[Homestead] Small dairy farmer

Tvoivozhd tvoivozd at infionline.net
Sat Oct 2 23:24:06 EDT 2004


clhw wrote:

>A friend of ours has been doing this type of dairy farming since not long
>after we sold our dairy herd in 1985. He rotates pastures, feeds no
>commercial grains, does not use pesticides, herbicides, growth stimulants,
>milk stimulating hormones, and almost no medications. He has opened, with
>his family and neighbors, a small store in which he sells his milk, fresh
>veggies, has a pick-it-yourself set up for several fruits and veggies
>(right now he is establishing a grape arbor). They also sell cheese, fresh
>eggs, and several canned foods which he purchases (mostly from Amish in
>Ohio). He maintains, as required in South Carolina, a Grade A dairy and the
>only treatment done to their fresh milk and buttermilk is to pasteurize it.
>The milk is not homogenized.
>  
>

tvoivozhd---producer to consumer is where it's at.  The best format for 
selling a limited dairy-based menu I ever saw was in Miami in the 
1950-s,---called "Farm Stores"---a one-way drive-in one side, circle a 
small hut and drive-out the other side, on a narrow, not very  long lot, 
ingress and egress  away from a corner (cheaper land) on a major 
commercial street.
A very limited and fast-moving menu, milk, eggs, ice cream and bread, 
two-persons taking orders over a microphone, and dispensing orders, 
taking cash. Some ceiling high refrigeration racks, refilled from 
outside. Good lighting inside and out, and not really big enough to 
invite robbers---all bills went immediately into a ground-level safe 
inaccessible to store employees.
They ate the supermarkets alive.  One of them bought the Farm Store 
chain and closed them all down to eliminate better-format competition.  
Hated to see them go, and back to the supermarket to the parking lot and 
slog through the building to dairy case, slog back through a crowded 
cashier line, and slog back to the car in the parking lot.

>He told me last month, that he only has a couple of cases of mastitis a
>year, has only had one case of milk fever (low calcium) in 18 months, and
>has only had one still birth in 3 years. In other words, without pushing
>the high protein to produce high amounts of milk, his Holstein cows (and a
>couple of Brown Swiss) remain healthy. He feeds roughage cut on his place
>and which neighbors also cut and sell to him. I'm not sure but I believe he
>has about 60 head in his milk line.
>
>If we were to get back into the dairy business, I'd certainly want to
>emulate what Tom Trantham has done. His dairy: The Happy Cow. A thriving
>small business which employs the family, 3 generations of them, and the
>community.
>Lynn
>  
>

tvoivozhd---well, I liked many aspects of the dairy farm busiess, 
especially the bi-weekly paycheck.  Were I to do it today, my milk 
parlor would be mobile and out in successive pastures, and I would use 
stockpiled pasture, damn little hay.  In
Virginia, where the weather is almost totally unpredictable and no dry 
periods between rain, I would go to green-chop and bag it.  Cows like 
hay, but like green-chop better, if the chop is between four and six 
inches long---can't make it shorter, they can't digest it.

By the way, my youngest daughter just rented a two-bedroom town-house 
apartment in North Wales, Pennsylvania.  A temporary, one-year 
springboard into Philadelphia and New York theatre business. Bucks 
County was too-expensive, the townhouses have a straight road, a few 
miles to theatre tryouts and there's twelve or so colleges in easy 
driving distance.  As the first resident in the town-house complex, she 
got a price break, and free use of things subsequent tenants will have 
to pay extra for, for example a lavish, fully-equipped physical therapy 
department to take off weight (90-day project), improve muscle 
tone---trainers and masseurs wandering about and all that sort of 
thing..Once ensconced again as a Broadway Player (no longer ingenue) and as
Associate Prof at one or more colleges, she may stray farther south to 
pick up a dead dairy farm and operate from there.(a dairy farm with a 
big spring and pondsites, that is).  I used to know a lot of them 
farther west in the Lancaster area.  Her oldest boy is with her, and is 
looking around for a college offering a Masters  in Sports Management, 
volleyball-related.  He coached a couple off-the-street teams to third 
place in some kind of volleyball Olympics, and is well-regarded in 
professional volleyball circles on both coasts. Not what I would do, but 
people should do what they like, if they can.

>  
>
>>tvoivozhd---Small dairy farming, especially small, seasonal dairy
>>farming with stockpiled forage accumulating from mid-August forward, can
>>make good money---if spring and summer grazing practices add more than
>>usual to the bottom line.
>>    
>>
>
>  
>
>>This fall, ARS soil scientist Lloyd B. Owens and colleagues at Coshocton
>>are using simple electric fences to create small paddocks to rotate
>>cattle from one part of a pasture to another every day or two. They are
>>testing a system called management-intensive, or rotational, dairy grazing.
>>    
>>
>
>  
>





More information about the Homestead mailing list