New England is home to over a thousand dairy farms, and you can find them throughout the
Berkshires, Pioneer Valley, and southern Vermont.
National Dairy Month, a campaign that happens every June, was initially created in 1937 to
promote drinking milk and has now developed into an annual tradition that celebrates the
dairy industry.
While that industry has seen a decline over the past several years, many farms still
carry on the tradition, and producer Dave Frasier visited one in South Hadley to learn
how it has survived for the past two hundred and fifteen years.
Dairy farming is a seven-day-a-week, 365-day-a-year job, and it's no secret that
dairy farms have been on the decline.
In fact, over the last half century, New England has lost more than 10,000 of its
dairy farms, and two thirds of Massachusetts dairy farms have closed down since 1997.
Today, there are about 125 dairy farms left in the Commonwealth, with most being in
western Mass. Denise Barstow is part of the seventh generation to work on her family's
farm in South Hadley.
We started out as a crop farm, you know the Hadley staples: asparagus room, broom corn,
squash, and then in the early 1900s, we transitioned to full dairy.
And our herd has grown over time.
We currently are milking three hundred cows and we have 600 head.
Through the centuries.
The farm's motto has been "looking forward since 1806," a phrase that the family keeps
in mind as they continue to innovate.
In 2008, they opened the Dairy Store and Bakery to diversify their business and open
their doors to the community.
The shop features homemade baked goods, prepared foods for purchase and, of course, a
wide variety of dairy products.
So, we have that as our forward-facing public farm stand.
And then we also wanted to have something that didn't rely on the public as much, but
was still really important for our community.
So, we have an anaerobic digester.
It's a system that takes the energy potential out of cow manure and food waste
and turns it into enough electricity to power.
1,600 homes.
The farm is one of 800 family farms that's part of the Cabot Agrimark Cooperative.
Every other day, milk from the farm is trucked to the processing plant in West
Springfield. And according to Barstow, milk that leaves the farm can be processed and in
the store in 48 hours.
The dairy supply chain is very fast and clean and efficient, and I think it's really
important to note that it's super local because milk is so perishable.
So, these processing plants are set up to make a lot of different things from cottage
cheese and whipped cream to butter and fluid milk and also a lot of different brands.
So, our milk is ending up on the grocery store shelves right here in the valley.
The Holstein is the main breed of dairy cattle in the United States, and it is what
makes up the herd at Barstow's Longview, Farm.
Cows are milked robotically.
The robots use sensors to identify electronic tags on each cow to make sure no
one cow is visiting the milking station too often or not enough.
And we have five robotic milkers for a herd of three hundred milking cows.
Before we used to milk our cows and milking parlor twice a day, once at four a.m.
and once at 4pm.
They take about four hours, all told each time.
So, eight hours of our day was just milking cows.
So, now our cows can milk when they want to get milked.
Some of them are milking two times a day.
Some of them are milking five times a day.
So cows are comfortable more of the time.
And every dairy farmer knows that a comfortable cow is a happy cow is going to
produce more milk and better quality milk.
New England dairy farmers have little control over milk prices, which are calculated by the
U.S. government. But for consumers, local dairy purchases do more than just keep
businesses like Barstow's afloat.
They maintain open space in the community, ensure a resilient food system, and preserve
local heritage.
We are very fortunate to live in a community that values having local agriculture,
including local dairy, because when we have more farms in the area, we have better
climate resilience as a community and we have better food security.
And I think that's only going to be more important as we go forward.