Davis Farm

A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Tammy at Davis Farm. You can also follow on Facebook.

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00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Tammy at Davis Farm. Good afternoon, Tammy, how are you? I'm well, thank you. How about you? I'm good. It's a beautiful day in Minnesota. Is it lovely in Vermont? Oh my goodness, yes. It's absolutely amazing.

00:29
Finally, we've had this ridiculous humidity that just we're not used to. So today is a glorious, you know, they call it a bluebird day. It's just blue skies and green, green pastures and cool weather. It's a bluebird day here too, but it's muggy as hell. So I'm so, you know what? My heart goes out to you because I thought I was going to die last week and the week before. Yeah. At least it's not raining.

00:59
I have talked about this a lot. It's rained a lot in Minnesota this spring, so we're really happy to have some sun. Yeah, we've had a lot of rain. We had an incredible amount of flooding again, which we've had this 100-year flood now, literally on the same day, two years apart. That's not 100 years. Indeed. Indeed. All right, Tammy, tell me what you guys do at Davis Farm. Yeah, well, we're a dairy farm. So we...

01:29
We're milking probably about 70 cows now. We used to be a conventional dairy farm. We shipped to DFA for decades. And then in 2016, we made the decision to go organic. And then in 2000, shortly thereafter, I don't know, 18, 19, we decided to go grass fed. So we stopped feeding grain.

01:57
and we're fully organic now. Very nice. I have to ask, is that an expensive proposition because I keep hearing that going organic, anything costs a lot of money to get certified. Yeah, that's a great question. For us, it was not too much of a transition. The grain situation was kind of brutal because you have for the first year,

02:24
For us, we had to buy organic grain but still ship at conventional prices. They did give you, I think, like $3 per hundred wheat to help with the grain transition. But other than that, that was a little bit tough. But all of our land and most of our practices have always been organic anyway. We've always been a pasture-based farm, so there was not a lot for us to switch. We should have done this 30 years ago. But, you know.

02:53
how life goes. And so anyway, so, um, but it has been a great, a great, um, move for us, um, for our business. Good. So I know nothing about dairy cattle and I've been looking for someone to talk to about it. So guess what? You're it. Oh, fun. So you said you have 70 cows you're milking. Yes. That is correct. Yes.

03:20
Okay, so are you selling that milk to, I don't know where milk goes to, to be sold at grocery stores? Sure. That's great questions. So we belong to a co-op. As I mentioned, we belong to DFA for years. And then we transitioned and we went with Organic Valley co-op. So we shipped to Organic Valley. And they...

03:49
They basically pick up the milk and then once it leaves the farm, it leaves the farm as fluid milk and then they go and they take it and they do the marketing and most of our milk goes into fluid milk or cheese in this area, in the New England area. And then, yeah, I guess I should say that I'm from Northern Vermont. We're about 45 minutes from the Canadian border. Okay. So in our area.

04:20
Most of our milk goes into New York state and then gets processed or distributed. Okay, then that leads me to my next question. When people who sell milk from their cows sell it to a co-op and that milk goes to be processed, pasteurized, whatever, to be sold in gallons or half gallons at the store, it's not just your batch of milk in that.

04:47
jug, it can be mixed with other people's cow's milk, right? That is correct. Yes. So right now we're on the grass truck because we're a grass-fed farm. So all of our milk is picked up with all the other grass-fed farms in the area. When we were conventional, it was a huge truck that would come and it was all the farms in the area. They're on a milk route.

05:15
And so then it would just come and pick up all the different farms. Now every farm, I don't know if, if sort of you were getting to this. So every farm, when they pick up our milk, um, vials are taken samples of our milk. So everybody's, um, milk is tested and, um, you know, and then the tank is tested to make sure like everybody, you know, if somebody had bad milk, you know, um,

05:45
know, we might have to get dumped. I mean, it depends upon what happened. Yeah, that was going to be my next question because I think that when I was young, I assumed that the milk and the jug in the fridge probably came from the same cow. And as I've gotten older and talked to people in the business, I'm like, oh, it's a mix of different cows milk. It is, but it's fun because, you know, every area has a lot number. So, you know, when we used to ship to conventional

06:14
You know, we would work with the elementary schools and we could find, you know, where, you know, our milk went to, like which, which school or whatever, because you could look at the lot number and you know where your milk has gone. So that was kind of fun. Yeah, I mean, it's government regulated, so they're going to want to keep track of where stuff comes from and where it's going. So my next question is, do you sell raw milk?

06:43
from the farm because we can do that here in Minnesota if we had dairy cows. Yeah, we're able to do that too in Vermont. Vermont has done a great job with lobbying for raw milk sales. Again, it's highly regulated. We have a separate certification for that, separate requirements and criteria that have to be met in order to do that. But that is

07:13
actually quite a bit of raw milk. And do you, I don't know, I assume you know who your customers are, so you probably have an idea of what they're doing with the raw milk. Are they using it for drinking milk? Are they using it to make cheese or yogurt, all of the above? What do they do with it? Yeah, that's a great question too. Most all of our customers use the milk to drink. There are, you know, most everybody does make yogurt. A few people make

07:43
cheese, not a lot. But you can't use raw milk for another sale. So nobody's using our raw milk to make any other products to sell. It's just for home consumption. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the same way here. I think. I don't know. Yeah. That's a pretty common thing. Yep.

08:12
Can, okay, this is gonna sound crazy. Can raw milk be sold in grocery stores in Vermont? No, not in Vermont. You cannot sell raw milk in grocery stores. And we just recently are able to bring it to a farmers market. And that's a different, there's a two tiered licensure to sell raw milk and it's not a license, it's just whatever, certification.

08:41
and so and you can do that. I don't know all of the, I haven't done that. We just have a great customer base. People come to the farm so we have not branched out into that area but I know that you can sell either vouchers and they come to the farm to get it or you can bring a certain amount of milk with you to a farmer's market now. Okay the reason I ask is because when we were visiting my parents in Maine back in 2014

09:08
They have a general store down the road from them. They live in Whitefield, Maine. And the general store, they sell, basically everything is local. Local things that are made, local things that are grown. And they had raw, unpasteurized cow's milk in their cooler. And I was dumbfounded. And we got, I think, a quart and took it up to the counter to buy it. Because I love raw cow's milk, especially for coffee.

09:37
And I don't get it very often. And when I walked up to the counter, I said, how long has Maine been able to sell raw cow's milk? And the woman looked at me and she said, for a while. She said, are you, where are you from? And I said, Minnesota, but I grew up in Maine. And she's like, huh. She said, I thought I heard just a little tiny bit of Minnesota in there. And there's a tie in for her too to Minnesota.

10:06
And I said, yeah, I said, um, I said, we can't get raw cow's milk in Minnesota in a store in a public venue. And she said, really? And I said, Nope. I said, you have to go to the farm and get the milk from the cooler from where the farmer milked the cow and put the milk in the cooler. And he, she was like, really? I said, yeah. And she said, well, she said, I don't know how long it's been.

10:36
legal in Maine, but it's been legal for a while. I said, thank you, Jesus. Yes. And she's laughed at me. Well, it is. I mean, there are lots of people who grew up in raw milk and have a really hard time trying to find it. And every state is different. I don't know how many states in the US allow it to be sold in a public venue, but I know there's not a lot. Yeah, I don't know either. I know that.

11:03
I don't know, about 20 years ago, we went to South Carolina to visit one of my cousins. I know that when we were down there, they had low pasteurization, which is an interesting thing in and of itself. That was able to be sold in the stores. I haven't really looked into other places very much. I've just been very, very thankful for the work that's been done in Vermont.

11:33
Vermont is a very low populated state and, you know, it used to be predominantly farms, dairy farms. And so to have that leaving, you know, it was harder and harder to get raw milk. So I was very grateful when these laws passed.

12:01
sell or can't ship their goods at all anywhere, even in the state. And every cottage food producer I know is like, they're working on it. They're working on it. And I'm like, I wish they would work on it and get it passed. I wish there was more information and more support for drinking raw milk across the board. I grew up in the city, so I didn't grow up.

12:30
on a dairy farm. I came here to Vermont when I was about 22 and met my husband. But that was all new to me and just the health benefits and there's just so many, I mean, like everything, you need to be educated. You need to educate yourself. Don't take someone else's word for it. But it just, there's a lot of misinformation out there and it just, it makes me kind of sad. Yep. You and a whole lot of other people too. You are not alone in that boat, I'm telling you.

13:00
So do you, if you have dairy cattle, then you must breed for the babies that you have more milk coming in. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. When we, when we were shipping to conventional market, we, you know, we'd used AI and, you know, we would joke. My husband and I would, you know, have our date night and choose our bowls. And but with, um.

13:24
Pastry management with all of our children, with everything that was going on, we kept finding it harder and harder to schedule breeders. We've just been through a lot in the farm. We mostly just use bulls for breeding now. There's a lot of different thoughts on that. We have a mixed herd, so we have Holstein Jersey Crosses. We just breed too.

13:53
depends upon what year to a jersey and then for the younger stock and then we'll breed back the next generation to a Holstein. Nice. So on average, how many, okay, number one, do you only have like one, I don't know what the word is, batch of calves a year or do you stagger them so you have a couple? Yeah, another great question. We have done it.

14:21
different ways throughout the years. We tried to go seasonal one year, so we were having calves all in the fall because there's a premium for fall milk production. We tried to do all calving in the spring to have maybe a couple months off while the cows were dry and then so that everybody's calving at the same time and then the cows are getting fresh grass.

14:49
As soon as they calve, now we pretty much just try to calve in the warmer months. We just try to have the bulk of our calves now. We start calving maybe the end of May through the end of October.

15:14
And then of course, you know, we always have those teenage pregnancies during the winter. Those, oh shoot, whoopsie. Surprise. How that happened, but. Surprise. Yep. Okay. So that leads me to, you said you have 70 cows, cows, not, not the bulls aren't included in that number. Right. Um, we have about 70 milkers. We have.

15:43
I don't know how many dry cows we have right now. Probably just a handful of dry cows right now. I don't know how many heifers we have left to calve this year. There's probably again probably a handful there and then the young stock there's probably we have two groups of calves that have calved this year and then the the calves that will be ready to breed next year.

16:10
So probably another, so we probably have about 100 head total in cows. And that's, you know, we used to milk about a hundred or a little over a hundred. I mean, we had about 160 animals or so. So we're down. We're, you know, we're phasing out a little bit here. So maybe, yeah, we have just a little over a hundred animals right now. Okay.

16:38
So that leads me to two questions. First one is cows typically have one calf, on average one? Yeah, their gestation is the same as ours. So they calve every nine months or so. Well, we like to have them within 13 months spread again. So. Yeah, but they're not like goats. Goats tend to have two or three babies at a shot and cows.

17:05
usually have one. They have single births, right? Their twins are, they can be and we love it when we have twins. They need to both be female or both be male. One is a female and one is a male. The female tends to be a free martin. She's not, doesn't typically have parts to breed.

17:35
So if there is a free Martin, do you guys raise it for a while and sell it? Um, no, typically we, we just sell calves, you know, within a couple of days we rate, you know, we, we let them have their mom's, um, the colostrum and then probably keep them for a couple of days and then we just put them on the beef truck. Okay. And that leads me to my second question. If you have male calves,

18:03
Do they hang around for long or the same thing? They go on the beach. We save, it depends upon, it depends upon where we are in our cycles of breeding. We will raise one or two bulls to use. We have in the past raised them as steers for meat, but we've been raising Highland cows over the past.

18:29
I don't know, 15 years or so. So we've been using the Highlands for beef pretty regularly now. Okay. All right. The reason I asked all that is because when I was growing up, my grandpa had friends that lived down the road and they had a dairy farm. And I just assumed, because I was young, that they just kept all the babies. I thought that the babies just grew up and became mama and daddy cows.

18:58
That's why they had so many cows all the time. And then I discovered in my teens that no, some of those cows went to the grocery store or freezer camp as my grandpa's friend called it. And I was heartbroken for a little bit. And then I realized that that was silly. I didn't need to be heartbroken because beef is beef and it's yummy and people eat it. So a lot of people do not necessarily understand how this all works. You're right, they don't.

19:28
They don't. I actually have some friends that came to visit and we got into talking about what we were eating and I was like, oh yeah, you know, we're eating our own meat because we raise everything. And they were like, oh, no thank you. I'd rather go to the grocery store. And to this day, we still joke about it because it's like they would rather eat something from the grocery store, which is, you know.

19:56
similar to what we have except we just know what's gone into our meat. So, but yeah, people are very disconnected from the food chain. Yep, they sure are. And I was one of those people because I didn't know. And as I've gotten older and learned more and discovered more, I understand that if I happen to meet a steer at somebody's farm and if I happen to buy beef from them, I'm

20:25
I might be eating the steer that I met, which was alive and friendly and let me pet its nose, you know? Indeed, yes. And we are terrible because our kids have often named whatever we're raising for meat and they'll joke at the dinner table, oh, we're eating so and so. And I know other people don't find the humor in that, but my kids did. It's probably a way of them not...

20:54
not coping with but processing the fact that they knew that animal before it became meat. Yeah and I think that they like the fact that the animals were cared for and you know taken care of and and it was also expensive to eat so I think we were all very grateful to have food. Absolutely. It's not a very lucrative lifestyle. Yeah.

21:17
It's not. The other thing is if you live on any kind of farm or homestead or a place where you're going to have chickens or rabbits or goats or cows or whatever, I don't name our creatures unless they are pets. And we have a pet. We have a dog. Her name is Maggie and we love her to pieces. We have three barn cats.

21:43
They have names because they have managed to survive being barncats. The chickens do not have names. We don't name our chickens because chickens die for no reason out of the door all the time. So we don't name our chickens. I don't need to name my chickens. When we first got chickens, we had four and they're distinguishing monikers or A, B, C, and D. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard. We have chickens as well.

22:13
We just have so many of them. We just, yeah, I can't name them. Plus we've had them for so many chickens over the years. We've run out of names. I think the only chicken we specifically named was one that came in a batch, and it didn't look like the other ones. Oh yeah, so you could tell which one it was. And its name was Oddball because it didn't look like the other chickens. Oh.

22:41
That was the only chicken we've actually given a name. And Oddball died like last year. And I was not heartbroken at all because we never, I don't like hang out with the chickens. I don't like chickens. I like eggs. I don't like chickens. Yeah. So when my husband came in and said, Oddball died, I was like, that's a bummer. Yeah. And that was kinda it. However, I made a big mistake last fall when our barn cat had kittens.

23:12
First experience, first experience with this. Oh, good to hear. They were super cute. Yeah. And Mama is a really fluffy cat. And so some of the kittens were short haired and some of them were really fluffy like mom. And we of course named all the kittens because they were adorable. Yeah. I think one, yeah, one kitten out of six survived ultimately. And is actually living her best life with someone who adopted her.

23:41
This time, this spring, when mom had babies again, we did not name them anything special. Like one was yellow and white and had black spots. So that was spot. And one had a head tilt for a while. So his name is Tilt. He's the one we kept. He's doing great. And every one of the seven kittens survived except for one. And that one actually died at like a week old. There was something wrong with it. So.

24:10
Six out of seven survived this time. That's awesome. Yeah. Yep. And they all went. Barn kitties are the best. We love. I love kittens. My kids all have allergies, so I can't have them in the house. I love having them at the barn in there. They get loved on very much by all of our customers. Even our chickens, people love our chickens. We have a couple of people who bring food to them when they come to get milk. So they're actually quite.

24:40
quite friendly and very sweet. So we just have a, we have an issue with a fox that comes and takes them off one by one. Drives me nuts, but other than that, so. Well, I was very careful with this litter to not get attached to any of them until we decided we were keeping Tilt, and Tilt is a boy, and he made it to eight weeks, and I said to my husband, I said,

25:11
He was like, well yeah, but if he gets hit by a car, you're gonna be really sad. And I was like, that's different. Yeah, yeah. So.

25:20
But anyway, yeah, don't name animals that are destined for the freezer or who have a high likelihood of just dying because you don't know why they died. Yeah, yeah, that is tough. That's part of the life cycle of farming. And it's something that I feel like benefited our kids and that a lot of kids don't see. And they're able to.

25:49
to deal with their own things, I think, because they've had such a versatile experience on the farm, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I hate to say it, but living on a farm is a really good way to be introduced to sadness and disappointment at some point earlier than most people are. Yeah, it's a lot of great things too. I mean, we've had the benefit. My mother and father-in-law lived next to us and my husband's families.

26:15
rather large. So the kids, the cousins all grew up together. My sister-in-law lives in my mother-in-law and father-in-law's house now, and then my brother-in-law lives on the backside of the property. And now my kids are all coming home now too. So my daughter and her husband and our new grandbaby are living in our apartment, and another son and his fiance are living on the property. And then another daughter is getting married.

26:45
She and her fiance will be buying our guest house. So, you know, everybody's coming home. So it's been nice for the kids to have a space to come back to, too. So it's a family farm for real. I mean, everybody, yeah, nobody works on the farm. Our son Cedric has a manure spreading business. So he started spreading manure when he was 16, bought his first tractor.

27:12
a newer spreader and then he does a lot of other things as well. He's very diversified. He's been around the farm. We thought our youngest daughter was going to take over the farm, but she's very into horses. We have horses. She graduated from high school a year ago and has been starting an equine business. She gives horseback riding lessons.

27:41
She ran two summer camps this summer, which was really fun to watch her do that. So, but nobody's very interested in the dairy. Yup. I'm not, I'm, I'm not surprised, but that's how it goes sometimes. It is. And it's okay. I mean, it makes me sad to think this is, you know, we're third generation farmers here on this farm. It makes me sad. But I.

28:09
We've done some other things. You know, we've been having, hosting weddings on the farm. We have a beautiful view of Mott Mansfield. Um, you know, we have a compost business. I have a guest house. So we've been doing a lot of other things. Um, we actually went to once a day milking about, uh, just, just about, um, during COVID and, um, and that's been, that's been great. That was a great transition for us. Um, it's.

28:38
afforded my husband some time in the afternoon, which he's never, never ever had. So, yeah, so I'm sad. I'm sad to see dairy farms just going by the wayside. It's sad. It's sad to see that lifestyle. I've been very blessed. I've loved being a farmer's wife. I loved raising my kids here. I'm sad that that's going by the wayside. But we've conserved our land.

29:08
No developments can be built here and hopefully our kids can enjoy this space doing other things. Great. So, when you say once a day milking, are you talking about the machine milking? You're not talking about milking that many cows by hand. Oh, goodness. No, no, no. We have, yeah. And we had a tie stall barn and then in 1993, we built a new barn and started milking in a...

29:37
milking parlor in 95. And yeah, so we have a free stall and a milking parlor. But we've always milked twice a day. And then like I said, 2000, when we had gone grain, when we went grass fed, we got rid of the grain, the milk production dropped quite a bit. And so we had thought about going to once a day milking and

30:07
there were a lot of things that happened around here. And so we just made the decision to go to once a day. And it was actually a great, great decision. And the cows didn't object. They didn't, you know, just like, just like us, when we're nursing, we adjust, they adjust, they had really dropped in milk anyway. So milking twice a day was a lot of, um, uh, a lot of effort, you know, it was, I think it was, it was cost effective for us to go to

30:37
You know, now their milk has it. We were really new to grass fed, so no grain. So we were in an adjustment period. And I would say, I think this year for the first year, we've done a really good job of feeding them and they're making pretty good milk. I mean, pretty good milk for a grass fed. Not like some of these amazing cows that are on grain. I mean, they make so much milk, it's crazy.

31:06
But we're doing a good job. Good. I was going to say, is there a difference in how much milk fat there is when you change from grain to grass-fed? I think that's more affected by the breeding than the grain. We produce really high butter fat because our cows are.

31:35
across. So we we often do really, really well. So you get paid. So you get paid by the by the butter fat and the protein in the milk. That's sort of what is, you know, what, what the bulk of your payment is. So having a really high butter fat and really high protein is, is a good thing. So and so we're that's why a lot of farmers are

32:06
are Jersey farmers because they make a lot of butter fat. But we do pretty well. So I would say no, I think it's more the grain helps to balance milk production. You're able to say, oh, they're not getting enough protein in the grass because it's getting late in the season. So then you supplement with the grain and we don't have that luxury right now.

32:35
Okay, so I have so many questions and I don't want to keep you too long. I know a lot about the East Coast because I grew up in Maine. I know Vermont's cold in the wintertime and I know that they're probably not eating green grass out of the field, out of the pasture in December, January and February. So are you buying hay for them? So we put up our own feed. Okay. I mean, we're pretty, we've got quite a few acres and then we rent.

33:05
another, you know, 100 or 150 acres and get a good crop off of that. So we put up haylage, we put up the round bales. Then we can put up some pretty good feed. Um, past couple of years has been a little bit difficult because of all the rain and the flooding. So, um, that was a little difficult, but we actually cut back a little bit on our herd to be able to, um, be able to feed everybody through the winter. Okay.

33:34
I was just wondering, because I know that a couple, well, I don't know how many years ago, but a while ago, there was a shortage in hay and people had to buy or bring in hay. Yeah, we did. We did two, three. Well, I mean, pretty much most of the winters we will buy feed from other organic farms in the area. So we'll get in touch with Organic Valley and they'll send us lists of farmers in our area.

34:03
that have organic feed. And then, you know, like right about now, I mean, we're, we're, we're done with our second cut. So we can pretty much project what our third cut will be. We might be able to get a fourth cut this year, but, you know, we'll start looking at how many bales we have and start preparing for the winter, letting other farmers know if we have to buy hay.

34:33
What kind of hay are you feeding them? Because there's so many different kinds of hay. Yeah, we just do straight grass. We don't add to our fields or we might, it's mostly clover. If we enhance our pastures, we'll maybe put some clover and festiolium in there if we get time to frost seed, but it's just been hard.

35:02
We have some really good help now, but it's been hard because we haven't had the greatest help in the past. So we haven't been able to do a lot of things that we would like to do. But yeah, it's just, you know, we don't plant any crops. We don't plant alfalfa or any of the grasses. Okay. I just, I don't know anything about this. So you're the only person I think of today to ask these kinds of questions and you are so forthcoming. Thank you for doing that.

35:31
We're pretty, we're very, we're minimalist. We're not, you know, we're not charged to, you know, put up the best grasses or, you know, I mean, there's a lot. I mean, it's fun. I mean, there's, I mean, you can spend all of your days managing, managing the farm, but there's other, other things we also do. Okay. And then I have one more question, should be a fun one and then we'll wrap it up.

36:01
baby bottle babies for calves. For the calves? Yeah. Yeah. We bottle feed. Uh, we let them stay with their moms, but then we bottle feed all of them for probably, probably, um, maybe a week or so. And then they go on to sucker pails. Okay. I was going to say that's the worst week of your life, isn't it? When you've got a bottle feed them little boogers. We don't mind. I know.

36:29
Teaching them to drink out of the buckets used to be, that used to be so hard. I used to teach elementary school and I would go out before I went to work and feed the calves and oh my goodness gracious, teaching them how to drink from a bucket was, yeah, you'd lose your mind. So I like feeding them from the bottle and kids love to come and help feed and you know, for the most part, that's actually a fun job.

36:56
Do the calves get milk drunk like babies get milk drunk? Yes. They're very cute. They really are. They're a lot of fun. And we moved them into a, we had a really bad windstorm in 2017 and we lost our barns. And we were able to rebuild one of them. One of them hasn't been rebuilt yet. And then we had another really, really bad windstorm at Christmas Eve a couple of years ago. And it...

37:25
destroyed our heifer barns. So we're still short couple of barns, but they go into groups of five. So they're like, you know, we usually raise about 20 calves. So they're in these little groups, these little groups and they're like, you know, just little family members and they're very, they're very darling. And so after they've been fed, they're, they're, they are very milk drunk and a lot of fun.

37:55
Cause I watched some of the barn kittens, you know, nurse from mom and they would just go fall over on each other and go to sleep. They do, or they get the zoomies. That's, that's the other thing. The little calves, like, you know, like a puppy will get the zoomies and run around. So they're, they are, they're very fun to watch. And often, you know, as we've gotten older, we will let them just go with their moms out in the field. And that's an awful lot of fun to watch the calves.

38:23
running out with a herd. They're very silly. Yep. I love what you're doing. I can hear how happy you are about what you're doing. We do. We have a lot of fun. I have to say, like I said, my kids are great. My grandkids love, love being here. So, um, and it's always fun to share. You know, like I said, I grew up in the city, so this is, was all new to me. And I'm, I feel very blessed to, to have, um, stumbled upon this lifestyle.

38:54
Well, I'm really happy for you because it's amazing when you find the thing that makes you happy or you find your calling. And if they are the same thing, that's even better. Yeah. Well, my husband will definitely say, I mean, this is all he's ever done. And, you know, it's a, it is definitely a lifestyle. Mm hmm. Yep. I, okay. I'm going to go on a limb for a second. I think that a lot of people have adopted.

39:23
lifestyles since COVID. Yes. And it sounds like this was a before COVID thing for you guys, but I have talked to a lot of people over the last year for this podcast. And I would say 85% of the people that I have talked to have come to the thing they're doing because they had time to reevaluate what they were doing during COVID. Yeah. I would say that that is true because our raw milk sales.

39:52
I mean, they quadrupled during COVID. And I think because people wanted to come to the farm to get food. Mm-hmm. And it has been, I mean, it's always been, my husband and I love to talk to people about what we do. And I would say since COVID, you're absolutely right. We've met so many people who are wanting to make yogurt and make cheese and make ice cream and just slow things down a bit. And I think that

40:22
that I've appreciated that from people. Yep. I think, again, I've said this a bunch of times. I think that COVID was a terrible thing to happen. But some really amazing good things came out of it. Oh, yeah. I did, too. It was a horrible, horrible thing. But I think anything that causes us to stop and reevaluate and look.

40:48
at how we can do things better is a great thing. And I think that that caused so many of us to do that. I mean, I feel guilty seeing this, but I mean, we weren't affected. I mean, there was nothing for us that stopped. We still had to milk cows. We still had to take care of all of the things here. So, and we were very fortunate. Nothing was interrupted, milk pick up.

41:16
know, those milk truck drivers need awards for picking up milk in all of the weather and, you know, farms that are hard to get to anyway. They're amazing people. But yeah, for us, things didn't stop. But people, more people came to the farm and that's been a blessing. And we've enjoyed getting to know more and more people and sharing about what we do. Awesome.

41:44
I'm so glad that it worked out for you because it didn't work out great for some people, but for others it did. It really did. Yeah. Us being one of them, we actually moved during COVID and we are so happy we did it. Yeah. All right, Tammy, thank you for entertaining my questions about dairy cows and milk and how it all works. I really appreciate it. Have a great afternoon. Thank you. All right.