No two farms are alike.
And no two farms have the same goals.
It's sometimes like a puzzle ...
how are we going to expand this farm in a logical manner
that's also not going to break the bank
or put them in hock with the environmental regulatory
agencies.
My name is Tim Terry
and I am the regional farm strategic planning
specialist with the harvest New York group.
What that means is I work
one-on-one with big farms, little farms and everything in between
on how they are going to grow their farmstead
In other words trying to keep them economically and environmentally sustainable
We just completed a project at the end of last year ...
It was a small farm and it was destined to be another ag statistic
The older generation was in their 60s but they still felt they
had a lot of time and energy left to continue farming
but not in the labor-intensive manner that they were doing it.
We had an opportunity with some different grants that became available
and we transitioned them into a brand-new state-of-the-art compost bedded pack system
with a robotic milker.
My name is Lester York my wife's name is Cindy.
The name of our farm is Whispering Winds farms organic dairy.
The reason that we wanted to do a new facility here
is that we had a facility that was built 1956 in a tie stall barn.
My wife and I do most of the milking and the chores
so we were trying to find a more efficient way of taking care of the animals
and it frees us us up to have more family time we've really longed for
because our family is so big and it's important to us.
We have no retirement thoughts at all.
Retire to what?
This is a lifestyle.
it is a business but it's a lifestyle. It's our way of life.
So we went about talking to several people
at Empire Farm days about robots.
We thought that we would look at this and see if it would help us in our situation.
So I got ahold of Cooperative Extension
and NRCS and soil conservation - all the different programs - to help us.
We went from the stone age to landing on the moon is how it changed our situation here.
We went to a TMR feeder,
we went to automatic manures system,
we have a robotic milker that is doing the milking for us.
We have Juno and what it does is pushes a feed up to the cows every hour of the day
and then we also have the automatic scraping system.
That's one of the things we both wanted to have because our cows feet are clean all the time.
We run it on the hour and with that it helps keep the manure away and it helps what they call somatic cells
so they have good clean milk.
And they also have a groomer edge they love.
It it is hilarious - that is probably one of my very favorite things to watch them do.
We built the barn with the idea of them being comfortable.
Cow comfort was what we wanted.
And I think we're taking care of 70 cows easier than we did 45.
It's easier, but you have to think differently now.
It's new for us.
It's a different kind of managing.
Sometimes you have to come out in the middle of night at 3 o'clock in the morning and that's that's not fun.
But the amount of work that we've saved
with the cows getting the food pushed up,
the manure being scraped by itself,
the composted bedded pack we only rototill once a day
and the milking process ... they're being milked right right now.
It's paying for itself.
It allows us to do the farming that we're supposed to better.
Cooperative Extension helped us
the most on this whole plan.
Tim Terry came in helping to design the
barn and drawing pictures.
He was a liaison between our carpenters,
at times with the people with the milking systems
and he helped it go a lot smoother.
I don't know as we would have done it without him.
I think robotics is going to be the new
thing in farming because of the labor situation
It is hard to get good labor and this has been a labor saver.
Hopefully by making this a modernized farm
it will bring the younger generation to want to do it
instead of just being all hard labor.
We're hoping to make this an organic dairy farm that's viable
so they would want to stay here.
Making more milk and is helping it pay for itself.
I think over the long run it'll be a very good thing.
Hats off to Tim Terry and Cooperative Extension.