Average age of local farmers is on the rise
George Wherry is his own boss, raising more than a thousand sheep not far from the family farmhouse, constructed in 1839 in Scenery Hill near Spring Valley Road.
It means a lot to Wherry, 78, to still be able to drive his 1995 Ford F-150 through his land, and on a hot July afternoon, he surveys the rolling hillsides through his windshield with admiration before feeding more than a dozen Texel sheep.
And it’s Wherry’s farm because he worked for it, farming even while working for 28 years as a coal miner, improving upon his father’s livestock management and enduring a nine-year legal battle with two of his aunts several decades ago for control of the farm.
A recent lung cancer scare prompted Wherry to get his affairs in order, solidifying his daughter Lisa as his farm-helming successor.
“You have to have (farming) in your blood to like it and enjoy it,” said Lisa, 52, who came back to help her dad on the farm after she retired from the Navy in 2006.
Finding a farm heir who feels the way Lisa does is a challenge for principal operators looking to secure the future of their estate.
Bill Jackson, co-owner of Jackson Farms in New Salem, said he and fellow co-owner Kerry Harvey are reviewing several options for who might take over their dairy farm some day.
“That’s a tough one,” Jackson, 61, said. “We have a couple of options. It’s not totally set in stone.”
Jackson noted that many of his fellow local farmers are aged in their middle 60s.
“They have been getting older,” said Walt Bumgarner, livestock extension educator for Penn State Extension.
Washington County has the second-highest average age of principal operators in the entire state at 60.4, according to the 2012 Census of Agriculture (the most recent such census), up from 56.2 in 1997. Westmoreland County’s average principal operating age also ranked high at 59.3 in 2012, up from 55.7 in 1997.
The average age of Fayette County principal operators rose from 55.0 in 1997 to 58.4 in 2012, while the average age in Greene County crept up from 54.2 in 1997 to 59.9 in 2012.

Mike Tony | Herald-Standard
The average age of farmers in Fayette, Greene, Washington and Westmoreland counties is on a long-term upswing.
Washington County Fair board secretary Wayne Hunnell, 71, has noticed driving through the county that it contains more trees and overgrowth than in years past, when it was farmed and dotted with planted crops.
Bumgarner, 62, noted that multigenerational farms are not as common as when he was a kid, but he was more alarmed by a 20 percent drop nationwide from 2007 to 2012 in beginning farmers, defined as having 10 years or less on their current operation, according to the Census of Agriculture.
“That really shocked me,” Bumgarner said, adding that he hoped that figure was skewed negatively by the 2008 recession.
George Wherry notes that the plethora of dairy farms that once dotted Spring Valley Road is now gone, and the Wherrys attribute that in part to a lack of work ethic among local young people – or at least enough to run a farm.
“My dad can outwork a lot of these young kids,” Lisa says, casting an appreciative glance toward George in what she calls “his domain,” her father’s dark, memento-strewn office where a picture of the farm circa 1900 hangs above George’s desk. “They just don’t have the stamina.”
Lisa lives in the property’s 178-year-old farmhouse, an heirloom that the Allen family in Smock would appreciate.
Clinton and Andrea Allen’s children Carter, 9, and Tenlee, 5, mark the eighth generation to live in the Allen farmhouse, built in 1853 and sitting on a hillside directly off of Route 51.
Ron Allen co-owned the Allen Hill Dairy Farm in Smock with his brother Rick from 1972 through 2014.
But in 2015, Rick’s half of farm ownership transitioned into the hands of Ron’s son Clinton, amid what Ron said were other community obligations for Rick.
“It’s great to take it and transition to the next generation, but they have to want to do it,” Ron says, sitting next to Clinton, 36, on the front porch of their 166-year-old farmhouse. “They have to want to sacrifice.”
Ron’s wife Lisa, a teacher in the Albert Gallatin Area School District, brings a clean shirt to Ron on a hot July morning shaping up to be one of his routine 14-to-16-hour workdays on the farm, which often start at 5 a.m. for cattle feedings.
“They were raised with a good work ethic,” Lisa says of her son Clinton and daughter Danielle Allen Angelo. “We’re getting too far removed from that. There are too many generations removed from the farm.”
Ron notes proudly that at 63, he’s still doing exactly the same thing he did when he was 12. But he still had to work as a disc jockey for more than 20 years to supplement his farming income.
Jackson noted a tough economy for modern farmers, recalling that Galliker’s Dairy stopped taking milk from 11 farms, including his own, last month because of a surplus of milk.
Area farming experts say that the decline in that profession isn’t likely to cause a difference in local or national food abundance, since larger, corporate farms have never been more efficient.
But local farming families do think the area stands to lose out as their families’ way of life continues to fade, as their families’ emphasis on togetherness and hard work diminishes.
“Is there even any activities we do not as a family?” Andrea asks her husband, parents-in-law and two children on the farmhouse porch.
A few minutes later, Ron rides off on a tractor with his smiling grandson, but not before reflecting on how much it has meant to him to keep farming in the family.
“We’re home every morning for breakfast,” Ron says. “There’s something to be said for that.”