hen John Radliff goes after something with friend and fellow farmer Richard Ball—the 2002 Times-Journal Star—by his side, guess which one plays the “bad cop?”
For his stories, his sense of humor, his love of the land, and his unyielding determination to speak up—loudly-- for farmers, John Radliff of Cobleskill is the 2009 Times-Journal Star.
“Yeah, when they see Richard and I coming, they know it’s time to get serious,” Mr. Radliff said with a laugh in his School Hill Road kitchen, taking a break between chores and…more chores.
“We play up the good cop-bad cop thing. Guess who’s the bad cop? Richard says, ‘You can talk to me or you can talk to John.’ Works just about every time.”
Mr. Radliff, who turned 54 on New Year’s Eve, never intended to be what Pete Lopez calls, in a gruff-voiced imitation, “the voice of agriculture.”
A self-described high school goof-off, he still got good enough grades to set his sights on going to college for agricultural education, a fall-back career for his real dream: Joining his father, Howard, on the family farm.
“I had some cows and he’d pay me in milk. I cut firewood and sold fence posts on the side,” Mr. Radliff remembered.
“I was heavily into 4-H, president of FFA, things like that, and whenever I grumbled about them, my dad always told me, ‘You’ll never know when you’ll be able to apply what you’re learning.’ And of course, I’ve used them most of my life.”
Sadly, he started using them sooner than he expected.
In November of his senior year, Mr. Radliff’s father was killed by a falling tree when he came to check on John, who was working in the woods.
“The neighbors kept me going,” Mr. Radliff said, as did his mom, Nancy, who had to decide whether or not to sell the cows.
“She was afraid that if she sold them, it would destroy me,” Mr. Radliff said. “The farm was part of my father, he was the farm.
“They didn’t have things like therapy then. I had to work things out in my head. And I put my mother through hell…She was my rock.”
One bright spot in those times was the girl, Terran, he’d met while showing cows at the Cobleskill Fair—her friend had the stalls next to his.
Thirty-some years later, they have five grown children all with an interest in agriculture and Mrs. Radliff is her husband’s biggest supporter:
When he takes a guess that he was about 40 before he started speaking out through organizations like Farm Bureau, she tells him he was closer to 24.
“Don’t sell yourself short. You’ve always had an opinion.”
“And I’ve always expressed it,” Mr. Radliff said, laughing and lighting a cigarette.
The short version of Mr. Radliff’s resume includes being a founding member of the Festival Farmer’s Market, and serving on the Schoharie County and Cobleskill Agricultural and Farmland Protection Boards, the county Soil & Water Board, and as past president and director of the Schoharie County Farm Bureau and well as as a just-retired NYFB state director.
“I remember when I was younger, we’d all go to these meetings, we’d all know what the problem was, but no one would say anything,” Mr. Radliff said.
“We’d stand outside our milk houses with the answers but couldn’t speak up to the people who could change things. Well, you can’t just stand outside your milkhouse.”
Pulling a number out of the air, Mr. Radliff said he expects to keep farming until he’s 85.
And though it might be nice to have someone else milk the cows once it a while, he can’t single out the one part of the job of farming he likes the best—or the least.
“On a good day, I wouldn’t do anything else,” he says with another laugh and another puff. “But some days? I’d sell you the whole place for $5.”
“I guess for me, it comes down to: I will admit to my failures, but no one can take credit for my successes.”
“That’s God, honey,” calls in Mrs. Radliff from the other room before joining the end of the conversation.
“All of these farmers…” she continues, “hope springs eternal. “It’s always, what they’re going to plant next spring, what they’re going to do next year…They just keep going, believing things will get better.”
“It will,” adds her husband, taking another drag on another cigarette, as he heads out to finish chores. “I’m not sure they can get much worse.”