Life on an organic farm is...so educational!

Yesterday evening, after we finished up picking beans, which are coming in leaps and bounds, and very tempting to just keep muchin’ on while walking hunched over down the row... :) Ellyn, Eric and I headed down the road to an organic dairy farm. Since we don’t get to experience that aspect of farming, we thought we’d visit Highgate’s very own, and winner of Sustainable Farmer of the Year for the state of Vermont, Guy Choiniere. An enthusiast about his farming to say the least, Guy greeted us with a smile, as he whipped off his hands on his already dirty clothes, and cleaned off his old school, Ben Folds glasses on his shirt. We followed him into the barn, where he and his father were just about to finish up with the evening milking. He said to take no offense, but our beef cows at Maplewood have nothing on his dairy cows. They work harder he said, dairy cows are like Olympic athletes, and need to be treated like them. Taking a mile a minute, about everything from his cows to the soil, he walked with us all around the farm and property. “Sorry, us organic farmers have a lot to say!” He said, as he could probably see it in our faces that our minds were trying to absorb each and every fact he told us.

Guy's farm houses 65 dairy cows, which each eat 70 to 80 pounds of feed a day, and drink at least 50 gallons of water a day, if I’m remembering correctly. The more grass they eat the better; it’s better for the cow, and saves him on grain, which used to cost him $100,000 a year before he switched to organic. “It all starts with the soil.” Guy relayed to us many times. All life comes from the soil, so it’s crucial that it holds the right balance of nutrients and minerals, “Calcium is the King!” he’d say. If you have good soil, all else will come into its place. Visiting Guy’s farm just reiterated to me that the way we live, with the food we eat, how we treat our land, is really just a continuing cycle; where every action has a consequence, and everything relates to everything else. Pumping your land with fertilizer isn’t allowing all the cycles and systems that occur underground to properly carry out, which is going to show in what grows from that soil, and the food it eventually creates.

An Olympic trainer, a nutritionist, day-care specialist, (all relating to his cows of course), Guy does it all and knows it all. He can tell how well a cow’s body is digesting her food by looking at her manure, and told us this as a big sloppy cow pie exited the back end of a lovely lady, splashing on the barn floor and partially landing on my left leg and hand. It’s been a learning experience for him, as he learned to combined farming practices of his grandfather, whose cows lived a long life, but didn’t produce a lot of milk, and his father, who could produce a lot of milk, but couldn’t keep a cow long. From what I could tell, he’s now got the best of both worlds. The average dairy cow in America milks for 3 and a half years, Guy’s cows milking averages 8 years.

We walked the farm road through the pastures that his cows travel, in through an overflowing creek, under a slippery manure soaked tunnel, and I was super smart and wore my flip flops…. We even got the pleasure of going into the covered barn yard, were his girls go in the winter, in which we stood on 6 feet of manure! The manure in there is brought out to the fields in October; he said he’s noticed a huge difference in the yield of his grass when he switched from conventional. He taught us so much, all extremely interesting, that I wish I could relay it all back! It’s so critical for farmers to understand the science behind their fields, and under their soil, and the needs of their animals. The greater knowledge shows through with results of more efficient production and healthier animals. I asked him when his last day off was, and he just laughed. “Ya never get a day off! You’ve got to love it, and I do!”

I meant to go back this evening to take pictures of the dairy farmer in action, but after putting up more hay, taking a “family” outing to Lake Carmi for a swim, then creemees :)... I didn’t get around to it! But look for pictures soon, as I’ll return to Choiniere’s Dairy, and this time know to wear my boots. :)

Check out an NYT article about Guy and his work with eliminating the methane release from his cows!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/us/05cows.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1