“Isn’t all milk local milk?”

No, all milk is not local. In fact, milk sold in the Northeast can come from as far away as California, and its quality varies widely. Milk these days travels an average of 508 miles to get from the cow to your supermarket, and that number is growing. At Five Acre Farms, none of our products travels more than 275 to reach consumers.

But, is that it? Local is just about milage? No, local is about more than geography and miles traveled. Local means that you know exactly where your food comes from. Local means that you know that only sustainable farming practices and processes were used along the way. Local means that you know that your milk doesn’t contain any artificial or added hormones or antibiotics. Local means that you can know your farmers personally and can trust them.

In Washington County New York, after a very tough first grass cutting (left too long because of wet ground) dairy farmers are into their second hay cutting. Repairs have been made to choppers and equipment is ready to go.

Battenkill Valley Creamery hosted a visit to the farm today by three busloads of school kids: 78 scoops of ice cream served. Sweet!  

Farmers installed water lines to the new calf barn.

At the bottling facility, 52,000 milk jugs unloaded and ready for action.

Five Acre Farms. Positively Local.TM

Check out our very own Gemma DePalma, Five Acre Farms’ director of operations, in this interview on the gastrognomes blog, brought to you by the dairy-loving folks at Good Food Jobs.

http://www.goodfoodjobs.com/blog/gemma-depalma-director-of-operations-five-acre-farms/

Five Acre Farms. Positively Local.

A good old saying about one’s hopes for the corn crop. If your corn is that high, then it should be a pretty good year. Wet fields pushing back planting dates, spotty germination…jury is still out for Northeast Farmers.

Happy Fourth, America!

Five Acre Farms. Positively Local.

Maximum number of miles from which all Five Acre Farms products come: 275

Number of hours it typically takes Five Acre Farms milk to go from cow to bottle: 8 (sometimes even 4)

Number of hours it typically takes our milk to go from cow to shelf: 36

Number of cows in the herd when the McEachron family (our first farmers) began dairy farming in upstate New York more than a century ago: 12

Number of cows in the McEachrons’ herd today: 350

Number of breeds in the herd today (a mix accounting for higher
butterfat and calcium counts): 3 (Holstein, Jersey and Holstein-Jersey crossbreeds)

Percentage of our cows’ diet that is grass: 90

Number of minutes you have to spend hand shaking Five Acre Farms Heavy Cream in a small glass container to make your own butter at home: 20

Five Acre Farms. Positively Local.

(With credit and thanks to Harper’s)

Our summer reading list could go on and on, but since Fourth of July is upon us and there is other beach reading to be done before Labor Day, here are six books that we think would be a solid start for anyone interested in local food and farms:

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals – Michael Pollan

Small is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered – E.F. Schumacher

Food Politics – Marion Nestle

Eco-Farm: An Acres USA Primer – Charles Walters

Farm: A Year in the Life of an American Farmer – Richard Rhodes

Five Acre Farms. Positively Local.

According to the American Farmland Trust, every minute, two acres of farmland in the United States are irretrievably lost. That’s 120 acres an hour, 2,880 acres a day, and more than one million acres each year. The loss of farmland in the Northeast is particularly extreme, especially in New Jersey, portions of western Massachusetts, and New York’s Hudson River Valley. Five Acre Farms is committed to protecting farmland by working with regional farmers to get high-quality products into the marketplace and by actively promoting other companies and organizations that share a similar mission.

A few sites to visit for more information: farmland.org (American Farmlnad Trust), osiny.org (Open Space Institute), Mainefarmlandtrust.org , Hudsonvalleyfresh.com, thefarmerscow.com

Five Acre Farms. Positively Local.

Today is the last day of National Dairy Month. Do you know the somatic cell count of the milk you’re drinking? What is somatic cell count you ask? Well, in the world of dairy, it’s one of our best indicators of quality: the lower the number, the higher the quality, the healthier the cow, the creamier the milk, the fresher the taste…we could go on, but you get the picture.

Most farmers in the northeast are happy to bid adieu to a tough spring. Too wet, too cold, then too hot, then too wet: nothing like a few weeks to change that. Apple farmers are cautiously optimistic about the Fall, but recognize that it was a little too wet and they had one too many hail storms to make autumn a banner season. First wave of strawberries has come. Blueberries are here. Sugar snap peas in full swing, as well as all salad greens. First zucchini sightings: Radishes abundant. Tomato crop looks to be solid but is a few weeks away. It’s probably gotten too hot for a disastrous blight this season. String beans are closing in. All winter squash has been planted.

Thank goodness it’s summer.

Farmers play an important role in society as, among many other things, stewards of our land. Because their farming practices directly impact the quality of our drinking water, these practices are directly relevant to all of us.

For those of us living or working in Metro New York, the best example of this direct link may be that we rely on the upstate watershed, home to several hundred farmers, for our water supply. So, it’s easy to see how supporting farms that practice sustainable and therefore water-protective agriculture is important to all of us and the way we live.

The good news is that, as consumers, we can do something for ourselves and the health and well-being of our families while at the same time promoting the collective good – buying products that are made using sustainable farming practices.

Five Acre Farms – Positively Local

Five Acre Farms was recently featured on edible Manhattan!   Click here to go over there and read the article– we also have a link in our “News” section!

Check us out at Fine Fare at 175 Clinton and 545 Grand Street. Get Local!

Psyched about cool poster in entry, too!

Very pleased to be at Big Deal Supermarket in the Bronx – 1018 Morris Park Avenue

MARCH 28, 2011

I bought a quart of your Fat Free
Local Milk and tried it out in my Nespresso frother.  And the foam is perfect!  I tried the milk both cold and warm, and
I particularly love the nutty sweetness of the flavor.  In a cappuccino it’s just about as wonderful as it gets.  And this
from someone who just returned from bell’Italia and had probably way too many macchiatos!

No editing on our part…and something we hear a lot about our skim milk!

Thanks for the kind words.

Our tribute to Bobby Womack! We are now available on 110th Street and Broadway at Westside Market.

Five Acre Farms – Positively Local

Senator Kirtsen Gillibrand announced today efforts to support New York Dairy Farms.

http://www.mpnnow.com/regional/x700959270/Gillibrand-today-announces-emergency-plan-to-boost-dairy-farms

However, the real message of today’s news is not that the government is stepping up to support farmers – it has tried hard to help for thirty years with scant result. The real message is that if we want any farms at all, it’s time to buy local. If we don’t buy local now, farms will just disappear: no farmland to protect, no reduction in food miles, and very little way to know your food source. In the last five years, New York State has lost 25 percent of its dairy farmers.

Five Acre Farms: Positively Local.