The dairy industry is inextricably linked to the working landscape of Vermont. Even if you have never set foot on a working dairy farm, you’re likely familiar with the iconic tableau of a black and white spotted Holstein grazing serenely in front of a barn. The average Vermonter likely has some familiarity with the process—cows get milked, hay gets made—but the real day-to-day operations of a dairy farm are far removed from the lives most of us live.
So what does life look like when you’re part of this centuries-old farming tradition? To get an inside perspective, we reached out to Nate Severy, an organic dairy farmer in Cornwall, Vermont.
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4:00 am: Breakfast and cup of tea before heading down the barn to begin the day.
4:30 am: Turn the lights on in the barn and do a quick check of all the cows to make sure no issues arose the previous night. Then it’s time to get the wash cycle started to sanitize the milking equipment. While that’s going on, Nate gets all the cows up and puts out fresh feed for them to eat while he cleans their sleeping area.
5:30 am: It’s time for the first milking of the day. After they finish their breakfast, the cows know to start moseying into the holding area so Nate can start letting them into his milking parlor once he’s done cleaning. Milking his 60 cows takes about an hour and a half from start to finish.
While Nate is in the parlor milking, a local high school student shows up around 6 am and hops on the skidsteer to clean the alleys and scrape manure out of the barn. Once he’s done, he’ll put fresh sawdust down in the stalls to get them ready for the cows to return later in the day.
7:00 am: With the morning milking and barn chores done, Nate has a couple hours to eat breakfast with his family and help get his young son and daughter ready and off to school and daycare.
9:00 am: Back to the barn to check on the cows. In the summer, the cows are outside grazing most of the time. In the winter, they stay warm in the barn and munch on hay. Nate puts out more feed and moves back anything the cows have nosed too far away.
9:00 am to 12:00 pm: With the kids off to school and the cows fully fed and comfortable, Nate has flexibility in his morning. It’s certainly not leisure time though: “This time of year, I’m basically spending a couple hours every morning doing paperwork.” From taxes, to organic certification record keeping, to looking at overall business health, the winter is when the administrative side of farming happens for an organic dairy farmer. Soon enough spring will be here and any available moment will be dedicated to making hay to feed the cows throughout the winter.
12:00 pm to 3:00 pm: Nate drives down the road to a rented facility to check on the heifers—young female cows who will rotate into the milking herd once they have been bred. He’ll make sure they have food and water, and check for any issues that need his attention.
3:00 pm to 7:00 pm: Some family time after his kids get home. They’ll have dinner, and Nate helps the kids get ready for bed before heading back out to the barn.
7:00 pm to 10:00 pm: Nighttime milking. Just like in the morning, Nate heads down the barn, sanitizes the parlor, and feeds the cows before milking them all and closing up the barn for the night.
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It’s quite the day—one that is repeated seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. No matter how deep the snow piles or how hot the summer gets, the cows still need milking. For Nate, it’s very much a labor of love. He talks fondly of his Jersey and Jersey-Ayrshire crosses; they’re great grazers who are able to convert their 100% grass feed into delicious milk with a high butterfat content. That high-quality milk is perfect for cheese production; just under half of their milk is sold to a local cheesemaker, with the rest being sold as fluid milk to Organic Valley.
As any dairy farmer can attest, the industry as a whole is facing massive upheaval at the moment. Rising input costs (fuel, grain, parts for repair, etc.) are coupled with flat pay prices from milk buyers to create a situation in which very few farms are being paid more for their milk than it costs to produce it. As a 100% grassfed farm, Nate is insulated from rising grain prices but is dealing with the fallout from last summer’s drought conditions and the impact it had on hay production.
“We go through dry spells all the time—that's just part of farming—but what's challenging about last year is we never consistently got enough rain.” In fact, only 50% of the average rainfall occurred in the months of May through August 2022, meaning they were only able to harvest about 60% of their usual hay crop. The 40% or so they had to purchase to make up the difference is dramatically more expensive than was even a couple years ago. This cost pressure and uncertainty in the market has him looking at long-term resilience for his farm. They’re exploring “side hustles” in small-scale produce and custom-hire fieldwork that could help diversify their income streams.
Nate credits his work with NOFA-VT’s Jen Miller via the Farm Viability program as being hugely important to the early days of his farming career. "The nice thing about working with [NOFA-VT] folks is having someone you're able to bounce ideas off of and having someone else look at your financials. The first thing Jen said when I gave them my P+L [a.k.a. profit and loss statement] is ‘wow you're spending a lot of money on interest.’” Nate was able to take that advice and refinance the farm’s debt in a way that saved a significant amount of money and helped boost the farm’s cash flow during the transition in ownership from his father to him.
While economic forces at play have been difficult for Vermont’s organic dairy industry, the farmers are continuing to do the crucial work of caring for their animals, keeping the farmland in organic production, and maintaining dairy’s important place in Vermont’s working landscape. Vermont would be a much different place if it weren’t for the hard-working folks who get up at 4:00 am to make sure that organic milk, cheese, butter, and ice cream are available for all to enjoy.