Syracuse, N.Y. —Patrick D. Aherns is known in the Syracuse community as “a true son of Ireland.” As Grand Marshall of the 2004 St. Patrick’s Day parade, a news report claimed that if you scratched his skin, shamrocks would fly out.

Aherns says Irish cultural is flourishing in Syracuse now more than ever.

“When I was a kid, I’d drive around and I couldn’t find an Irish flag in the neighborhood. I couldn’t find any Irish things,” Aherns said.

He says the growth in the number of Irish dance schools illustrates the change in the attitudes of the Irish people in Syracuse. When his daughters were growing up, there was only one dance school in the area. Now, however, there are nine Irish dance academies to choose from.

“The community always knew it was Irish, but they didn’t know what that meant,” Aherns said. “The local community now, the Irish American community, is getting more involved, sort of knows their history more.”

“And it’s a sad history,” Aherns said. “But their grandparents—the immigrants, they didn’t talk about Ireland because it was so painful. So their families were raised without the Irish culture, basically without the history and things like that”

Aherns said that is not the case in his family. He recalled a story his grandmother told him about how her 15-year-old sister was killed by members of the British military force sent into Ireland to suppress revolutionaries as she was riding her bicycle down the road.

“That kind of bitterness and that kind of hatred doesn’t go away,” Aherns said. “That’s the way a lot of us were raised, with that kind of memory, so we [did] what we could for that situation in Ireland.

Aherns says he’s been involved in these organizations to aid the Irish republicans and to foster Irish culture in America for most of his life.

Among the numerous organizations for which he has held positions, Aherns was an officer in the Irish American Cultural Institute, chairman of the Knights of the Red Branch, and president of the Syracuse chapter of the Ancient Order of Hibernians for four years.

“I was raised in the Ancient Order of Hibernians hall,” Aherns said. “They had dances every Saturday night and all the immigrants would come there and find out about America.”

But, Aherns says because there are far fewer Irish immigrants coming into the area than in the past, Irish culture in Syracuse has changed.

“There’s no Hibernian hall anymore, you know,” Aherns said. “Those days are gone. The younger generations don’t have to go to a certain place to find a job from other immigrants. They don’t have to go to another place to find friends, and socialize, and dance, and things like that.”

Aherns is confident that although the reason for Irish cultural pride has changed, the renewed pride and involvement in the culture is not going anywhere.

“You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube anymore,” Aherns said. “I think it’s only going to grow and grow and grow.”

Katie Alexander

Skaneateles, N.Y. —Rose Burtless, head milker at Elmer Richards and Sons Dairy Farm in Skaneateles, said her farm is lucky. She said as a dairy farm, it isn’t as negatively affected by the poor economy as many of the nation’s other industries.
Burtless explains that jobs cannot be cut in dairy farming. There will always be a demand for milk, and the job of caring for dairy cows will never disappear. Burtless said she is optimistic about the financial future of dairy farming.
Yet across the country, the low demand for milk means the profit dairy farmers can receive for their products is shrinking. “Dairy farms are heading into one of their worst years ever,” according to an article in the Syracuse Post-Standard earlier this month.

When we spoke to her, however, Burtless was so confident about the future of dairy farming that she said the people who have lost jobs in the current recession should be looking for jobs on dairy farms –that is, if they can handle the workload.

Burtless describes herself as a jack-of-all trades because she does a little bit of everything on the farm. She’s involved in many aspects of caring for both calves and cows, including vaccinating, ear tagging, and, of course, milking.
When we visited the farm, she was marking cows in heat so the breeder would have an easier time finding them the next day. This system of marking involves using different color paint — green for cows that need to be bred this afternoon, and orange for cows that can wait until tomorrow morning.

Burtless says the gestation period for a cow is nine months, and each cow spends at least 55 days with its calf. She said when it comes to breeding and milking, it’s at least a 305 day cycle from one conception to the next.
As of November, Burtless said Elmer Richards and Sons was doing well, and she was sure she would have a job helping with breeding and milking, among other duties, in the future.