Even at 80, Coal Valley farmer David Schroeder isn’t thinking of retiring
By Thomas Geyer – Quad City Times, Davenport, Iowa (TNS)
Coal Valley farmer David Schroeder turned 80 in September and still farms.
He admits he doesn’t move as fast today. He has had both knees replaced. The rotator cuff in each of his shoulders could use the work of a good orthopedic surgeon.
But, as Schroeder will tell you, there is no time for that. There’s too much to do.
“Show me retirement in the Bible,” he said. “It’s not there.”
Each day Schroeder does what he has always done since he was a boy, and still on the same farm where he grew up. He’s up early to milk the cows — which need milking twice a day — as well as tend the many varied chores required to maintain his dairy cattle and his field crops.
“I don’t get up as early as I used to,” he added. “I get up about 6:30 a.m. now and I try to get started milking about that time. I’ve got part-time helpers, about a half-a-dozen people that milk a few days out of the week to fill the gap.
“I’ve got to have somebody,” he said. “I can’t do it by myself anymore, and you don’t want to because it’s too much. You’d never get it done.”
It’s not just dairy cattle, of which he milks about 75 cows year around. He also has crops to plant and harvest, and he feeds fat cattle, and sells about 50-60 fat cows a year.
“I’m the youngest of seven kids,” Schroeder said.
“My dad never milked,” he said. “That was the kids’ job.”
Schroeder went to Lutheran grade school in Rock Island and high school in Orion, where he met his wife, Anita, who lived just a few miles down the road. He also attended Black Hawk College.
Every day he would get up and milk the cows and do his chores. He ran track and earned seven letters, but he never practiced at school. He would practice on the road outside the farm after chores were done. As his siblings moved away, he took on more responsibility.
As his children were born, they got chores, too, including milking.
The second oldest of the nine children, Dawn Zmuda, 56, now of Goshen, Indiana, said neither she nor any of her siblings were in 4-H. They already were living the farm life.
“4-H was for the wannabes,” Zmuda said with a chuckle.
“Our parents taught us hard work, respect, discipline and the love of Jesus,” she said. “We have a strong family bond that way.
“It’s all a process. It made them learn to work, learn to think, learn to hustle, and it helped them get good grades,” he said.
Zmuda said all the children did well in school, and all were in sports, but there were still chores on the farm they had to do.
Of her siblings, Adam became the farmer. Like his grandfather, though, Zmuda said, Adam deals with field crops. He’s not into milking.
“We’re proud to be farm kids,” she said. “I don’t think people understand that today.”
Zmuda said her high school did special features on the seniors. Her picture is in there milking cows.
As for her dad, she said, “If you really love something, you don’t retire. You just keep going until God takes you.”
Farm and family
Schroeder and Anita were married in 1966 and went to Houston, Texas, for their honeymoon and to see the Astrodome.
“On our honeymoon the Dodgers were playing the Astros,” Schroeder said.
“And before the game they had a milking contest,” he added, laughing.
He didn’t compete but said he “probably” could have beaten the people doing the milking.
Anita Schroeder is herself a marvel, and David and Dawn say everyone knows it. She has survived two bouts of cancer, one thyroid when she was seven months pregnant in 1969, and breast cancer in 2000. She has been living and fighting with Parkinson’s for 15 years.
An artist in many ways, she made her own wedding dress; she sewed her children’s clothes; she hand-carved a nativity scene that is out each Christmas; she has sewn 51 stockings for the children and grandchildren and the first great-grandchild.
She has a loom in the basement on which she has created hundreds of rugs and other items.
David said his wife could take just about anything off the ground and make a piece of artwork out of it. The house is full of her crafts, he said, and she easily could have opened her own craft store.
“I didn’t know her until high school, and we dated for six years,” he said. “I told her I wanted to have six sons, and our first three children were daughters, and she said she knew then, ‘I was in trouble.’ ”
On their 55th wedding anniversary, Schroeder said, Anita told him, “‘I can’t believe you kissed me on the first date.’ I told her, ‘I can’t help it. I liked you.’ “
Schroeder doesn’t have time to slow down. His last real vacation was on his 35th wedding anniversary, 23 years ago.
“The only other time I had a vacation I had my knees replaced,” Schroeder said.
“You’ve only got so many hours in a day,” Schroeder said. “You’ve only got so many hours the rest of your life. I’m not going to sit here and twiddle my thumbs or sit on the swing or talk on the phone for hours for nothing.”
“I get so mad and disgusted with people who waste time,” he said. A good example is people spending hours scrolling on their cell phones, he added.
Living in the farm economy
The family has survived tough economic times. Schroeder has a picture of himself with Willie Nelson in the 1980s, when the musician was in the Midwest singing concerts to support the farmers at Farm Aid.
“The 1980s just about ruined a lot of guys,” Schroeder said.
In 1985, the Schroeder family made the nightly national news talking about the farm crisis.
Some farmers today are worried because Deere & Co. and Case New Holland have laid off workers. Prices for corn have fallen from highs of $7.38 a bushel in June of 2022 to $3.98 in September of 2024. Soybeans have fallen from a high of $14.10 a bushel in August of 2023 to $10.20 per bushel in September 2024.
Asked if the situation now is similar to the crisis four decades ago, Schroeder said at this point, it’s not as bad as the ’80s.
“Farming is cyclical. Interest rates are high, but they are nothing like we had in the ’80s. It was really, really tough,” he said.
It is hard to tell at this point if things will get worse or better, he said.
Schroder said 2024 was his biggest crop production year, ever “because we got rain.”
“That’s the key,” he said. “You can have the best equipment, the best seed and the best manure in the world, but if it don’t rain, it don’t work.”
The years 2021 and 2022 were the best money years because of the price of grain.
Schroeder is diversified between dairy cattle, feed cattle and crops.
“You’re always going to have something that works,” he said. “If all three things don’t work, that’s bad news because there ain’t going to be anybody left.”
Schroeder said he would love to see more young farmers coming in.
According to the 2017 Census of Agriculture by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, in Rock Island County that year, there were 94 farmers below the age of 35, while there were 542 between the ages of 35 and 64, and 399 who were 65 and older.
According to the 2022 Census of Agriculture, in Rock Island County farmers below the age of 35 dropped to 76. Farmers between the ages of 35 and 64 dropped to 503. Farmers who are 65 and older climbed to 451.
People who get into farming and stick with it do so because it’s in their blood, Schroeder said.
But the cost of getting into farming is huge these days. It can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a crop into the ground, he said. Climbing into a planter is almost like climbing into the cockpit of an airplane. And the cost of equipment is huge.
But more than anything, to run a farm takes time and hard work every day, he said.
“You’re going to give up a lot,” Schroeder said. “You’re going to make sacrifices. There are going to be a lot of 18- and 20-hour days. It’s all about time.”
About 10-15 years ago, there was a stretch of poor farm ground that was susceptible to flooding he tried to fix. Schroeder said he put in 120 hours in one week.
“That’s a lot of time. About two weeks later, 40 acres of that flooded out. I put in all those hours, and it was just gone.
“But you can’t sit there and feel sorry for yourself,” he said. “You just have to do something else the next day and not worry about it.
“Worry is the devil’s playground.”
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