Steeped in organic principles

GILMAN, Wis. — As a child, Kevin Mahalko watched his father, Ken, farm conventionally with a grazing mindset. Growing up immersed in these ideas led him to pursue organic dairy farming.

Mahalko officially transitioned the farm to organic production and joined Organic Valley in 2011.

“We were really operating as organic since about 2003,” Mahalko said. “We spent a few years making sure it would work for us. Then, for a few years, it was hard to get a spot on a truck up this way.”

The health benefits to the cattle and the land and eventually the consumer and community are among the primary reasons why Mahalko said he is committed to organic production.

“Organic grazing is healthy,” Mahalko said. “It is a more viable method of production. When we were conventional, I remember watching other conventional farmers going out of business day by day. Within Organic Valley, we have a lot of smaller farms along with some bigger ones, which is great. We need to have all sizes.”

Mahalko milks 45 Holsteins once a day on his family’s dairy near Gilman. His ideal cow for grazing is a medium-sized, big-bodied cow with good feet and legs and high, tight udders. Mahalko relies on A.I. for breeding his herd, and pays close attention to the body condition scores of each cow.

“Brisket width is the key, you don’t want to be grazing narrow cows,” Mahalko said.

Three years ago, Mahalko went to once-a-day milking, freeing time to make hay, perform other jobs around the farm and attend meetings.

The Mahalko family has been involved in grazing networks since the 1990s. Mahalko has worked as a grazing educator since 2008.

Once he joined Organic Valley, Mahalko took on leadership duties. He is a member of the dairy executive committee for the dairy north-central region of Wisconsin for the CROPP Cooperative of which Organic Valley is a brand.

“I truly value the CROPP cooperative,” Mahalko said. “As producers we have the ability to talk to the people we have hired, and we have the same with the CEO and the management team.

In addition to his leadership involvement in Organic Valley, Mahalko is dedicated to grazing efforts working with GrassWorks Inc., and River Country Resource Conservation and Development Council Inc.

With grazing being his passion, Mahalko was among the earliest to embrace grass-fed milk production, joining the first route to cover central and northern Wisconsin in 2013.

“Within Organic Valley we were able to work with the team that was involved in setting the cooperative’s standards for it,” Mahalko said. “There were certain grazing farmers that pushed them to explore it, and the management took the gamble to get it started. It’s really growing. I believe there are 270 or 280 farms producing Grassmilk now.”

Mahalko is entirely grass-fed and has 118 acres of pasture dedicated to rotational grazing.

“I really focus on the timing of the grazing, the height of the grass and species of grasses,” Mahalko said.

Mahalko has found that relying on native grasses as much as possible is a key to successful grazing in Chippewa County.

“We want to have a bunch of clover, white and red,” Mahalko said. “Kentucky bluegrass is probably still the number one thing we have here.”

Mahalko also said they have quack grass and timothy. He has also planted a GrassWorks mix, which is a blend of ryegrass, festulolium, meadow fescue, soft tall fescue, a little bit of orchard grass, and different things like chicory, plantain and trefoil. He said they have planted alfalfa in the past, but it does not last in the heavy soil.

With once-daily milking, Mahalko typically moves his cows after milking, although in the summer, he will move them twice a day if needed. He outwinters the cows as much as possible. In the spring, he drags this area with an S-tine Brillion to break up surface compaction and reseeds using an grain drill. He varies the area outwintered from year to year to distribute fertility.

In the first month of grazing, Mahalko makes hay off his pastures because the cows are unable to keep up with the growth. In addition to that forage, he makes hay, haylage and baleage from an additional 112 acres for winter feeding.

Like many central Wisconsin dairy farmers, Mahalko struggled to make hay this year.

“We pretty much had one day in June that we could even make hay,” Mahalko said. “We hired a crew, which we typically don’t do, for a majority of first crop filling silo. We just had to get it done, to get it back into some kind of growth stage. It was mid-July before we could even get back out. We had standing water for nearly a month. I’ve never seen that before.”

Mahalko said he works with cover crops like triticale, winter wheat and winter rye to help reduce small weed pressure in his fields and paddocks.

“That is a big point of pride here on the farm — weed control,” Mahalko said. “When my dad started farming here, the farm was pretty depleted, especially on lime. It was very acidic, with a low pH. He put 10 tons to the acre of lime on just to try to get it balanced.”

Timber on the farm had been harvested prior to Ken’s purchase, leaving a bevy of stumps throughout the fields.

“Every summer I can remember in the 1970s, we spent clearing stumps, doing some each year,” Mahalko said. “He was a hand weed picker, too. We would pick spreader loads of yellow rocket and other weeds.”

Economically, he said he thinks the organic model of dairy production makes the most sense.

“I just want to have my costs as low as possible and have them live off the land as much as they can,” Mahalko said. “If a conventional farmer is thinking about grazing, there is a good balance point of feeding grain mix and grazing and being successful.”