My husband and I have been "green" for many years, inspired by concerns over the earth's finite resources and the strong sense that it's the right thing to do. But we never carried the commitment as far as when we took the leap to move our home from a major metro area back to his ancestral farm in Michigan. We opened a goat dairy activity at Birchbark Farm and we love to share tips on how to enjoy goat cheese.
I've had a long career in high-tech marketing and PR, and had daily interaction with the fast pace of technology change, as well as the positive and sometimes not-so-positive impacts that technology can have on quality of life. Think of the stress that product life cycles, deadlines and market performance can have on development teams...
Without leaving my consulting role in high-tech, it became feasible for us to relocate to the country, where we built an energy-efficient house with geothermal heating and well water, we started composting, rehabilitated the depleted fields around us, and started a small goat dairy. The dairy was motivated by several factors: a love of goats, their small carbon footprint, a desire to get closer to our food sources, and an evangelistic drive to show how locally-produced goat milk and meat can improve people's health.
After much hard and rewarding work, we now have ten Swiss Alpine goats on the farm who graze on a mixture of biodynamic orchard grass, timothy, brome and birdsfoot trefoil hay pastures. When in milk, they receive a small amount of easily digested, specially-mixed non-GMO grains, sunflower seeds, kelp and molasses while on the milkstand. Their manure is composted to be spread back on the fields as well as our three vegetable and fruit gardens.
The goats also receive large quantities of squash and melon peelings and seeds, veggie trimmings, carrotand peach peels, acorns, witch-hazel branches, cattails and raspberry, blackberry and currant seeds from jam-making -- you begin to see how varied their food sources are, which lends to lovely, sweet milk and its subsequent products, the nine different artisan goat cheeses we make and age on the farm.
Our cheeses are aged in an underground cave which takes advantage of the constant temperature and humidity at 5 feet underground -- much as our ancestors in Europe did for centuries. As most people know, cheese was originally used as a way to inventory milk from the production months of the summer, to make it available as a food source during the "lean months" of winter. Because our goats are seasonal milkers (only in milk from March through September), cheese is the only product that extends the shelf life of their healthy, Omega 3-charged and highly digestible milk all year long.
We are diligent in making sure that all of the resources used in our milking and cheesemaking operation return quickly and safely to their place in the natural cycle. For example, the waste water is filtered and returned to our watershed, which drains into natural springs close to the dairy. Whey from the cheesemaking is collected and taken to a farm close by, for use as chicken and pig feed. We use as few harsh synthetic chemicals as possible in the cleaning and maintenance of the pens, facilities and equipment, as we are very conscious of what goes back into the waste stream and the ground.
I've been a city girl all my life, but my husband grew up on a cow dairy farm, long before the days of feedlot operations so common today -- his parents pastured all of their animals, so we have built on his foundation of good animal husbandry and unknowingly followed the "new traditions" recommended by environmental activist and successful farming innovator Joel Salatin.
It involves soil conservation, healthy pasturing, dedication to animal health with minimal drugs, a non-industrial approach to food production, and in general, keeping our animals and ourselves as happy and satisfied as we can. It has also led us to pursue a somewhat slower, more handmade lifestyle, matching our rhythms more closely to nature than to technology and working with the cycles of the weather and the seasons instead of solely human-imposed deadlines.
We have encouraged other farmers and animal-keepers in the area to consider the ideas promulgated by Salatin and leaders in the Slow Food USA movement, and together with our county's major organic vegetable CSA, we are promoting Meatless Mondays, heritage vegetable farming and keeping food production and consumption local, real and fresh.
Farming can indeed be a nature-conserving activity, if done with conscious concern for resources. Working with nature, instead of against it, is the wisest approach over the long term. We strongly believe that you can work within the 360-degree cycle of grass to milk to manure to grass and make the most of healthy, green dairying.
Jill Budzynski and her husband George operate the Birchbark Farm in Fountain, Michigan. Jill is known in the high-tech community as she led the product launch and public relation campaigns of many start-ups as Principal at Market Ready.
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