Betting the Farm

Five dairy farmers took a big chance when they started Rhody Fresh milk three years ago. Their overwhelming success proves the cream always rises to the top.

Stone walls that cascade across wide green fields; ancient maple trees hinting red in the early autumn air; a pair of brown-and-white, spotted calves half asleep; a ragged patch of orange wildflowers; a grand stone staircase paid for with two pigs and a calf; a broad-shouldered well-worn barn; the sweet smell of ground corn mixed with hay. All of these things, and more, come packaged with every gallon of Rhody Fresh milk.

The local dairy co-operative, with five family farms working together to market their milk, is all about preserving Rhode Island’s farmlands. It’s not going to make any farmers rich, or entice new farmers into the business. But the extra income the farmers earn by cutting out the middleman can mean the difference between running nervously in the red or edging more reliably into the black.

“And that gives us hope that we can at least keep the farms a viable business, so there will still be local family farms for the next generation of Rhode Islanders, and generations after that,” says Jim Hines, executive director of Rhody Fresh. All five of the coalition’s dairy farmers, gathered together on a fall morning beneath an apple tree at Meadowburg Farm in Richmond, nod in agreement. Proudly arrayed on a picnic table are the co-op’s growing line of products—whole milk, 1 percent, 2 percent, fat-free, half and half, coffee and chocolate milk—in sizes ranging from gluttonous gallons to skinny quarts to tiny half-pints.

Rhode Islanders certainly seem to support the concept because they’ve heartily embraced Rhody Fresh milk since its launch in 2004. In its first six months, the co-op reached targets set for three years into its business plan. “There was no doubt in my mind it would sell,” says Louis Escobar, owner of Highland Farm in Portsmouth, a white-bearded, energetic booster for the cause. “Rhode Islanders want to support local farms. And they love our milk, because there’s none better!” The taste is fresh, rich and creamy, and the shelf life outlasts most other brands.

The group faced challenges at the start. They had to borrow money to get off the ground, scrounging $150,000 in grants and loans from state and federal agencies. They had to convince local grocers and the big chains to give them shelf space, a scarce commodity. They had to work out all the details of how they would sell their milk to the processing plant, then buy it back, and deliver it to markets themselves, negotiating a complex web of federal and local laws that govern the sale of milk. In the end, each farmer pockets an extra morsel of income, about 10 percent more than they’d make just selling wholesale. Not a windfall, but in a tough business, it means a lot.
Rhody Fresh now is found in more than 100 stores across the state, and the co-op sells about a half-million gallons of milk per year. All the big local supermarket chains—Shaw’s, Stop & Shop, and Dave’s—carry at least some of the products. Students at Roger Williams and Brown universities can find it in their dining halls. “We have far surpassed our goals,” says Hines. Whole Foods initially declined the brand because although the Rhody farmers raised hormone-free cows, the processing plant they used couldn’t guarantee that all milk treated there was equally pure. The co-op worked with other local farmers and the processors to meet those concerns, and Whole Foods is now on board.

The co-op has benefited from a timely launch, says Ken Ayars, chief of the division of agriculture at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. “There’s an increased focus on local agriculture right now due to a lot of concerns about where food comes from,” he says. People are worried about the safety and purity of their food, the environmental cost of factory farms, and the contribution of long-distance transport to global warming. “Knowing that food is local and fresh is important to consumers,” he says. “And preserving our ability to produce food locally is an important goal for Rhode Island.”

Preserving farms is a constant challenge in a state where the price of agricultural land is the highest in the country, says Ayars. All five Rhody Fresh farms are small, with about fifty to 100 cows, most of them the familiar black-and-white Holsteins, which tend to produce the most milk. A few of the brown Guernsey and Jersey cows diversify the mix. Glenn Cottrell, in Kingston, raises Ayrshires, which give less milk, but each gallon has a higher percentage of protein and butterfat. At Escobar’s farm in Portsmouth, where wide rolling fields have been cultivated since the 1700s, the herd of eighty black-and-white cows knows the daily drill.

As soon as eighteen-year-old farmhand Jake Dame opens the gate between the feeding pen and the milk shed at 4:30 in the afternoon, Number 68 hoofs it down to the first slot in the line, sticks her head through the stanchion, and backs up to the milking machine. Catching sight of me, a stranger, her dark brown eyes gaze steadily into mine, her fluffy black ears twitch, her wide wet nose wrinkles, searching for a scent.

Dame expertly cleans her udders and affixes four stainless steel milking cups. The milk flows like a river down a yellow tube into a stainless-steel tank. In just about five minutes, the first batch of cows is done, Dame pushes a button, the stanchions rise, the cows march off and the next dozen file sedately into place. It all operates like clockwork, twice a day, dawn and dusk, eighty cows, eight gallons apiece. “There are no days off for farmers,” says Escobar. “Christmas morning, or Sunday morning after you’ve been out late Saturday night, the cows don’t know the difference. It’s very demanding. You have to love the work.”

The dairy business is not only demanding, it’s perpetually uncertain. The wholesale price of milk fluctuates from month to month. The farmers grow their own feed corn and hay, and depending on weather, the harvest can be bountiful or scant. The cows will still be hungry, which means money must be spent for supplemental feed. Add in costs for fuel, machinery, farm help and veterinary care, and it’s a challenge to make it work.

Most of the farmers depend on other income streams to keep going. Barry James, owner of Tomaquag Valley Farm in Hopkinton, runs the trucking business that transports Rhody Fresh milk from farm to processing plant. Escobar charges admission to a popular corn maze at his Portsmouth farm. Jessie Dutra, who operates Wanton Farm in Jamestown with her husband, Joseph, is starting up her own photography and design business on the side.

What’s next for Rhody Fresh? Hines says they are starting to market to schools, and this year, students at St. Michael’s Country Day School in Newport will drink local milk. The farmers are also considering producing cheese and ice cream. “But we want the quality and success to be as good as for the milk,” says Escobar, so they are taking their time. They are exploring the idea of adding more members. Meanwhile, the co-op model is spreading. In 2006, twenty local sheep farmers pooled their raw wool, processed it, and wove it into blankets under the logo Rhody Warm. All 370 blankets sold. The goal of that co-op also is to help local farmers to thrive.

At Escobar’s farm, the autumn sun is setting as the cows steadily march in, take their turn giving milk, and amble back out. Workers and visitors come and go, the milking machines chug away, the phone rings repeatedly as lost corn-maze seekers call for directions. And amid all the activity, an odd mix of serenity and chaos, just another day on the family farm, Escobar beams.