Today I'm talking with Tammy at Davis Farm. You can also follow on Facebook. If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee - https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Tammy at Davis Farm. Good afternoon, Tammy, how are you? I'm well, thank you. How about you? I'm good. It's a beautiful day in Minnesota. Is it lovely in Vermont? Oh my goodness, yes. It's absolutely amazing. 00:29 Finally, we've had this ridiculous humidity that just we're not used to. So today is a glorious, you know, they call it a bluebird day. It's just blue skies and green, green pastures and cool weather. It's a bluebird day here too, but it's muggy as hell. So I'm so, you know what? My heart goes out to you because I thought I was going to die last week and the week before. Yeah. At least it's not raining. 00:59 I have talked about this a lot. It's rained a lot in Minnesota this spring, so we're really happy to have some sun. Yeah, we've had a lot of rain. We had an incredible amount of flooding again, which we've had this 100-year flood now, literally on the same day, two years apart. That's not 100 years. Indeed. Indeed. All right, Tammy, tell me what you guys do at Davis Farm. Yeah, well, we're a dairy farm. So we... 01:29 We're milking probably about 70 cows now. We used to be a conventional dairy farm. We shipped to DFA for decades. And then in 2016, we made the decision to go organic. And then in 2000, shortly thereafter, I don't know, 18, 19, we decided to go grass fed. So we stopped feeding grain. 01:57 and we're fully organic now. Very nice. I have to ask, is that an expensive proposition because I keep hearing that going organic, anything costs a lot of money to get certified. Yeah, that's a great question. For us, it was not too much of a transition. The grain situation was kind of brutal because you have for the first year, 02:24 For us, we had to buy organic grain but still ship at conventional prices. They did give you, I think, like $3 per hundred wheat to help with the grain transition. But other than that, that was a little bit tough. But all of our land and most of our practices have always been organic anyway. We've always been a pasture-based farm, so there was not a lot for us to switch. We should have done this 30 years ago. But, you know. 02:53 how life goes. And so anyway, so, um, but it has been a great, a great, um, move for us, um, for our business. Good. So I know nothing about dairy cattle and I've been looking for someone to talk to about it. So guess what? You're it. Oh, fun. So you said you have 70 cows you're milking. Yes. That is correct. Yes. 03:20 Okay, so are you selling that milk to, I don't know where milk goes to, to be sold at grocery stores? Sure. That's great questions. So we belong to a co-op. As I mentioned, we belong to DFA for years. And then we transitioned and we went with Organic Valley co-op. So we shipped to Organic Valley. And they... 03:49 They basically pick up the milk and then once it leaves the farm, it leaves the farm as fluid milk and then they go and they take it and they do the marketing and most of our milk goes into fluid milk or cheese in this area, in the New England area. And then, yeah, I guess I should say that I'm from Northern Vermont. We're about 45 minutes from the Canadian border. Okay. So in our area. 04:20 Most of our milk goes into New York state and then gets processed or distributed. Okay, then that leads me to my next question. When people who sell milk from their cows sell it to a co-op and that milk goes to be processed, pasteurized, whatever, to be sold in gallons or half gallons at the store, it's not just your batch of milk in that. 04:47 jug, it can be mixed with other people's cow's milk, right? That is correct. Yes. So right now we're on the grass truck because we're a grass-fed farm. So all of our milk is picked up with all the other grass-fed farms in the area. When we were conventional, it was a huge truck that would come and it was all the farms in the area. They're on a milk route. 05:15 And so then it would just come and pick up all the different farms. Now every farm, I don't know if, if sort of you were getting to this. So every farm, when they pick up our milk, um, vials are taken samples of our milk. So everybody's, um, milk is tested and, um, you know, and then the tank is tested to make sure like everybody, you know, if somebody had bad milk, you know, um, 05:45 know, we might have to get dumped. I mean, it depends upon what happened. Yeah, that was going to be my next question because I think that when I was young, I assumed that the milk and the jug in the fridge probably came ...
