10/19/2026
Important to read this. ➡️ What our neighbors at O'Brien Farm are telling us is that it's all but impossible for small (and also not-so-small) farms to stay afloat selling food unless they have some kind of off-farm income. Farming on its own just doesn't cut it. 😢
🚜 We have a deeply irrational food system where food prices are determined by how cheaply the really big players can produce things. That leaves smaller producers (and also small independent food retailers like us who are trying to support small and local producers) struggling and often failing to keep ahead of the bills.
Meanwhile, there are far too many people who can't afford food (let alone good-quality local food) because wages haven't kept up with the cost of living and expenses like housing and health care just keep getting more and more out of reach. It's not healthy and it's not sustainable. 😓
Building something better means facing up to these realities and figuring out what we might do together to change them. Food isn't the whole answer but it's a place to start.
If you're able to support any of these alternative food ventures, your purchases, even small ones, make a MUCH bigger difference than they do at a supermarket or big-box store. "Voting with your dollars" is a real thing. (But of course we also need to vote with our votes, so we hope everybody casts their ballot in this fall's election too. It's all connected!) 🗳️
Hi guys, I haven't been doing this very much lately. I sort of got into a funk about what this page is supposed to be about. I started it because I wanted people to understand the complexities and to have a broader appreciation for dairy farming, and not just post about what's for sale at the farmstand. I was sort of hoping that this understanding would translate into our real lives, and it just didn't always happen the way that I intended. For instance, there's a kind of farm-envy going around, and that I guess I'm supposed to feed into, and I do at times, but the reality is that milking cows is a tremendous amount of work and the dairy industry is in a crisis.
At first, I thought I could just work a little harder and get ahead of things. When the clocks changed two years ago, I kept the old time and started waking up an hour earlier, leaving the house at 3 am instead of 4am to milk and do chores. Every day, 7 days a week. It worked. I got more things done. But it's taken a toll on my body, and chronic sleep deprivation has become an overriding feature of my life. Sometimes I'll get a nap during the day and the whole day will feel better, but the hardest part about it is that outside of my husband, few people know my alarm goes off at 2:30am. I had many friends and people who visited frequently chide me about having to nap (because they'd always come while I was trying to catch a break!). But I felt that if I had a "real job" where I worked at night, I would get more respect. And that's the thing, after starting this page, more and more I would get comments in real life insinuating that I wasn't really working, that farming isn't a real occupation. The very opposite of what I was trying to get across!
Sadly, this sentiment might be closer to the truth for many farms. Our milk market is in serious trouble, and it has been for a long time. The price our cooperative is paying us right now for milk is less than half of what it costs us to produce it. It's really the worst the milk market has ever been, and no one seems to be able to do anything about it. It's not something you can fix by just trying harder. So many farms have gone out in the last few years, and many more that rely on their milk check will follow. We are lucky in that we are small and nimble and have a great group of people who support us regularly, but there are so many farms that have no option to market their milk directly. I am really fearful for what the future will bring for them.
And really, it's not like a real job. How many people do you know who would wake up an hour early to go to work because they love what they do? Would you? Would you do it even if you weren't being paid? Would you do it on Christmas? When you're sick? When it's -15F? If you just had a baby? I will never understand being glad for Fridays or hoping the workday will go by faster, because even with the hardships, I do love every day! The days are just not long enough to do all I want to do! And the trouble is, the cooperatives know this, and they're very purposely sucking the lifeblood out of small farms all across the country.
And so, all spring and summer we've been quietly building a lifeboat so that we can survive the next wave of farm closures. I'll tell you more about it another time.
Thank you to everyone who has been coming out to support our farm regularly. We really owe everything to you, and I am so touched that even if I don't remind you guys we're here for a few months, you're still coming. Thank you.
