became outstanding in the field of
dairy husbandry, for example, C. T. Rice, a celebrated dairy owner of
the Oakton area, whose animals consistently scored highly on milk
production. He came to the county in 1915 but "threw away his plow"
during the 1920s to concentrate solely on dairying, citing erosion
problems and the more constant income of dairying as his reasons.[144]
So widespread was this tendency to embrace dairy farming that a
traveller riding through the county in 1930 sensed that "it is not
farming country at all, because there is very little planting done. We
saw few fields in which a crop had been recently harvested ... it is
apparently a grazing country."[145]

Despite its spectacular achievements, the Fairfax County dairy industry
did not rise with an unchecked ascent but suffered a certain share of
problems and setbacks. In one sense its very success was its worst
enemy. Although many farmers continued to focus on dairying, by 1926
there was a surplus of milk on the Washington market and the county
agent noted that "it appears as if we had sufficient dairies."[146]
Still, while prices dropped steadily between 1926 and 1935,[147] farmers
continued to increase their yields in hopes of increasing profits by
shear quantities of milk sold. One county farmer commenting on the
futility of this, remarked:

We were getting about 25c a gallon for our base milk. Seventy-five
gallons a day at 25c a gallon wasn't paying the interest and the
mortgage on [his farm loan]. So we decided in 1928 that we would
put in some more cows and get a little extra money to help pay off
this mortgage and this loan. So we started shipping, instead of 75
gallons of milk a day, 90 to 95 gallons of milk a day. Then milk
went down from 25c a gallon to 22c a gallon. Well, we couldn't do
that, so we put some more stalls on the barn and built a new silo
and put in enough cows to ship 125 gallons of milk a day ... it was
only netting us 18 to 19c a gallon ... the more we worked, the more
we produced, and the harder we worked, it seemed like the less net
income we had.[148]

Against this turn of events the state agricultural service advocated
poultry and truck farming for those entering the county and urged a more
uniform distribution of the county's cattle. Some farmers had too few
cows for even their own use. Others had too many and no feed. "A few
good cows well kept, rather t