About twenty local farmers and raw milk producers attended Rural Vermont’s raw milk meeting in Poultney on Wednesday. We talked about specific concerns that people had about raw milk production and regulation in the state, reviewed state inspection information, had a nice lunch together, and discussed possible solutions to problems throughout the state.

Some of the biggest concerns were:

- State regulations regarding vaccinations and testing of milk-producing animals

- Sales of raw milk at farmers’ markets and how to educate consumers about proper handling of raw milk

- Sales of raw milk products, such as cream, butter, and yogurt

Rural Vermont is holding one more meeting in the state on Saturday March 23 in Townsend. I strongly encourage you to RSVP and attend this meeting if you are interested in raw milk sales in the state. As usual, Rural Vermont did a great job hearing everyone’s concerns and moving the meeting along in a timely way.

This post is a collection of suggestions, recommendations, ideas and discussions taken directly from all of you via our Facebook postings & associated comments.

It will continually be updated.

We hope this post will overtime become a tomb of knowledge for those looking to understand the ins and outs of micro-dairy farming, from those with a wide range of experience and expertise from all around the country.

If you would like to contribute in anyway to these topics, please email us at amdairies [at] gmail [dot] com

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In lieu of recent conversations, here are several interesting articles about getting your animals out to graze and what kind of pasture makes sense for you and your animals.

How to use a grazing stick and planning your paddock rotations:

Sarah Flack has some helpful videos as we start to think about planning our pasture use over the coming spring and summer. She has one about how to use a grazing stick to calculate dry matter:

And another one to help you calculate a paddock size:

Silvopastures:

The USDA and the National Agroforestry Center have a great website dedicated to silvopastures, or forested pastures. Instead of clearing land completely to graze your cows, goats, or sheep, the practice of silvopasturing has you leave some trees on the land. This practice is good for your animals and good for your land, and allows you to harvest trees as high-value saw logs in the future.

The website has many helpful papers on a variety of topics, including an overview, working trees for water quality, and converting your pine forest to silvopasture  or your pasture to silvopasture.

From Rural Vermont:

If you are concerned about raw milk in Vermont, take the Rural Vermont survey here.

Additionally, you may attend their raw milk meetings around the state (February 7th in Randolph Center, February 21st in South Wheelock, and dates to-be-determined in southeastern Vermont and Poultney).

Interview with AMD Member, Ed Morsehead of Siberia Farms in Maine.

Can you describe your farm and farming philosophy?

We are milking purebred Jerseys, some registered, some grade.  We belong to National All Jersey, and as such use their promotional material and logo’s.  In return we promise to only milk Jersey cattle, which works fine for us as we prefer the high butterfat milk, and the small frame of the Jersey which lends them to grazing better than a Holstein would.  We have 12 in our herd, currently milking 9, the others are dry.  We feed free choice hay or baleage, and at milking we feed 3 or 4 pounds of beet pulp as a treat to get the girls up on the step up parlor.  We also have a mineral feed supplement.

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