,” Dan Smith said.
