(that’s us!) Champlain Valley Business Journal Article, April 2011

PROVIDED Evan Reiss and Lindsay Harris of Family Cow Farmstand in Hinesburg own two of the growing number of micro-dairies appearing throughout Vermont that provide raw milk for customers.

As the milk churns

Micro-dairies bemoan ban on raw milk sales in stores

By RACHEL CREE SHERMAN

This spring, as lambs once again graze upon Vermont’s meadows, there is a new breed of farm expanding in their midst. It is the micro-dairy, and it is proliferating at an encouraging rate throughout Vermont.

These farms are carrying on the work of the larger farms which have dotted Vermont’s hills and valleys since its inception, but are now greatly depleted due to the overwhelming cost of doing business. These smaller dairies are the passion of those who, like their predecessors, are dedicated to providing the best in sustenance for their families and customers while caring for their animals and for the land itself.

Vermont’s new farmers are going back to what once were basic, natural ways of producing food, yet in safer, cleaner, more secure settings provided by ever-growing technologies.

Family Cow Farmstand on Shelburne Falls Road in Hinesburg is a raw (unpasteurized)-milk micro-dairy, the first state-certified raw-milk dairy in Vermont, according to co-owner Lindsay Harris.

Harris was a field biologist and wetlands ecologist for the State of Vermont when she and her husband, Evan Reiss, who has a degree in ecological agriculture from the University of Vermont, decided to farm full-time three years ago. Though she was born in New Jersey, her grandparents lived in Vermont.

“I was born to farm,” she said. Her husband, also “a born farmer,” she said, grew up in Hines-burg. Their first child is due in May.

The Harrises have 17 Jersey and Guernsey cows and young livestock, breeds known for their high protein and butter fat. They milk six of them.

“Why raw milk?” said Harris. “Because it’s better tasting: rich, yet not heavy, a healthy whole food with amazing flavor.” When the milk is pasteurized, she said, the natural enzymes and probiotics that aid in digestion are destroyed.

The cows are grass-fed and the Harrises sell directly to their customers, as state law prevents the sale of raw milk in stores. The Vermont Health Department contends that is for safety reasons, because raw milk could potentially contain harmful bacteria, including salmonella and E. coli.

Though recent legislation has loosened regulations somewhat in Vermont, farmers still cannot skim the milk to make cream and butter for sale purposes.

Explaining the difference between the dietetic approach of small farms versus that of corporate farms, Harris said, “A cow is born to eat grass. Her digestive system is set up that way and, as a result, the pH in her stomach is in balance. When she has a healthy pH, her rumen is supporting a whole community of beneficial organisms that help her digest her food.

“But, when a cow is fed grain and concentrated feeds, which is what commercial cows are fed almost exclusively, they [cannot digest it]; they get a condition called acidosis and become susceptible to pathogenic bacteria such as E. coli. Those nasty bacteria don’t have any competition; the beneficial bacteria are very reduced, out of balance, and the cows can get sick.”

“The industry standard is that it’s okay to put diseased milk into the system because you’re just going to pasteurize it. It’s more about money than it is about health.

“When you have healthy cows and a clean farm, there’s no reason to pasteurize,” she said.

Other farmers who provide raw milk for a living are in resounding agreement. Doug Flack of Flack Family Farm on Pumpkin Hill Road in Enosburg has a friend in California who milks 330 cows, all on pasture land, producing raw butter, raw milk, raw cream, kefir, raw yogurt and cheeses sold in 350 retail stores.

In Maine, Flack said, numerous raw-milk dairies have been selling their products to stores for at least 10 years.

“Anyone who has drank raw milk from good, clean, healthy herds can testify to its benefits,” said Sara Armstrong Donegan of Trillium Hill Farm on Route 116 in Hinesburg village.

The industry has taken away so much control from farmers that it forces them to compete in a market where they’re losing money, Harris said. This isn’t true for smaller dairies.

“That’s why we love to do what we do,” she said. “We can produce an extremely high-quality product and have control over our pricing. Last year, our vet bills for two little kittens were three times as much as for our entire herd. We feed grass, and the grass makes healthy milk, safe milk, and it takes care of the cows: it’s a beautiful, efficient system.”

Though regulatory hoops can be challenging, Harris said, the new laws allow farmers to sell up to 40 gallons of raw milk per day. “It’s exciting,” she said.

Harris and Flack both serve on the board of Rural Vermont, a statewide grassroots organization dedicated to building a prosperous rural life. “There are very unfortunate limitations in the new bill which are hard to work around, and we’re working on getting some of those changed,” she said.

Farmers recognize the fact that raw milk has had an unfortunate reputation in the past, Harris said. “But nowadays, when we know how to care for cows, can vaccinate against infectious diseases, we have advances in sanitation and know how to keep our equipment clean, the data just don’t support that.”

Armstrong Donegan and her husband, James Donegan, raise goats.

“They’re really wonderful creatures,” she said. “We’ve both lived with digestive problems, and have found relief and renewal from drinking the fresh milk that our goats produce.”

The Donegans are currently focusing on their Community Supported Agriculture sales to about 25 families. They also sell milk to Beth Sengle, a caterer at NRG, and to the Farmhouse Tap and Grill in Burlington. They milk nine goats, grow vegetables and raise pastured laying hens.

When it became legal to advertise, they did so and their customer base has grown accordingly. Like the Harrises, the Donegans foster an ideal environment for their goats in terms of diet and housing, using foods and herbs that support their immune systems.

“Pasteurization is cooking milk and just like when you cook any food, you lose some of the nutritional value of the food,” Armstrong Donegan said. At Flack Family Farm, workers are immersed in biodynamic farming and educate the public through farm visits, seminars and even plays. Flack has a Doctor of Philosophy in ecology, zoology and botany, and has a vast knowledge of grass farming.

The farm herd is comprised of 15 mature cows as well as young stock, bulls and beef animals. Flack milks between four and six cows for the micro-dairy, providing raw milk to some 20 families in the area.

Natural minerals and planned grazing for their American Milking Devon cattle, Flack said, rejuvenate the soil, sequester carbon, and yield nutrient-dense foods and medicines in what they produce. This includes dairy products inclusive of raw milk, grass-fed beef and pork, eggs, fermented vegetables and herbal tinctures.

Flack said he is frustrated with the “situation that Vermont has gotten itself into, where we’ve been trying to compete on a national scale for commodity milk and we’ve lost too many family farms.”

“We’ve sent off the land a population roughly equal to the size of Burlington since the early ’70s. These are special people with diverse skills; [professionals] who are highly motivated and work without complaining for hours on end . . . we’ve been very slow as a state to wake up to the devastation this has created to rural Vermont.”

The potential for producing nutrient-dense food here in Vermont, Flack said, includes those foods “grown outdoors from animals that are [pastured], all raised in the sunlight. Right on the top of the list is raw dairy.”

“The best medical practitioners of the mid-20th century [at] big clinics such as Yale, Mayo and Johns Hopkins were aware that certified raw milk was one of their most effective tools for not only producing healthy people, but for healing serious illness,” Flack said. “This is fully documented in the scientific literature. There’s a whole literature on the subject.

“Roughly 300 organic dairy farms are shipping commodity organic milk to competing companies, but there’s a long way to go before they receive parity,” he said.

Citing the “powerful new interest” in small dairies and in farming generally that is now being realized, Flack said, “There’s this fabulous collection of people in Vermont now who are rebuilding the farmscape.

“Here we have this demand and hundreds of small farmers starting to take on family cows and wanting to have raw-milk dairies and not necessarily small dairies . . . it could move so quickly and heal so many people if we created the proper environment, which includes education for consumers, for legislators and other leaders. It needs some serious education for the so-called food experts and the medical establishment; educational opportunities for farmers who are interested.”

“It’s sad,” Harris said. “We make butter and cheese, and we really enjoy a wonderful bounty from the farm. We’re working to get [the laws] changed so that our customers can enjoy those products, too, but right now the law forbids it.”

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