Stauffer Dairy

Please welcome Krista & Brandon on the blog today from Stauffer Dairy in Washington! Brandon & Krista have a small family farm where everyone helps out to make their dreams come true! 

Hello, we are Brandon & Krista Stauffer of Stauffer Dairy in Washington. Brandon is a third generation dairy farmer & I (Krista) is a second generation dairy farmer. We have three kids under 6 years old & milk on average 150-180 jersey/Holsteins/crosses.

Brandon was born & raised in Whatcom County which is well known as a dairy community. At a young age he worked for his uncle Craig & other local dairy farmers. He knew that when he grew up that he wanted to be a dairy farmer & nothing else. His senior year in high school he had them put in his year book that he wanted to be a dairy farmer!

In 2008, he decided that it was time to make his dreams come true. His grandfather & father no longer dairy farmed so he would have to figure out another way to get in the industry. He began the process & started seeking out potential dairy farms to lease. After going through all the motions he had found a dairy farm, had the startup loan, found some cows to add to the 20 he raised himself and it was go time! He moved away from everyone & everything he had ever known. In May 2009 he started milking cows. He worked endless hours, battled tremendously low milk prices & all with moving to a county where he knew only a couple people.

I was not born on a farm & knew next to nothing about farming especially dairy farming. My great grandma was a dairy farmer, but I knew very little about what she did or how she did it. I was just a kid when she was still milking cows. She did pretty much everything on her own. I met Brandon the summer of 2009. I was actually trying to set him up with one of my friends. We began dating the end of August. I had a daughter from a previous marriage & we found out we were expecting in May 2010. We had our son May 2010 & were married July 2010. I dove in head first into the world of dairy farming. I took on the books, the calves, helped with milking & basically anything to help take some work off Brandon. There have been plenty of times where I have had a baby in the front pack & carrying two five gallon buckets of milk or a stroller in one hand & a bucket of milk in the other. We had our youngest son in May 2012. I have taken on the task of agvocating for the dairy industry. I have a Facebook page & a blog. I try to post daily on Facebook but find it hard to make time for the blog. In addition to everything, I have taken a job off the farm two days a week. I felt it necessary to have something of my own.

Brandon is the brains of the operation. He is very business orientated & is the main laborer. An average day for him is up early in the AM to feed cows. He also feeds the calves as we have a new program & not too many calves right which means feeding calves doesn’t take much time. He fixes anything that needs fixed from fences to tractors. He tends to any cattle that may be sick or calving. Pretty much anything & everything on the farm he does it. Then most nights he milks the cows. When the kids are cooperating we help with the night milking. We are very fortunate after four years to have some reliable help. We have two part time milkers that do all the morning milkings so Brandon can feed cows. With the exception of 2013 the last couple summers we had all our hired help quit in the middle of silage season leaving everything to us. We got creative & made it work. If the weather was bad the kids watched a movie during milking in the milk house. If the weather was good, they played in buckets of water or a pool in the milk house. Our youngest son slept in the swing in the parlor or a pack on mommy’s back. Makes milking really fun! ;) We have chickens & love our farm fresh eggs! AND of course we have plenty of beef!!

What we both wish people understood about farming is everything! We wish that people understood what it takes to farm & that is not for the money. The public tends to think dairy farmers all abuse their cows & that we do not care about them. It’s simply not true. Dairy farmers simply cannot afford to not take the best care of their cows possible. Happy, healthy & comfortable cows produce milk. The cows have to be able to pay for what they eat & then some and in order to do that they have to be happy & healthy. We spend 24/7/365 taking care of our girls. Also we would like everyone to know how important it is to support all farmers from organic to conventional. From hobby farm to “corporate” farms. Every farm & farmer has something to offer & we need everyone to feed the growing population. There is not one way of farming that can be applied to everyone, to every farm or every part of the world. Farmers need support more than ever. Know your food, know your farmer.

The past four years have been tough as a new dairy farm especially operating on a cash flow only basis. We have amazing support & great relationships with our local farmers in which we buy feed from. Time spent with family & the way of life is why we do it. It’s not for the money, well because there is no money to be made in dairy farming. It’s 2013 and we are still going strong. Everyone said it would be over in the first year & we are not ready to give up. We have dreams of owning our own farm & plan on making that a reality some day!

Thanks so much to Stauffer Dairy for the great feature! Be sure to keep up with Krista on her blog, Facebook page & Pinterest account! 

Homestead Hill Farm

Welcome Tom & Barbara Womack as our first farmers from Virginia to share their story! Tom and Barbara have a small diversified farm where they sell their produce at the farmer's market, but their real passion is for growing food!

Greetings from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia! 

We are Tom and Barbara Womack of Homestead Hill Farm. We own and operate a small, diversified farm specializing in seasonal vegetables, lamb, chicken and eggs. Our products are available for sale at the Staunton/Augusta Farmers’ Market on Saturday mornings. Since we are located just 12 miles from town, we can assure you that everything we sell is truly LOCAL.

If someone had told us twenty years ago that we would be able to make our living at the Farmers’ Market, we would have laughed. I don’t think we had even shopped at a farmers’ market twenty years ago. But, when life events caused us to begin from scratch in 1997, one thing led to another…and here we are. Our girls were very little when we moved here, and they had the experience of a lifetime growing up in the country on a small working farm. There have been some true learning adventures along the way. We have always worked well as a team, and now that our daughters are all grown-up, married and living elsewhere, it’s just the two of us working together here on the hill. While there are days when the work is hard and frustrating, I cannot imagine any lifestyle more rewarding than growing food.

Our farm is an ever-evolving entity. Over the years we have raised eggs for wholesale, sold vegetables to fancy restaurants, and baked well over 15,000 loaves of bread. (for ten years we sold bread at the Market) We have had milk cows and pigs and LOTS of chickens, for a long while our youngest daughter had a pony…and we even had a llama and a herd of goats for a while. We’ve been shepherds for the past ten or eleven years. But, the Farmers’ Market has been the one constant during all these ventures. Presently, we focus on our large gardening operation, two hoop-houses in which we grow greens year round, 2 small greenhouses for propagation, a layer flock, pasture-raised broilers in the summer, …and a flock of sheep. Our small farm is nothing, if not diverse.

Being vendors at a Farmers’ Market means that life around here revolves around Saturday morning Market. Our schedule and routine is far from typical. While most other folks are still in their warm and comfy beds, dreaming sweet dreams, we are up and packing our wares to get them to the Market. It’s still very dark at 5am when Tom heads out to the Market. He is also the Market Manager, so he gets there earlier than most of the other vendors to get things ready for the day. It’s my job to feed all the critters and make sure the farm is tended before I head into town as well. We may have the only sheep in the county that come running when they see a flashlight! 

While the five hours that the Market is open may not sound like a long time, when you add time for set-up and clean-up, we get a pretty intense workout on Saturday mornings before all the goodies are sold and it’s time to head back to the farm. It is rare that we bring much home, but any leftover vegetables are later processed for off-season sales.

I love the camaraderie of the Farmers’ Market. Since this is our fifteenth year in the same place every Saturday morning, I suppose you could say we have become fixtures in the downtown scene. We have seen a lot of changes over the course of all those years. There are a lot more folks concerned with knowing where their food comes from, and knowing who grows it and how than ever before. Items that no one had ever heard of are now becoming sought after and some new things have become immensely popular. Many of our customers have become friends over the years and it’s always fun to exchange recipes and learn new things. Our Market has live music a lot of weekends, so the atmosphere can be quite festive.

The human interaction at the Market intrigues me. In recent days, it has been noted that most folks are two to four generations removed from the farm. Most of these folks have NO clue what goes into farming or food production. There are those who think that small farms must be better than “big ag”, but I beg to differ. There are so many different ways to raise food, and all of them are crucial to supplying the demand. I love sharing our own experiences, as well as attempting to clear up some of the mis-perceptions about agriculture in general. To that end, I started blogging about our farm (and other random things) several years ago. It’s always humbling to meet one of my “fans” at the Market. I hope you’ll read it as well… follow at Homestead Hill Farm or LIKE us on Facebook! 

At the end of each Market, it’s nice to head back to the farm for lunch and a restful Sunday before getting back to work with our focus on the next selling day. Because, we don’t just sell stuff on Saturday… the Staunton/Augusta Farmers’ Market is a PRODUCER ONLY market… so, we must grow everything we sell. That means we are almost always starting seeds, transplanting seedlings, harvesting, or removing spent crops in order to plant new ones. If we aren’t in the gardens, or the hoophouses, we are feeding sheep, gathering eggs or processing broilers. There is always something to do.

A number of years ago, one of our customers suggested we consider selling year ‘round. We talked it over, changed up our growing patterns, and developed a customer list. This will be our fifth year of offering all sorts of farm products for downtown delivery in the off-season to a group of loyal customers. It works well for everyone….the customers get fresh greens/lamb/eggs/chicken/vegetables all winter and we are able to have positive cash-flow…even in the dead of winter. 

As much as I love selling at the market, I must say that lambing season is my favorite time of year. Our ewes are bred to lamb in January, so that we can get the lambs on the ground while things are relatively calm in the gardens and hoophouse. This timing also allows the lambs to be fairly good sized before they are turned out on grass in the early spring. I have often likened lambing season to Christmas morning on steroids. You never know what’s going to happen. While there are the occasional losses and frustrations, the winter lambing barn is a great place to spend some quality time. The sheep keep the grass mowed throughout the summer and provide some of the best lamb products any non-vegetarian has ever eaten!

While the sheep are great, and have earned a special place in my heart, I wouldn’t want to overlook the chickens. Our laying flock is quite productive, and farm fresh brown eggs are one of the most popular items at the Market. We also run a several batches of “broilers” throughout the summer months to provide our customers (and ourselves) with pasture-raised chicken to use in all their favorite recipes. The chickens also do their share by eating weeds, spent crops and vegetable waste. 

Yes, we might have laughed twenty years ago if someone told us we would be making our living growing and selling vegetables, but this is the good life…raising food. We will never be big producers, and some folks might discount farms of our size. That’s okay. There are a lot of folks that depend on us to grow good food for them. We haven’t been doing this for generations, but our daughters learned a good work ethic that they have carried into their adult lives.

At the end of a productive day, there is a great sense of accomplishment knowing that what you do for a living really matters to someone. Add to that living in a beautiful place, being with someone you love, and having time to enjoy it all…this is the GOOD life.

Thanks for the fantastic feature Barbara! It takes all kinds of farmers and advocates for agriculture to keep the food supply in this country running. Be sure to check out Barbara's blog and Facebook page. If you or someone you know would like to share your story on Faces of Agriculture, please contact us today! No need to have a blog or social media, we want to share everyone's story!