9781422276648

NOTES FROM THE FIELD Farmer, Litchfield, Maine Q: How did you get your job?

A: I grew up in the middle of a large city. I hated it. I always wanted horses and cows. When I was young, my parents, brother, and I would go out to buy sweet corn every summer Sunday after church at a local dairy farm. The first place I went was to the barn to play with the calves and pat the cows. Later on the nephew of the farmers became a veterinarian and raised racing quarter horses. I got to visit both the horses and the cows! I was in heaven. I got a job when I turned sixteen and saved enough money to buy my first horse, which I supported. I became an apprentice horse trainer and learned horse breeding and raising. . . . I met my husband to be when I boarded my horses at his stable. He had the same dream . . . a dairy farm. Since dairying was almost impossible to get into in Massachusetts at the time, we moved to Maine with our two young sons. We finally got our dairy farm. I had a herd of dairy goats as well as dairy cattle and did well with milk production from both animals. We set up the cattle milk machines to accommodate the goats and mixed the goat milk in with the cows’ milk. We started getting a premium price for it because the protein and butter fat went up and the bacteria count went down. Only our sales rep knew we had the goats’ milk piped in with the cows’ milk. I still have horses and goats. My horses are used mostly as pasture pets these days, but I still raise the goats. I have four dairy goats left from the original herd, but I have since added Boer goats to the mix. Boer goats are meat goats, and goat meat, or chevon , is becoming popular due to its low fat–low cholesterol content. I still milk the dairy goats, but, instead of selling the milk, I make cheese, soap, butter, pudding, custard, and lotions from what milk I don’t use in the house for drinking. I sell the male kids for meat, and a very select group of buck kids for breeding. The doe kids are either kept as replacements or sold for breeding. I have a full time job to support my livestock hobby, but the kid and soap sales help pay the feed bill. I ama small farmnow, but I still run it like I did the big farmyears ago.

• Agriculture, Food & Natural Resources

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