Farmers forget that most consumers are three or four generations away from the farm. When I was a kid, 70 years ago, everybody knew a brother, uncle, or grandfather who lived on a farm. Seventy years ago, 90 per cent of our farming community lived on or worked on a farm. Everybody understood what farming was all about. There used to be 600 dairy farms in our community. Today there are only 14.
My grandfather and grandmother milked 20 dairy cows by hand on our farm, separated and bottled the milk and, after breakfast, Grandpa delivered milk in reusable glass bottles, using a horse drawn milk wagon in our little town. For years after that, our dairy farm has hosted elementary school kids at our farm and explained how we feed the animals, milk them, and clean out the barn before bedding all the stalls with fresh smelling straw or shavings. As we’ve progressed from one new barn to another new barn, we still host school kids, but now the teachers don’t know any more than their students do.
We now milk 160 cows instead of 20 cows. When our son had to help one cow deliver her calf while 100 students and teachers watched, the students showed concern for both the cow and her new calf when our son had to “turn the calf” and straighten one leg before the cow could deliver the calf. Neither the students nor the teachers had ever witnessed a birth of any animal or child before. Scott (our son) explained every part of the delivery. They were amazed when the five-minute-old calf stood up and suckled her mom.
Our farm has hosted an open house several times, when hundreds of visitors come and go all day. Nine years ago, Scott and his wife Jennifer planted a five-acre vineyard and built a winery-restaurant-music event building, and sell about 12,000 bottles of wine per year. Last year when we hosted the open house, we thought that everyone would want to visit the vineyard-winery, see how wine was made and sample the wine and specialty cheeses. We were surprised when everyone was more interested in how the cattle were looked after.
Cows walk on a rubber covered floor because it’s easier on their feet and legs. An automatic cow brush is available for the cows 24/7. The barn floors are washed out with water three or four times each day. Each cow has their own rubber filled mattress to sleep on. Their rumination, temperature, activity, milk production, and distress level are monitored 24/7. Every medical event date, calving, breeding, and when and why moved or was sold is recorded on computer and stored for generations.
For an open house, we also have charts posted in every corner and several employees explaining feed contents, milk quality record, milk temperature recorded 24/7. All corn silage, haylage, dry hay, and straw is grown on the farm. All rations are calculated on computers to meet the needs of each cow group. Group rations are transferred to the feed mixer truck wirelessly as the truck passes the barn office. Most years, there is more corn than we need for silage and the extra acres are combined for grain corn.
Those at the open house then got the guided winery tour where wine was made, tested for alcohol, sugar, tasted, bottled, labeled and aged. Each batch has a sample sent to a Quebec government lab for testing before it can be sold. They find out the different kinds of grapes planted, where these northern grapes were bred, etc.. As they tasted different wines and specialty cheeses they were treated to music and songs by some local artists. The yard is open to campers, for a night or a week, who come and go and do some word-of-mouth advertising. In grape picking season, there are many local and visiting friends who come to help harvest grapes.
Our farm also has a few sugar-maples that are tapped by neighbours who bring us back a little syrup.
Our farm-winery employs six people full-time, a couple part-time for the summer grape season, and about ten part-time student employees, mostly for milking the cows.
Some years the winery produces twice as much wine as we need, but some years a late spring frost can cut production by 90 per cent (wine ages well). The dairy farm is very consistent in both production and crop growth. All milk is marketed by our Canadian milk board and volume controlled with a milk quota. If very good wine is produced, there is always a market.
Excellent food and performers keep the winery-restaurant-entertainment nights sold out. Psychology is very important to keeping family, employees, and patron-buyers happy! Remember that all farmers are consumers too.
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations.
