Two bill collectors have taken out liens against the farm. There are weeks where the entire milk check goes towards the $2,100 monthly mortgage payment. The Rieckmanns receive about $16 for every 100 pounds of milk they sell, a 40 percent decrease from six years back. But it’s harder than ever to make any money, much less pay the debt, Mary Rieckmann says, in the yellow-wallpapered kitchen of the sagging farmhouse where she lives with her husband, John, and two of their seven children. ![]() ![]() The Rieckmanns are about $300,000 in debt, and bill collectors are hounding them about the feed bill and a repayment for a used tractor they bought to keep the farm going. But they’ve never seen a crisis quite like this one. Mary and John Rieckmann, who now run the farm and its 45 cows, have seen all manners of ups and downs - droughts, floods, oversupplies of milk that sent prices tumbling. ![]() For nearly two centuries, the Rieckmann family has raised cows for milk in this muddy patch of land in the middle of Wisconsin.
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