Farmers' markets focus of Connecticut dairy industry Dairying Across America
Sadie Frericks Staff Writer
ENFIELD, Conn. - In the state of Connecticut, farmers' markets are nearly as abundant as dairy farms. According to the Connecticut Department of Agriculture, there are 114 farmers markets in the state and 157 working dairy farms.
The popularity of farmers' markets is a reflection of how residents of the state choose their food - and their milk. "Our customers want local milk," explained Mike Smyth of Trinity Farm in Enfield. "Local is more important [than organic] to our customers. We do, however, follow organic methods in our production."
Mike and his wife, Dale, have been retailing the milk from their dairy farm since 1995 through farmers' markets, an on-farm store, and a home delivery service.
Managing the farm and the processing enterprise is a family affair for the Smyths. Mike and Dale wouldn't have it any other way. "It has to be a family effort," Mike said. "You can't hire people to do this."
Mike keeps everything in balance on the farm. "What a lot of [people] don't understand [is that processing milk] is another whole full time job in addition to the full time job you already have [milking cows]," Mike explained. "You have to learn how to allocate time and labor. You can't cross between the two [jobs]. Everything has to be kept separate for sanitary purposes. You can't be in bottling milk and run out quick to breed a cow."
Three of Mike and Dale's five children work with them daily: Anne works in the processing plant and helps with the delivery route; Peter, who just returned from military service abroad, is now helping with the cattle and hay harvest; Sam, the Smyths' youngest child, helps with the cattle on evenings and weekends when he's not at college. Sam plans to stay on at the farm after he earns his Animal Science degree from the University of Connecticut in Storrs.
The Smyths' son, Dan, works part time in the dairy plant. Their daughter Bridget was very active on the farm; now she is busy parenting four young children. Anne's husband, Jeremy Dugas, also helps at the farm when he's not working. Jeremy manages the herd's reproduction, taking care of all the breeding and pregnancy checking.
Dale handles all of the retailing for the farm. She manages the on-farm store and attends four farmers' markets each week, offering the farm's array of dairy products. One of the farmers' markets, in New Haven, near Yale University, runs year-round.
Trinity Farm sells half-gallons and quarts of whole, one percent, skim, whole chocolate, and low-fat coffee milk in returnable glass bottles. Eggnog is added to the list during the holiday season. They also bottle heavy cream and half-and-half in pint sizes. Homemade butter and six flavors of yogurt are available as well.
"Coffee milk is milk with coffee flavoring and a little sugar added," Mike Smyth said about the farm's flavored milk. "It's very popular here in New England. Our customers asked us to make it, so we did."
The pricing on Trinity's milk ranges from $3.50 for a quart of coffee milk to $3.50 for a half-gallon of whole milk. "We charge premium prices because we have a premium product," Mike said.
Others agree about the high quality of the Smyths' milk. The farmers market in New Haven recently gave its Artisan Beverages Award to Trinity Farm. Edible Nutmeg, a quarterly magazine dedicated to promoting Connecticut-grown foods, featured the farm and its award in one of its recent issues.
The publicity will hopefully bring more customers to the farm. "We are still building our customer base," Mike explained. "It takes a long time to build the market. We have a lot of good, steady customers, but we could handle more."
"We host a large farm tour with the Farm Bureau each year," Mike added about the farm's marketing strategy. "The event brings over 1,000 people to the farm. We develop several customers through the tour."
Success starts in the barn
Behind the Smyths' high-quality dairy products is a herd of 30 Holsteins and their supply of quality raw milk.
"Everything starts in the barn," Mike explained. "The environment the cow lives in makes all the difference - fresh air, clean water, clean, dry bedding. High quality dairy products require high quality raw milk."
The Smyths keep their cows' environment as comfortable as possible. The cows are grazed during the growing season; in the heat of summer, however, the cows stay inside a tie-stall barn while the sun is out and return to the pasture at night. Mike feels the cows stay healthier and more comfortable in the shade of the barn.
Come winter time, which in Connecticut means plenty of snow, the Smyths' cows spend about four hours during the day in an outside exercise lot. The rest of the time they're in the barn.
Stalls in the barn are padded with rubber mattresses and bedded with wood shavings.
The cows at Trinity Farm are fed a simple, steady ration of pasture, when available, dry grass hay, and an 18 percent protein grain mix. According to their DHIA records, the Smyths' herd averages 17,000 pounds of milk a year. "We don't feed for components or push for production," Mike explained. "Instead we have a lot of cows that last a long time."
Now that Peter and Sam are helping with the farm work, the Smyths have started making their own hay. Since they own only 20 acres, all of which is in pasture, they rent 60 acres of hay ground from a neighbor. Prior to making their own hay, they were buying a lot of New York and Canadian hay. "Purchasing hay was becoming cost prohibitive," Mike said about the decision to switch.
"When it was just me and Dale working the farm, I worked in the barn full-time and didn't get into crops," Mike continued. "Now that the kids are grown, there's a lot more labor available to harvest our own crops."
"We follow organic practices, but have never certified because of the feed," Mike explained. "We use a local feed mill and I wanted to stay with them. They provide great service and nutritional support; they're just down the road [in Manchester]; they're very helpful and I like to deal with them."
The Central Connecticut Cooperative Farmers Association where the Smyths purchase their grain is one of few remaining agricultural businesses in the area. "We don't have the services we used to," Mike said. "We're in a part of the state with only a few dairy farms and there just isn't the business for [dairy-related businesses]. We're able to get what we need; we buy a lot from Pennsylvania.
Trinity Farm is located mid-way between Hartford, Connecticut and Springfield, Massachusetts. Their land abuts Interstate-91. Despite being a 15-minute drive from two of New England's largest cities, Mike said they really don't have any problems with their location. "We don't have any really close neighbors," he said. "Our manure is taken care of - there's enough open land. I don't know how long [these conditions] will last, though."
"Land is very valuable around here," he continued. "[Prices and development] have backed off the last couple years, but a home lot still goes for $60,000."
Behind the decision to bottle
The Smyths' proximity to urban markets was part of their decision to pursue bottling their milk. "[Bottling milk] was the plan we had all along," Mike said. "We're in a suburban environment."
And, bottling milk on the farm is what Mike grew up with.
"In 1915, my grandfather was the first in this area to pasteurize milk," Mike explained. "With the tuberculosis at the time, local doctors would send their patients to him for pasteurized milk."
Mike's father continued the family business of milking cows and bottling milk.
After high school, Mike went off to college at the University of Connecticut and earned his degree in Dairy Manufacturing. "I thought I was going to be working on the family operation," Mike said.
Instead, land became valuable for development and the family farm was sold.
With no farm to return to, Mike worked in quality control at a dairy plant for five years and then as a herdsman for five years while Dale worked as a registered nurse. In 1984, Mike's dad gave him a 20-acre parcel of bare land that had been separate from the home farm. Mike and Dale purchased cows from the farm where Mike worked, housing them there until they were ready to milk cows on their own.
In May of 1984, after building a dairy from scratch, Mike and Dale started milking cows on their new farm.
In the early 1990s they started from scratch again, this time building their bottling plant.
"If I had it to do over again, I'd do it all at once," Mike said about the development of the farm. "This is a high capital [enterprise], though, and it was hard to put the money together. At the time, nobody had heard of bottling your own milk."
He'd also build the bottling plant differently. "We bought used pieces from different sources and put the system together," Mike explained. "I wouldn't recommend doing what we did. It led to a lot of difficulties. At that time, though, there wasn't a real good source of equipment for small plants. If I could do it again, I'd spend more and have a regular equipment company come in."
Looking to the future
With the fourth generation of Smyths joining the family enterprise, plans are being made for improving the operation.
"We are planning on getting into cheese," Mike said about the future. "Jeremy and I recently took a cheese-making short-course at the University of Connecticut. We intend to start with cottage cheese as our first product."
"And we're going to build a separate building for the farm's store," Mike continued. "Right now the store is in a corner of the tie-stall barn."
"Other than that, [Dale and I] are looking at taking on less responsibilities, but we're going to keep working. The next generation is taking on more and more responsibility all the time. With them, Trinity Farm is going to continue producing high quality, local dairy products for the people of Connecticut."
