Chase's Organic Dairy - Farm Blog

Lew and Aaron stack haylage bales on a trailer truck for the deer farm.

Today was a busy day at the farm.   In addition to milking and the usual chores, Thursday’s our day to get hay down.  (We drop a week’s worth of square bales down through the hay holes and stack them in front of the cows.  We are currently feeding dry hay in the mornings and haylage in the afternoons.)   We also loaded some round bales for our friends who have a Red Deer farm in Linneus.   We hear that the deer love eating hay and haylage from our farm and are doing really well this winter.  We’re looking forward to going to visit them very soon.

We’re also getting ready to travel to Westbrook tomorrow for the MOOMilk launch.  We are very excited to see the first batch of MOOMilk come off the production line at Smiling Hill Farm and be loaded on a truck for delivery to grocery stores in Maine this Saturday.  This is great news for consumers AND family farms in Maine.  Go, MOOMilk!

For more info on MOOMilk, please visit www.moomilkco.com.  Here’s an excerpt from a recent press release:

“The start of the production marks a new step in the recovery of the Maine dairy industry. MOOMilk with be produced and processed entirely in Maine, with trucking, processing and delivery all done by Maine family businesses. Ninety percent of the profits from the sale of the milk will go to the family farms producing the milk. MOOMilk is not a cooperative, but a low-profit company with a mission of helping Maine organic family dairy farms survive by earning a fair price for their milk.”

The cold days of January are upon us, and the busiest place on the farms these days is inside the barn.

Happy cows doing what they love best - eating!

Click here to view more photos of what’s happening in the barn during the winter months.

We’re very excited to share this photo from Smiling Hill Farm of equipment that will soon be used to process Maine Organic Milk for MOO Milk Co.

Hooray!  We can’t wait to get MOO Milk on store shelves!

Our cows aren’t the only ones who love our alfalfa.  Our friend Bob took these photos of the moose in our alfalfa fields while he was deer hunting.  He says you can’t tell from the photos but he could count sixteen moose out eating alfalfa at dawn.  So cool!

Cows aren't the only ones who love our alfalfa.

Here’s another photo, facing southeast from the previous photo.

More moose chowing down before the snow flies.

Wild turkeys have been spotted in Northern Maine

Gooble, gobble!  We just received word that two wild turkeys were spotted in our alfalfa fields today.  We heard they were releasing some wild turkeys in Chapman, Maine, but are surprised to learn that they have already arrived on our dairy farm.  We have heard about them causing problems on dairy farms in other areas of Maine.  Let’s hope the wild turkeys in Northern Maine stay in remote areas and away from our barn and haylage storage areas.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Maine’s Own Organic Milk Company is mooooving right along.   We are hoping to have our milk in stores in Maine and New Hampshire by mid-December. I’ve been busy working on a new website for MOOMilk.

Find out all about MOOMilk at our new website, www.moomilkco.com

Visit MOOMilk’s new website for a link to a national news story about our new, partially farmer-owned company by Fox News yesterday: Organic Farmers Band Together To Survive.  Our company manager, Bill Eldridge, filmed several live video segments at Smiling Hill Farm in Westbrook, ME, where MOOMilk will be processed.  He answered questions about our new company, our new brand of organic milk, and the jobs being saved and/or created in Maine in connection with MOOMilk (Maine’s Own Organic Milk Company).

You can read the business blog at Fox News for a related news article, Organic Dairy Farmers Create New Brand: MOOMilk.  Lots of lively discussion going on there!

Also, one of our farmers did an interview for My Fox Maine that’s available at www.myfoxmaine.com/dpp/news/20091124_maine_organic_dairy_farmers_form_company.

Well, the days are getting colder.  Soon we will have to “tie up” but we are trying to keep the cows out as long as the weather permits.  After the record snowfall on October 22nd, we’ve had many decent days with temps in the forties and occasionally even in the fifties.  There’s not much grass growing these days, but the cows eat from the hay rings and enjoy getting outside for some fresh air and exercise.   It’s a long winter in the barn in Northern Maine.  We’re trying not to make it any longer than it absolutely has to be.  More photos are available, including photos of two calves born this week.

Cows graze on Creasey Ridge, with a view of the Maxcy and Currier homesteads on Griffin Ridge in the background.

Snowy pasture

The cows aren’t overly impressed with yesterday’s storm, which left 6 inches of the white stuff at the official weather station in Caribou, breaking a record. There won’t be much grazing happening today, but there is plenty to eat in the hay rings and they will get exercise and fresh air.

For more photos of the day, click here.

Ready or not, a little snow arrived today.  The cows are still outside for the most part, and we hope to be able to keep them going out for a while longer.  They are feeding mostly from alfalfa haylage in rings in the pasture, but there are still some die-hard grazers who are still feeding themselves.

The Jerseys in our herd are often among the heartiest grazers.