Carolina and Bessie; Or Just One More Reason We Are Not an Organic Farm

N. Carolina with her new herdmate Virgina behind her.

Those who have followed the farm for a while know that we were originally all about goats. We had no intention whatsoever to own cows. When people asked if we were sure that the milk they were tasting was, in fact, goat milk, not cow milk (because it tasted so much better than the goat milk they were accustomed to getting from the grocery store), we assured them that there were no cows on the farm at all.

Then, in 2020, I found myself tired, exhausted, and just plain drained. It might have had something to do with trying to finish my masters degree at the same time as running a small family farm and a large weekly farmers market, but the end result was the same. I posed a question to Tim--what would he think of shutting down the farm? Just quitting, going under, whatever you want to call it. Our side gigs, which at the time included both managing the market and teaching, were sufficient to pay the bills, while the farm, as always, was in a desultory circle around the proverbial drain. Our largest bill was animal feed, second was the electricity for the dairy and creamery. It was a smart financial decision to get out of farming.

Instead we got cows.

Right now I can't even recall the path the conversation took that led us from "Let's quit," to "Let's expand," but we soon found ourselves with a sweet Jersey cross named Virginia. Virginia led to Georgia, Mississippi, S. Carolina, and Virginia's heifer calf Shenandoah. (We'd decided that our cows would be named after southern states, and their babies would be names after towns or regions in those states.) Over the years since we first discussed quitting and instead dug the hole deeper, we've had to euthanize a cow due to an uncurable illness, we've sold a cow to a friend, and we've lost a cow to pregnancy complications, leading us back to where we started, with just Virginia supplying an increasing demand for Swede Farm cow milk. It was clear to our customers that we needed another cow, even if we took a while to agree. Once we decided that it was probably smart, we went cow shopping, only to find that we are definitely in a sellers market for cows, for reasons I may get to in future posts, but for now, I want to talk about N. Carolina.

When we started our search for a new cow, at first we just looked at Jerseys, or Jersey crosses, which were already in milk. Jerseys are smaller, eat less, and give super creamy milk. The proverbial black and white cow one sees on Etsy tee-shirts and cookie jars are Holsteins. They are large cows, they produce a lot of milk, and eat a lot of food. They just seemed like a bit too much cow for us. Yet as I scrolled through the for sale listings, one cow caught my eye. She was a Holstein, and she was large, very large in fact, for she was pregnant. Strike one: a Holstein. Strike two: not even in milk, the very reason we were looking for a cow. But every single Jersey in milk that I'd called about for the past two weeks had been sold within hours of being posted, so perhaps it was worth looking into.

And so we hooked up the trailer and drove to Italy, Texas.

She was clearly in good health, which subsequent blood and milk tests have confirmed. She was also huge. And skittish. And clearly close to calving, as she was already dripping milk from a very capacious udder. The couple who had listed her weren't even in dairy, they raised beef cattle, but the wife had owned a dairy for years, decades ago, and had a soft spot in her heart for dairy animals. 

"When they ran her through the auction, they said she was from an organic dairy," the woman explained, telling me that she had felt sick, thinking "She's got a big ole baby in her and they're just gonna turn her into hamburger." 

Her husband chimed in "So when she got home I went to unload the trailer and here was this Holstein among the Angus I'd sent her for!"

We are often asked at the farmers market if our dairy is organic. It is not. Often the assumption is made that the reason is the high cost of organic certification, but the truth is that once a dairy has jumped through the hoops to satisfy the requirements to be organic, the certification fees are the least of it. The requirements are many and often difficult, if not impossible for a small farm to satisfy. For us the biggest reason has to do with medication. We have a small herd of goats and a likewise very small herd of cows. With the goats we are currently milking great, great, great, great, great granddaughters of some of our very first goats. We raise our animals as holistically as we can, but sometimes we face a situation where medications are needed and there is nothing we can do about it. One of our favorite breeds of goats are LaManchas, a breed with ears that are very small and close to their heads, not unlike human ears, just smaller and hairier than any but a hobbit ear might be. Ear infections can happen--and can be very dangerous in LaManchas, calling for antibiotics. The organic code mandates that organic dairies may not withhold needed medication, which is a compassionate approach. The problem is that these animals may no longer be used for milk on an organic dairy. So what do you do when you are a small farm with animals you've needed to medicate but whose milk you can no longer use? Small farms don't always have room for non-producing dairy animals, nor the money to run a livestock retirement home. So the other options are to butcher them, or sell them to non-organic dairies. We decided long ago that we are not going to do this. When we have delivered a baby goat, bottle fed it, watched it grow, marveled at how it looks just like her grandmother Nyla, waited excitedly for a baby from this goat, we are not going to butcher it or sell it. Other farms do, and this is fine. We also do sell animals, but when we feel it is best, and when we can carefully select where they go, not with our backs against the wall. Ultimately what it comes down to is that we do not feel "organic" to be an animal-friendly designation for dairy animals. Perhaps for meat animals with a relatively short lifespan, but not for an animal you hope to work in partnership with for over a decade.

From what we can tell, this is likely what happened with N. Carolina. She was in the prime of life at five years old. She was in crazy good health. She had an uncomplicated pregnancy. She was less than a month from having a healthy baby--yet likely because she'd needed to be medicated, she was sent to auction where she was destined to be turned into hamburger.

We are so thankful that there was someone at the auction who recognized "She's got a big ole baby in her and they're just gonna turn her into hamburger." That they were able to bring her home. That they kept an eye on her, made sure she was settled and that there were no health issues brewing.

So we brought her home, she and that "big ole baby" in her. She was named N. Carolina by the customers who urged us to shop for an addition to the herd, which was a perfect fit as we had recently lost S. Carolina. And two days after we got her to the farm, she calved, giving us a sweet baby girl, named Bessie after the North Carolina town.

We think that's a better ending than being turned into hamburger.

Bessie