More than once he had contemplated ending his life by suicide, and it scared him. One time he found himself in the barn, looking up at some ropes in the hayloft. 'You try to sleep, and it gets worse because it’s all going through your head. You feel like everything’s spiraling out of control.' 'All of this starts playing with your mind,' Roecker said. He couldn't turn it off at night, either. “It got to the point where I wanted to die every day.” There was nobody to help me get through all this stuff,” he said. That’s when Roecker's depression kicked in. The farm was losing up to $30,000 a month, undermining years of hard work and careful planning for the future. Still, the debt, and the recession that followed the expansion, triggered financial stress that became unbearable. 'But in order to survive, in any business, you have to grow. “It's not all gloom and doom in the dairy industry,' Roecker said. It was aimed at keeping the farm up to date, and to bring Randy's two children, now adults, into the operation as his parents, now in their 80s, ease out.

Thirteen years ago the farm underwent a major expansion costing about $3 million. He's an experienced farmer and board member of Dairy Management Inc., the national organization that promotes dairy products through ad campaigns such as “Undeniably Dairy.” The 300-cow operation has been in Randy Roecker's family since the 1930s. It's a showcase operation that has hosted many foreign visitors touring Wisconsin dairy farms. Success can be costly, stressfulĪt Roecker's Rolling Acres, you'd never know anything was amiss. 'You feel like you are letting down all the previous generations of your family if you don't farm anymore,' Roecker said.

If It Ain't Broke by Brenda Barrett