Barn Gothic: Three Generations and the Death of the Family Dairy Farm

When Ryan Dennis’s father was crushed by heavy machinery on their New York dairy farm, both men accepted the accident as a risk of agricultural life. But it was harder to comprehend being crushed by low milk prices, big banks, and the policies that destroyed America’s family farms. 

Even though Ryan grew up watching his father and grandfather struggle to survive, he always thought he would follow in their footsteps and take over the family farm. But as he milked cows and fed calves, the world outside the barn was changing. Between 2003 and 2020, 40,000 dairy farms went out of business in the United States.

Barn Gothic is an elegy for family farmers and an intimate portrait of three generations laboring to be fathers and sons while their livelihood falls apart. Beautifully told with a farmer’s restraint and a poet’s grace, it is a story of personal loss amid corporate corruption and of finding a way forward when everything you know disappears.