In the late 1970s the golden valley between Utah’s Wasatch Mountains was home to some of the best dairies in the country. That was also where Linda Rhodes, a newly minted large animal veterinarian, had to prove that a woman could do what the Mormon dairymen were sure was a man’s job. She was often scared that they were right. Throughout her experience, she tackled a menagerie of challenging medical and surgical cases that forced her to be fearless. Every bovine life she saved helped her confidence grow, but each failure left her feeling defeated—as did the mounting tensions between pursuing a demanding career and saving a crumbling marriage.

In Breaking the Barnyard Barrier, Linda Rhodes tells the story of how a woman, through grit and tears, made her way in a man’s world and blazed a path that prevailed against career stereotypes.

Excerpt

I emerged from the cramped car, stretched my arms over my head, and took a deep breath. The sweet scent of lilacs was a wonderful change from the stench of West Philadelphia. My sister, Anne, carried her daughter, Satya, seven years old, fast asleep, into the house. Vincent pulled boxes out of the car and piled them on the driveway. The chickens ran to greet us, cackling, looking for their dinner of corn. The setting sun cast a warm light on the meadow, and the peepers sang down by the pond. Vincent put his arm around me. We stood, silent, and gazed at the rolling green hills east of the house. I leaned my head on his shoulder.

Vincent sighed.

“What?” I asked.

“Long day,” he said.

After my Philadelphia life was packed up and the rental cleaned so I could get my deposit back, we left Philly around three in the afternoon, arriving in Freeville, New York, a few miles outside of Ithaca, after four hours on the road. Anne, Satya, and Vincent came to Philadelphia to celebrate my graduation from Penn Veterinary School in late May 1978. I had just turned twenty-nine, and after four years of living apart from him, I was ready to start my life with Vincent—and, hopefully, a job as a large animal veterinarian in the rolling hills and meadows around Ithaca, New York.

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Anne, Vincent, and a group of musicians and friends lived communally in an old Victorian house in Freeville while I was studying in Philadelphia. Now I was happily done with living in a city and the rigors of veterinary school. We had planned to settle into a life—Vincent playing music with his brothers, me working as a large animal vet in the local dairy farms. It would be so good if we could finally be together after four years of Vincent in Freeville and me living in the gritty world of West Philadelphia, but in spite of months of trying, I hadn’t found a job. We both knew that meant our dream was in jeopardy, but we avoided talking about what might come next.

For now, it was enough to breathe the scent of lilacs and lean on each other. The screen door banged. Anne threw some cracked corn out the back door for the chickens, already busy pecking. I plopped down on the porch steps.

“Seems weird not to have a schedule,” I said. My life had been defined for the last four years by a hectic rush of classes, labs, and clinics.

Vincent smiled. “Maybe you can take a few weeks to slow down,” he said.

My back against the porch railing, I stretched my legs out. Th peepers down by the pond were getting louder, fireflies flashed in the grass, the last of the light slanted across the meadow.

“I guess I could try that,” I said, and we both laughed.

“It’s getting dark,” Vincent said. “I’ll get your stuff and put it in the cabin.”

The Freeville house functioned as a commune, with most of the original founders who had moved into the house in 1974, when I moved to Philly, still there. During the four years I toiled away at vet school, the vegetable garden had grown large and weedy, a few more cats had turned up, and the attic and basement filled with the boxes and miscellaneous detritus of various musicians who came and went.

The cabin, a tiny one-room shed behind the house, would be fine for now, but I hoped in a few weeks I would find a job with a salary so that Vincent and I could move someplace to avoid the chaos of the commune. I wanted to celebrate finally being Dr. Rhodes, but instead I worried. Starting in early spring of 1978, long before graduation, I searched for a job in large animal practice, but it had gradually become clear that finding a job taking care of cows near Freeville was going to be much harder than I had expected. Degree in hand, no job, student loan payments due in a couple of months, I had a bank account so close to zero that the bank might close it out.

The countryside around Freeville was filled with dairy farms. New York State was the third largest producer of milk, after Wisconsin and California. Prosperous dairy farms dotted the landscape. Since the beginning of vet school, my plan had been to return to Freeville. I’d spent the spring of my senior year interviewing for all the jobs listed in the area. No one would hire me.

The pink sunset clouds darkened to gray. Anne was in the kitchen singing along with the radio. She chopped zucchini and onions into the oil-coated wok, making stir-fry for dinner. The light was on in Vincent’s little cabin. I rolled my shoulders, stretched to reach my toes, and yawned. My exhaustion from the last four years settled over me like a heavy blanket. There was still a long way to go until

I was a practicing veterinarian.

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About the Author

Linda Rhodes began her career as a dairy cow veterinarian after she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania summa cum laude in 1978. After several years in dairy practice, she was granted a fellowship at Cornell University, where she obtained her PhD in 1988. The rest of her career was spent in the pharmaceutical industry, helping to develop medicines for many species of animals. She retired in 2016 and has subsequently served on several corporate and start-up boards in the animal health industry. She has received the Iron Paw Award for her lifetime achievements. Breaking the Barnyard Barrier is her first book.