DeLoach Dairy closes after 103 years

Published 4:30 pm Friday, November 13, 2015

EATONTON — After 103 years of being in business through five generations, the DeLoach Dairy has closed.

Located just off Pea Ridge Road in neighboring Putnam County, the well-known dairy, operated by Clark DeLoach, his son, David, and grandson, Gregory, has gone out of business. The last cow was milked Tuesday afternoon.

Even though family members admit that was emotional for them, they believe they made the best decision, considering a number of things, the biggest of them being that they no longer have to milk the dairy cattle they once owned twice a day.

“Those days are long gone, and I can’t say I’m going to miss them,” said Clark DeLoach, now 72, who has been involved in the family dairy business there since before he ever went to Auburn University and graduated in 1964. “I’m not going to miss getting out there and milking cows when it’s real cold weather.”

Asked how retirement was for him after just a couple of days into it, DeLoach replied with a smile, “I’m getting used to it. I’ll eventually get used to it, anyway.”

It’s going to be equally as hard for his son, David, now 46, who has been a dairy farmer since he was old enough to walk hand-in-hand with his dad to the barn.

Clark’s grandfather, the late C.W. Dennis started the business 103 years ago. He purchased about 200 acres of land and planted a lot of it with cotton. He also invested in 10 head of registered Jersey cows. Clark’s dad, Clark Sr., later inherited the family business, and through the years, it grew bigger and bigger on the dairy side.

“My granddaddy bought this land in 1912,” Clark said. “And it’s been in the family ever since. At that point in time, and I’m trying to pass down what I’ve been told because I certainly wasn’t around, he planted a lot of cotton. And then he started out with nine of 10 cows; that’s what I always heard mama say.”

That’s really how it all got started, Clark recalled Thursday afternoon during an interview at his beautiful farm home, which he built several years ago. He now shares that home with his wife, Diane, who he has been married to for the past 26 years. Between them they have five children: David, Greg, Scott, Beth and Leigh.

After graduating from Auburn, Clark worked fulltime at the J.P. Stevens plant in Milledgeville, which went out of business several years ago. He worked there for 13 years and continued to help his father part-time at the family dairy. At Auburn, he majored in textile engineering. The plant was the second largest employer in Milledgeville and Baldwin County at the time, trailing only Central State Hospital, the largest employer. He and a former co-worker were the last two employees to walk out the doors of the plant when it closed.

Clark said he turned around and did exactly what he said he would never do as a teenager: He bought some dairy cows.

“You’ve got to be careful as a teenager what you say because you just might do what you once said you would never do after you get older,” Clark said.

When the job played out at the plant, Clark became a rural mail carrier with the U.S. Postal Service where he worked for nearly 30 years before he retired. And like has been the case most of his life, he still was committed to the dairy farm like his son, David, who has never known anything else.

“I’ve got to get out and find me a job doing something, now we’ve gotten out of the dairy business,” David said, noting it wasn’t a one-person decision. “It was a family decision.”

It wasn’t an easy decision. In fact, it was something that Clark and his son, along with other family members, had pondered for a while. Even though they admit it was a little emotional, too, making such a decision, they contend they made the right decision.

Diane said even though it was sad to see the last dairy cow loaded onto a truck, she said she feels fortunate that she and her husband can now spend more time together and do some of the things they haven’t been able to because of the demanding job her husband had being a dairy farmer.

“There was never any let up,” Clark lamented. “It didn’t matter to the cows if it was Sunday or Tuesday, or what day of the week it was. They had to be milked and we had to make sure they got milked.”

Even David’s 20-year-old son, Gregory, who worked on the dairy farm full time, will now seek other opportunities while helping his dad take care of dozens of young cows that they say they will keep and raise for a while.

“We’ve sold all the milking cows,” David said.

Mid-Georgia Livestock Market, he added, handled the selling of the dairy cattle.

“They did an exceptional job,” David said. “I was impressed with the way they loaded the cows onto trucks and the advertising and all they did, too.”

Those days are now over, no more milking cows twice a day, 365 days a year, including holidays, the DeLoach family said.

Gregory, a 2013 graduate of Putnam County High School, recently figured up how many total milking of cows took place during the 103-year history of the DeLoach Dairy Farm.

“It was 75,233 times,” said Gregory, his eyes beaming with pride as he said it. “That’s figuring in leap years too.”

The family said they are grateful to God for allowing them to make a living doing what they loved to do, working as dairy farmers.