Amongst many things I do on this farm, I have a custom grazing service for the Amish/Mennonite dairy farmers in the area. Due to the new organic  pasture rule that has just passed through the USDA, organic dairy farms must graze their animals (except for their bulls) in such a way that  a minimum of 30%  of the total dry matter intake (DMI) that each animal eats must come from pasture for a minimum of 120 days during the grazing season.  While this may seem low to some, it actually is pretty significant given that myriad of ways that dairy cows are fed to produce milk.  The organic consumer, generally speaking, has an expectation that organic dairy farmers have their cows out on grass — but due to how the rules were written in the past ( very general – allowing loopholes) there were huge “organic” dairy confinement operations out west that were flooding the market with cheap fake (my opinion) organic milk. These operations were not at all how consumers were viewing how organic dairies were run. They expected to see picturesque small farms, cows out on pasture, and a happy smiling family working together to build a home, a family and a community. How far from the truth it was.

Well, times are changing. While I’m not against large farms, I personally do expect organic livestock operations to adhere to a pasture-based system. If a large farm can pull that off, then more power to them. It’s hard though. Pasture means land, and land can be expensive in certain areas. There is a reason that dairy in general is concentrated in areas such as the Upper Midwest, New England and parts of the Mid-Atlantic, and the Pacific Northwest — due to the climate. Those areas can be built up commercially, and land can be difficult to obtain in the amounts necessary to run a viable operation.

Here in Kalona, Iowa there is a large Amish/Mennonite community. While some Amish communities focus on other businesses, the Kalona  Amish “business” is an organic farm, with a focus on organic dairy.   These are not large farms, but there is enough land to generally support a large family.  However, with the new pasture rule out, these dairies don’t necessarily have enough land to meet the requirement for all their animals (that’s a change in the new rule).  And here is where I come in — I’m offering to custom graze their calves and replacement heifers during the growing season to free up pasture for their main milking herds. It’s a great partnership, and helpful to me as well as I’m converting all of my 60 acres to pasture.

The next blog post will be focused on the rudiments of grazing animals.

Filed under: Grazing/Pasture, Organic Dairy, Organic News, Uncategorized on April 21st, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Due to my job as plant manager of Farmer’s All-Natural Creamery (where we procure, bottle and sell milk), I get to observe quite a bit of what happens in the organic dairy industry. The past year and a half has been devastating to the dairy industry in general, and very difficult for organic farmers specifically.  A lot of the pain has been caused by general economic conditions and “the recession” that has effected most of the United States (and the world for that matter), but also weather events have played a large part.

Prior to the economy taking a nose-dive, there were three large buyers of organic milk nationwide. These were Organic Valley, Horizon Organic, and Kemp’s (a subsidiary of HP Hood). All three competed with each other in various markets for farmers (meaning milk supply). Last year Hood pulled out of the market, dropping routes and farms at almost a moment’s notice for some (and honored other contracts until the end). This painful restructuring has caused consternation in the supply chain — what does the industry do when there is too much milk overall? It is easy to shut dairy farms down (just stop picking up their milk), but it is extremely hard to start them back up.  Milk by definition is highly perishable, and organic milk is not only highly perishable but relatively expensive as compared to conventional milk. Compounding the problem is the age-old dairy issue: cows give milk every day.  And that milk has to go somewhere.

In a recession people stop going out to eat and eat at home. Usually, a recession is good for the food industry. However, organic food is higher priced, so recessions are bad because while people need food to survive, they do have a choice between conventional and organic food. If organic is a lot higher priced, then it is easy to just “buy down” until times get better — which is exactly what has happened over the last year or so.

There has been a shakeout of the number of organic dairy farms that are continuing to operate.  Recently the industry got a wake-up call when there were two large back-to-back major snowstorms on the east coast of the US. People generally panicked and bought up food supplies to keep them going while being snowed in. Shelves were stripped of food, milk in particular, and all of sudden everyone began asking for more milk. Ironically, there was little to be had.  While this has been a short-term event, it’s highlighted a growing concern for a more long-term perspective.

We are now coming out of a period of over-supply, and entering into a phase of under-supply. With the mainstream consumer becoming more and more aware of the impact that food has on one’s health coupled with the general easing of the recession, I foresee the pendulum swinging back the other way soon — organic milk will be in demand and there will not be enough farms to supply it.

Filed under: Organic Dairy, Organic News on March 15th, 2010 | No Comments »

I switched out our Icelandic sheep herd last fall, in a radical attempt to reset my entire genetics with a low labor/low cost breed that would be parasite resistant in the summer and that would be hardy enough to dig through the snow in the winter and eat stockpiled grass. And, if that wasn’t enough, would also be good eating (meaning – mild tasting). Well, I think we’ve hit on the right breed. We bought a started flock of hair sheep from a grazier in southern Missouri by the name of Greg Judy (http://www.greenpasturesfarm.net/), a renowned grazier who overwinters his flocks and herds entirely on grass.

Hair sheep grazing through snow

It’s now the end of February, and I’ve fed very little hay. It’s amazing to see the sheep dig down through the snow and eat the grass. When one thinks about it, stockpiled grass (grass that was allowed to grow during the fall without cutting for hay or allowed to be grazed) is in fact “standing hay”. The idea is to have the animal go out there and harvest the feed themselves, not us humans spending a huge amount of money, time, effort and energy harvesting the hay and bringing it to the animal. Much less costly, much less effort, and the animal is healthier I believe, in the end.

Filed under: Animals, Grazing/Pasture on February 22nd, 2010 | No Comments »

Here are two current media articles where we and our farm is featured.

The article below was featured in ABC channel 7 in New York, New York.

http://www.greenrightnow.com/wabc/2009/07/17/going-organic-in-iowa-means-reclaiming-the-family-farm/

http://www.zwire.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=20294907&BRD=1140&PAG=461&dept_id=579117&rfi=8

Filed under: Media on July 21st, 2009 | No Comments »

Well, summer is here with a bang. Spring was long, cool and wet, but there was a window of opportunity in April for most of the vegetables to get planted, cover crops put in, and lambing to occur. Lambing went well for the most part. There were a few deaths due to me not being there at the right time — we had a couple of triplets that didn’t make it. Other than that, I was pretty pleased with the outcome.

This is our first year on our home pastures, and I’ve been working overtime putting in our perimter fence along with the electrical part. We use electric fencing to control our grazing, and believe it or not there is a lot of preparation and installation that goes into installing a charged fence properly. Compounding the issue has been simultaneous wet weather, lambing, planting and a host of pressing spring jobs. However, we are rotating our sheep and horses every 2 days, and it’s great to see the response of the grass to grazing pressue.

Our goal is to eventually minimize and possibly eliminate hay feeding in the winter. Right now, I would settle for extending the season in fall to late December, and starting back up in late February. I still can’t see how our sheep would bust through the ice to eat stockpiled grasses, but I could be wrong.

Lots of wet weather lately, and hay making has been an extremely difficult excercise in futility. But, all is not lost and we have much to be thankful for.

Filed under: Grazing/Pasture on June 22nd, 2009 | No Comments »

Normally we plan for the next year the year previous, optimally in November. This year, due to many changes in our operation and the economy, the planning process has extended now into February. We are in the process of several changes that will effect our operation significantly. One, we are really contemplating changing our sheep breed to a hair-type breed, so we don’t have to shear. While Marjorie is still a committed knitter and fiber enthusiast, the time that it takes to transform wool into yarn is huge, given we have 2 small children and a host of enterprises on the farm. Hair sheep don’t need to be sheared, so we would cut out that portion of the operation and concentrate on just raising sheep for meat.

Secondly, we are expanding our vegetable operation. We plan to add another acre of squash and potatoes, and are collaborating with a like-minded grower to help process/package and deliver our wares to our Iowa City markets. Thirdly, we are reconstructing our hen house to include a house movable on wheels — to allow for us to move our chickens around on pasture. Pasture-based chickens are great in helping break down manure left by other animals, and they also get a larger portion of their diet from the ground instead of eating bought feed.

These are challenging times in our economy. We feel this is the best time to be on a farm and growing our own food for our family, our friends, and our community.

Filed under: Farm Planning on February 19th, 2009 | No Comments »

Well, today marks the 1st day of December, and the first snow. Typically, farmers around here try to get the harvest end before Thanksgiving, as all bets are off once the holiday is over. This year has been no exception. I finished (finally) the perimeter fence of the 10 acre field just south of the barn in lieu of grazing my sheep and horses for the winter on Saturday around 12:30pm, and by 4 the snow was flying. Which is good — I need a break – a time to relax, reflect and plan.

This year was one of the more challenging years for a while. The winter lasted much too long (mid-April), and spring was much too wet for too long. My market garden was 3 weeks late, and the harvest showed it. I found that onions do best planted as early as possible (but not too early to be heavily frosted). Squash needs to be replanted if there is a pounding downpour that heavily crusts the soil. Oats also do much better planted in March, not April. But, I don’t want to complain — even with vegetable setbacks the forage crops this year did quite well. I was one of the lucky (blessed) ones this year as I had no hay rained on — a miracle!! I know farmers that had every single hay crop rained on. I was able to store most of my winter needs in May and June, and sold the higher quality July/August cuttings to either neighbors or at the hay auction.

Animal health was fairly consistent this year. I havent’ wormed my sheep herd for 3 years now. I feel my brood herd is fairly resistant — the ones that lived are genetically  predisposed to parasite resistance. Although it seems cruel to let sheep die (without worming them), I had to do it to get the right genetics as I want to reduce my cost and labor in my sheep herd. I do not want to mollycoddle sheep, they need to be hardy. Saving sheep that probably should die and breeding them on produces offspring that are also weak. In the wild predators fulfil this function, in dometic settings the shepherd needs to step up into this role, in my opinion.

Filed under: Farm Updates on December 1st, 2008 | No Comments »

The following is an excerpt from several sources found in various publications on the Internet. What do I think about it? More reason to know your source, buy organic (at the very least), and to evaluate with extreme skepticism any rhetoric put out by the various vested interests of the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. Read more »

Filed under: Organic News, Uncategorized on January 17th, 2008 | No Comments »