Recollections from the Milk Maid
If you would have told me in my Freshman year of college that I would own my own milk business as a Junior, I would have said “Hey, anything’s possible.” I’ve really learned how true that statement is with the range of opportunities that bump into you as life flows by.
There were three things I was certain of sophomore year: 1: I hated living in college dormitories, 2: Working on the college farm kept me in a healthy routine, and 3: I loved being awake to see the sunrise over the hills. You could throw all those sunsets to the hopeless romantics that cherish the evenings for all I cared – morning beauty was all I wanted to see.
When my friend, Teep, told me about an educational opportunity at Morningside Stable over in Wells (8 miles down route 30S) I said, “tell me more.” It was the start of a beautiful relationship between the Larson family and myself. The most prominent part of the Larson’s existence is their “win-win” mantra. Basically, any relationship they have with other people needs to be beneficial for both sides - a symbiosis (for those ecology buffs). Cynthia and Rich are the parents and educators to their eight wonderful children. The family had experienced different farming systems from commercial scale dairy (milking over 90 Holsteins on silage-based diets) back in the 90’s, to grass-fed Black Angus beef, (their specialty) these days. Cynthia’s venture in 2006 was restoring a community around food and getting into the “localvore” movement. She was going to start with small-scale, high quality, affordable milk. She had one obstacle – she needed a person to take on the project, and she needed to create a win-win relationship with that person.
Today, I would say our relationship is above and beyond what we had ever hoped it would be. Learning about sustainable agriculture at college was fantastic – but do Vermont farmers really believe in quality and community over high yields? Cynthia and Rich devote all their spare time to learning about the newest innovations of carbon sequestration in sod (hence environmentally friendly animal products) and nutritional benefits from grass fed meat, dairy, and eggs. Animals that can live purely on the pasture polyculture are supporting an intricate ecosystem that is unable to be used by humans as a food source. Grass-fed animal products have also been proven to contain balanced and healthy essential nutrients. Rich and Cynthia also asked me to help them form an education relationship with Green Mountain College, and now they have had students visit their farm for workshops from courses like Food Preservation and Society, Fundamentals of Organic Agriculture, and an intensive marketing class. Those farmers put all sorts of crazy ideas in my head while I was away from campus! (To top it off – there are more of them – all over Vermont!)
The learning didn’t stop there. After a few visits, I thought I might as well make the whole experience really beneficial and take advantage of this educational opportunity. What did I do? I designed my own class and called it The Pastured Dairy Cow. It worked as an upper level distribution course for my ENV concentration and it totaled 4 credits! I went with Cynthia on NOFA-VT (Northeast Organic Farmers Association) sponsored pasture walks (which are pretty cheap for GMC college students because we are members!). These pasture walks are held by professionals at different farms in Vermont. I learned about transitions from conventional to organic dairy farms and about pasture management for dairy animals. Did you know that you have to manage pasture for dairy differently than you have to for beef?? I learned so many cool things!
Have you ever started your own business? How would you like to get paid an average of $2 every day to spend two hours hand-milking cows and washing equipment? Would you try to find more customers? Yeah, I had the incentive. Every day, when I finished cleaning up, I would think to myself: Vermont law allows me to sell 25 quarts of milk a day. That is 6.25 gallons. If I sold 6 gallons every day at $5 per gallon the total amount would be $210 per week, or an average of $30 per two hours each day! Now that’s pretty good. Except… Rich and I figured out that it costs about $6.05 to care for a cow each day (that includes feed, vet, and utilities). It also cost about $1.16 a day to own a cow – that’s the cost spread out over her productive life (we buy old cows, so hope for about three years). Now, that profit margin goes down. Cynthia and I worked out a win-win deal though. Instead of me buying the cows and paying for their food, I rented them and their food for 40% of the milk money. So let me try to explain what a fantastic opportunity this was for Cynthia and I. Cynthia wanted someone to expand a local market that wants affordable, healthful, grass-fed milk and create a community around that idea. She gets the person to do all the labor, run a business, bring the customers/community members to her front door-step and she gets 40% of the milk money! But wait, there’s more! Erika gets the educational experience of starting her own farm business without taking the risk of owning the cows and land and learns from a top-notch dairy-team about the ins and outs of dairy cows while receiving 60% of the milk profits! Also this partnership makes both Erika and Cynthia want to get more milk customers because Cynthia finds her community and Erika (a “starving college student”) gets money for gas to get back and forth to school.
The benefits don’t end at community, carbon sequestration, and money. The Larson family and I have use of all milk and cream that does not get sold. That means old milk can feed the pig, new milk can make pies, soup, bread, cheese, yogurt and other cultures, and be consumed as is. My favorite thing to make is cultured butter!
There’s something very different about how a cow thinks in comparison to any other animal. When you gather up the cows to milk in the morning you are almost performing a dance. The two partners (driver and cow) have to know exactly what the other expects for it to look good and flow well. It took me one week to learn how to milk a cow with my right hand. It took me two weeks to learn how to milk a cow with my left hand. It took me three weeks to learn how to coordinate milking with both my hands. It took me four months to learn how to coordinated that “perfect dance” with my Jersey girls. There’s something about those big brown eyes and those fuzzy ears that I can’t resist now. When I drive through Vermont and New Hampshire and see those wide open spaces filled with dairy cows, I run down the farming systems in my head. I think about what kind of milking parlor they have, whether they use rotational grazing or not, and what feeding ratios they use concerning silage to soybeans to hay. I had a whole new world open up to me.
Have you ever hand milked a cow? It’s relaxing and gives me a time in my day to contemplate life – and someone who will listen to me do it! Sometimes, I sing in the barn, early in the morning. Sometimes I think about the most beautiful things in life and sometimes I think about the ugliest. There’s one thing that happens no matter what, when I’m about halfway done milking. I look up through the big picture window in the end of the barn (right above my “milking station”) and see the morning light begin to trickle in over the mountains.
Why am I telling you all this? I have two messages for you.
Get out there and experience it! You may never get the chance to figure out what works for you if you don’t take the initiative to find out.
2. I’m a senior!…which means I am leaving the Larsons this May. They need a new intern and would love to work with you.
(Since last year Vermont State decided that small raw milk producers should be able to sell 50 quarts or 12.5 gallons per day and Erika found more customers and is no longer a “starving college student”).
Please direct questions and comments to Erika at krausse@greenmtn.edu
If you would have told me in my Freshman year of college that I would own my own milk business as a Junior, I would have said “Hey, anything’s possible.” I’ve really learned how true that statement is with the range of opportunities that bump into you as life flows by.
There were three things I was certain of sophomore year: 1: I hated living in college dormitories, 2: Working on the college farm kept me in a healthy routine, and 3: I loved being awake to see the sunrise over the hills. You could throw all those sunsets to the hopeless romantics that cherish the evenings for all I cared – morning beauty was all I wanted to see.
When my friend, Teep, told me about an educational opportunity at Morningside Stable over in Wells (8 miles down route 30S) I said, “tell me more.” It was the start of a beautiful relationship between the Larson family and myself. The most prominent part of the Larson’s existence is their “win-win” mantra. Basically, any relationship they have with other people needs to be beneficial for both sides - a symbiosis (for those ecology buffs). Cynthia and Rich are the parents and educators to their eight wonderful children. The family had experienced different farming systems from commercial scale dairy (milking over 90 Holsteins on silage-based diets) back in the 90’s, to grass-fed Black Angus beef, (their specialty) these days. Cynthia’s venture in 2006 was restoring a community around food and getting into the “localvore” movement. She was going to start with small-scale, high quality, affordable milk. She had one obstacle – she needed a person to take on the project, and she needed to create a win-win relationship with that person.
Today, I would say our relationship is above and beyond what we had ever hoped it would be. Learning about sustainable agriculture at college was fantastic – but do Vermont farmers really believe in quality and community over high yields? Cynthia and Rich devote all their spare time to learning about the newest innovations of carbon sequestration in sod (hence environmentally friendly animal products) and nutritional benefits from grass fed meat, dairy, and eggs. Animals that can live purely on the pasture polyculture are supporting an intricate ecosystem that is unable to be used by humans as a food source. Grass-fed animal products have also been proven to contain balanced and healthy essential nutrients. Rich and Cynthia also asked me to help them form an education relationship with Green Mountain College, and now they have had students visit their farm for workshops from courses like Food Preservation and Society, Fundamentals of Organic Agriculture, and an intensive marketing class. Those farmers put all sorts of crazy ideas in my head while I was away from campus! (To top it off – there are more of them – all over Vermont!)
The learning didn’t stop there. After a few visits, I thought I might as well make the whole experience really beneficial and take advantage of this educational opportunity. What did I do? I designed my own class and called it The Pastured Dairy Cow. It worked as an upper level distribution course for my ENV concentration and it totaled 4 credits! I went with Cynthia on NOFA-VT (Northeast Organic Farmers Association) sponsored pasture walks (which are pretty cheap for GMC college students because we are members!). These pasture walks are held by professionals at different farms in Vermont. I learned about transitions from conventional to organic dairy farms and about pasture management for dairy animals. Did you know that you have to manage pasture for dairy differently than you have to for beef?? I learned so many cool things!
Have you ever started your own business? How would you like to get paid an average of $2 every day to spend two hours hand-milking cows and washing equipment? Would you try to find more customers? Yeah, I had the incentive. Every day, when I finished cleaning up, I would think to myself: Vermont law allows me to sell 25 quarts of milk a day. That is 6.25 gallons. If I sold 6 gallons every day at $5 per gallon the total amount would be $210 per week, or an average of $30 per two hours each day! Now that’s pretty good. Except… Rich and I figured out that it costs about $6.05 to care for a cow each day (that includes feed, vet, and utilities). It also cost about $1.16 a day to own a cow – that’s the cost spread out over her productive life (we buy old cows, so hope for about three years). Now, that profit margin goes down. Cynthia and I worked out a win-win deal though. Instead of me buying the cows and paying for their food, I rented them and their food for 40% of the milk money. So let me try to explain what a fantastic opportunity this was for Cynthia and I. Cynthia wanted someone to expand a local market that wants affordable, healthful, grass-fed milk and create a community around that idea. She gets the person to do all the labor, run a business, bring the customers/community members to her front door-step and she gets 40% of the milk money! But wait, there’s more! Erika gets the educational experience of starting her own farm business without taking the risk of owning the cows and land and learns from a top-notch dairy-team about the ins and outs of dairy cows while receiving 60% of the milk profits! Also this partnership makes both Erika and Cynthia want to get more milk customers because Cynthia finds her community and Erika (a “starving college student”) gets money for gas to get back and forth to school.
The benefits don’t end at community, carbon sequestration, and money. The Larson family and I have use of all milk and cream that does not get sold. That means old milk can feed the pig, new milk can make pies, soup, bread, cheese, yogurt and other cultures, and be consumed as is. My favorite thing to make is cultured butter!
There’s something very different about how a cow thinks in comparison to any other animal. When you gather up the cows to milk in the morning you are almost performing a dance. The two partners (driver and cow) have to know exactly what the other expects for it to look good and flow well. It took me one week to learn how to milk a cow with my right hand. It took me two weeks to learn how to milk a cow with my left hand. It took me three weeks to learn how to coordinate milking with both my hands. It took me four months to learn how to coordinated that “perfect dance” with my Jersey girls. There’s something about those big brown eyes and those fuzzy ears that I can’t resist now. When I drive through Vermont and New Hampshire and see those wide open spaces filled with dairy cows, I run down the farming systems in my head. I think about what kind of milking parlor they have, whether they use rotational grazing or not, and what feeding ratios they use concerning silage to soybeans to hay. I had a whole new world open up to me.
Have you ever hand milked a cow? It’s relaxing and gives me a time in my day to contemplate life – and someone who will listen to me do it! Sometimes, I sing in the barn, early in the morning. Sometimes I think about the most beautiful things in life and sometimes I think about the ugliest. There’s one thing that happens no matter what, when I’m about halfway done milking. I look up through the big picture window in the end of the barn (right above my “milking station”) and see the morning light begin to trickle in over the mountains.
Why am I telling you all this? I have two messages for you.
Get out there and experience it! You may never get the chance to figure out what works for you if you don’t take the initiative to find out.
2. I’m a senior!…which means I am leaving the Larsons this May. They need a new intern and would love to work with you.
(Since last year Vermont State decided that small raw milk producers should be able to sell 50 quarts or 12.5 gallons per day and Erika found more customers and is no longer a “starving college student”).
Please direct questions and comments to Erika at krausse@greenmtn.edu
