From Dairy to Diversified

In June of 2023, our 43 year run as a dairy farm came to a close, and we embarked on a journey to become a direct-to-consumer diversified farm. While Nick and I had been talking about moving away from dairying for a while, we had hoped to milk cows until 2025 while we laid the groundwork for new farm enterprises. The intention was to have these new enterprises cash flowing BEFORE the dairy cows were gone in order to make a seamless financial transition away from regular milk checks, without having to take off-farm jobs. Well, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and in the Summer of 2023, we were faced with the decision of either putting thousands of dollars into replacing two pieces of milking equipment that had bitten the dust, or just acknowledging that perhaps the universe had decided for us that the end of our dairying careers was upon us. Add to that, a job opportunity for Nick, RIGHT IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD, that incorporated both his knowledge of dairy farms as well as his engineering experience in the energy sector. Since dairy cows can’t exactly hold their milk for a week or two while decisions are mulled over, swift action had to be taken… Nick begrudgingly applied for the off-farm job, and over half of our dairy herd left the farm the next day. As much as I may have complained over the years about the relentless life of dairy farming, I also took great joy in the role of caretaker for those cows that often felt like family members. Spending multiple hours each day with dairy cows made it very easy to recognize and appreciate the personalities that each of them brought to the barn and my life. After a whirlwind day of loading cattle and watching trailers leave, I felt a weird mix of relief, guilt from abandoning my cows, and profound loss for them as well as my identity as a farmer. After years of milking cows every single day, and after a lifetime of only knowing this farm as a dairy farm, it was so hard to wrap my head around who I was in that moment and what I was supposed to focus on. But once the grief subsided and acceptance of change set in, Nick and I had a good idea of how to get to work… as I said, we’d been talking about different farm ideas for years, and we knew that dairy farming wasn’t what we wanted to do forever. Not only is dairy farming a relentless, 24/7 way of life, but it is also very difficult these days to run a profitable dairy if your intention is to keep a small herd size in order to not become a manager of people rather than cows. We were both more excited about the idea of managing a small farm that produces a diverse array of nutrient dense foods that we could sell directly to consumers, rather than a farm that just focused on one or two products that were sold at a commodity scale. Since we were already rotationally grazing our dairy cows and raising many of our calves in the “Madre Method,” where the cows raise their calves, it was easy for us to set our sights on transitioning to a Cow/Calf organic grassfed beef operation. To complement our direct-to-consumer pastured meat offerings, we thought we’d also try raising some sheep, as well as continuing to raise pastured pork. During the pandemic, we felt it would be wise to also put a focus on growing immune boosting crops. So, we planted an acre of elderberries and recently started making and bottling our own elderberry syrup. Another medicinal crop that we use daily in our cooking and wished to grow on a larger scale was garlic. We just finished our first year growing a quarter acre of it, hoping to save enough seed to get up to growing an acre in the next few years. There are many reasons why we landed on these particular crops and animal management styles, which I will discuss in more detail in future posts, but the main idea was farming with a focus on healing. Healing our bodies with natural products & nutrient dense foods, Healing the land through organic & regenerative practices, and healing rural communities by proving that small family farms can still be viable and important drivers of local economies.

Please stay tuned if you are curious about the health benefits of elderberry, garlic, pastured beef, pork, & lamb, or the use of natural soaps… or just stop out at our farm store to check out the animals & pick our brains, we always welcome conversations about sustainable farming!

“There’s nothing more beautiful than cows out grazing on green grass.”  - Grandpa Vernon