BLUE RIDGE – For the Richardson family, the cows have come home.

In the next couple of days, the Richardsons will shutter their dairy farm of almost 60 years, leaving only one other family dairy in Collin County.

That's one more than in Dallas, Tarrant, Denton and Rockwall counties, where all the family dairies have vanished, according to state dairy officials.

Closing the northeastern Collin County dairy and selling their Jersey herd wasn't an easy decision.

Dwayne Richardson said his mother, Leona, has been "bawlin' and squallin'."

"It's rough," she said, sitting on her front step with a toothpick in her mouth, staring at a field of hay bales. "Where do I go from here?"

The Richardsons knew this day would come, but they still weren't prepared.

Mrs. Richardson, 77, and her husband, Edward, 87, said they are too old to round up the cows on their nearly 300 acres. Son Dwayne, 58, has degenerative joint disease, making it difficult to walk. Plus, they're barely earning a profit.

"It's hard to get up," Dwayne Richardson said. "It's very depressing. It's crazy. People change jobs all the time, but we haven't. We haven't had to."

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The number of North Texas family dairies has dropped dramatically in recent years.

In 1998, Collin County had eight. Once the Richardson farm shuts down, only one of those – Lavon Farms in Plano – will be in operation.

Dallas County's last dairy folded in 2000. That trend is spreading: Wise County had about 60 dairy farms in the early 1990s. Now only seven remain.

(A couple of Dallas-Fort Worth farms sell raw milk, which hasn't been pasteurized, on site, according to state data.)

Dairy farms are fading partly because families want to have more free time, said Dr. Ellen Jordan, a dairy specialist with the Texas AgriLife Extension Service.

"They'd like to have weekends off," she said. "They don't want to be tied to the farm 24/7 anymore. Thirty years ago, people never missed a milking, but it was a very hard life."

Some families get time off by expanding their farms so they can earn enough money to hire workers. But that requires a significant investment.

Farmers who want to expand in Dallas-Fort Worth are landlocked because of suburban sprawl, said John Cowan, executive director of the Texas Association of Dairymen.

Those who aren't landlocked often can't afford the escalating land prices, Dr. Jordan said.

Fewer metropolitan dairies means milk will have to travel farther to get to Dallas-Fort Worth, potentially making milk more expensive, Dr. Jordan said.

And as suburbia devours more farmland, North Texans lose an understanding of what it takes to fill stores with milk and food, Mr. Cowan said.

"If you've been a farmer who loves the land, makes your living off the land, it's the core value of what this country was founded on," he said.

"What we lose is the respect that we have for our land. That saddens me."

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The only skyline you'll see on the Richardson farm is a sky lined with wispy clouds.

It's quiet and peaceful, aside from the wind blowing, the cows mooing, the crickets chirping and the occasional car rumbling down the country road.

Mrs. Richardson walked near a crowd of tan cows waiting to be milked. They peered into her eyes. They know her.

"You come out here and you air your brain out," she said. "The cows couldn't care less. They have no spite. I've learned to trust cows more than people."

Farm life can be challenging, Mrs. Richardson said. The family had to sell several cows a few years ago because they were running out of hay during a drought. Last year, Mrs. Richardson and her son got rabies shots after a cow contracted the disease.

The Richardsons say government regulation was getting too burdensome, and their profits were dwindling. Of the $7,500 they made each month, about $4,000 was spent on animal feed. Then there's farm maintenance, water, electricity and fuel.

The Richardsons expect to sell about 35 of their cows for $35,000, but they aren't selling their entire herd. Mrs. Richardson wants to keep milking one for her own use.

She can't stand grocery store milk. It's like "drinking a glass of water," compared to her dairy's thick and creamy milk, she said.

The elder Mr. Richardson says little. He's finding it difficult to express his feelings.

"You don't want to know," he said. "It's not funny."

But the pain is evident in their voices, their tired eyes.

"I don't know how to act," Mrs. Richardson said. "It's a hard thing, but it's an inevitable thing."