At the heart of High Lawn's herd

Published July, 01 2004 www.iberkshires.com & The Advocate “Patience is the companion of wisdom. — Saint Augustine” LEE — What can people learn from cows? “Patience,” says Lawrence (Mike) Whitman of High Lawn Farm. “Cows wait for their feed. They wait to go out. They wait to come in. They wait to be milked. They chew their cuds and they wait. They’re patient.” So too is this energetic, pleasant dairy farmer, who has lived and worked at High Lawn almost continuously since he was 9 years old. His father, Lawrence Whitman, Sr., went to work for the Wilde family in 1961. Three members of the Wilde family still own High Lawn Farm – William Wilde, Alice Field and Mary Carswell. Mike Whitman is their herd manager, in charge of the breeding, genetics, production, care of the cows, tours of the facility and the crops. Whitman earned a bachelor’s degree in animal science from the University of Massachusetts in 1977 and said during an interview last week that he can’t imagine working or living anywhere else than High Lawn, although, he added, if someone offered him a million dollars to give it all up, “I’d have to think about it.” “There’s no fame or fortune in dairy farming,” he said. “The day normally starts before 4 a.m. It’s hard to find employees and it’s hard to keep them. It’s hard work, and it’s dirty work and it’s not for everyone.” That hard work has its up side, too, he hastened to add. He strolls to work every day, his house being only a few hundred feet from the barns and fields. He’s home for every meal. He has time to spend with his family. His wife, Rosemarie, names the cows and keeps the endless paperwork in order. His sons, Tom, 19, a Berkshire Community College student majoring in business and Rich, 23, a senior and English major at UMass, still help with work in the barns when they’re home. “It was a great place for kids to grow up and I’ve been lucky,” he said. And then there are the cows. “It’s something different every day,” Whitman said. “Cows will always surprise you. Always. Just the other day, I had a cow that wasn’t quite ready to give birth — or so I thought. So, I didn’t bother to put her in the birthing pen. And the next morning, her newborn calf was curled up in the stall next to her mother. Surprise!” According to Whitman, cows are creatures of habit and very social animals and have a “definite pecking order.” Cows that are moved into a new group have to figure out a way to fit in and get along. It isn’t the biggest cow that’s in charge but the bossiest cow, Whiman said, noting that cows are also contrary. “She’ll lean against you. If you push back, she’ll just push you harder. But if you try to pull her closer, she’ll step away,” he said. Whitman said he doesn’t have a favorite cow and declines to choose, as if they are his children. For one reason, he’s afraid of hurting their feelings. “All of them are my favorite cows. I’m a cow person. I love cows,” he said. He does admit to liking Cow Nnumber 269, whose full name is Pointer Sky Cartier — a fittingly regal name for the cow that recently earned a Hall of Fame certificate, which hangs by the front door of the farm’s office. Pointer gave birth to a daughter a few weeks ago. Her name is Gem. “She’s got the same gentle disposition as her mother,” Whitman said proudly. “But 269 isn’t perfect. She’ll push you all around the barn, literally and figuratively, if you let her. She knows that she’s a special cow.” Whitman acknowledged that he talks to the cows. “And they listen,” he said. “Some of them answer. They speak their own language. They can sense you’re talking to them.” For example, he said, “A heifer is a cow that hasn’t had a calf yet. She’s never been milked. After she has her first calf, you have to milk her, and that’s a totally strange sensation to her. Her feet go up and down and she starts dancing and she starts kicking. So you talk, and you whistle and tell her what a good girl she is, and most times she will calm down — which is really good because I really don’t like getting kicked.” He lowered his voice when telling one of the rumored secrets of cows. “It’s said that if you go to the barn at midnight on Christmas Eve, you’ll hear them talk to each other. …But I’ve spent many Christmas Eves in the barn at midnight and so far they’ve been quiet.” Another myth laid to rest: “Cows don’t lay down if it’s going to rain; they wait by the gate to come back in the barn. If they lay down, that means they’re content.” The cows on High Lawn Farm are content in the barn or in the pastures and roam free only by accident. “We don’t want that to happen,” Whitman said. “We have 40 acres of pastureland where we send our pregnant heifers. For the last 60 days of their nine month pregnancies, they’re on vacation. They go and eat grass and generally have a good time — especially when they get out and run on Route 7, which is something we don’t like but they don’t seem to mind. They never wander very far though. They know where home is.” Whitman believes it’s better for the cows and calves to stop milking for the last two months of gestation because that’s when a calf will put on 50 percent of its body size. Calves are bigger and stronger if they receive all of the nutrients instead of sharing them with milk production. After the calves are born, their mothers will remain out of the production line for another eight milkings to make sure they’re back to normal and feeling good. Whitman is also a big believer in exercise for cows. He said some farms keep the cows confined at all times but he feels the cows are happier and produce more and better milk if they’re outside, exposed to fresh air and sunshine on a regular basis. High Lawn Farm is self contained. The farm grows its own feed, breeds, cares for and milks its own cows and pasteurizes, homogenizes and packages its own products. They include butter and milk (regular, light and heavy cream, low fat, skim, whole), cheese, and, the all-time favorite, chocolate milk. High Lawn’s door-to-door deliveries include local businesses, schools, co-ops and private residences from Sheffield to Williamstown, and the farm keeps expanding. It sells wholesale to stores and restaurants from Lee to Boston. The farm is regulated and inspected by the federal government and the state Department of Food and Agriculture. Its current butter-fat level is at 4.6 percent and its protein level at 3.6 percent, one of the highest in the industry. “If there’s ever a problem with our product, the customer knows just where to go,” Whitman said. “They come to the source – to us – and we’ll take care of it.” According to Whitman, “The best part of dairy farming is working with the animals, breeding them, watching them grow up. It’s also the worst part because the reality is, it’s a business. We have 190 stalls in the barn, 100 heifer calves born every year, and we sell a fair number of them. Cows that don’t make the grade have to be culled and have to go to auction and that’s the hardest part.” One of his favorite parts of the job isn’t really part of his job at all, he said. His faces lit up when he described his tour-giving experiences. “Unfortunately, milk isn’t a big deal anymore. There’s too much competition — though no beverage on the market comes close to milk in nutritional value. We have generations of people growing up with no concept of where food comes from, whether it’s dairy or something else.” He said he feels it’s important to the country’s future to change that. There’s no charge for the High Lawn tours — or for its coloring books, created by Whitman and illustrator Elizabeth Cogswell. Children have come back years after their tours, with their own kids, drawn by their memories of High Lawn Farm. Educating them about farm life is a satisfying accomplishment for Whitman. “They remember the chocolate milk, too,” he laughed. Increased environmental awareness, in Whitman’s opinion, will be the driving force behind all agricultural industries for the next 50 years. “Each day, cows eat 80 to 100 pounds of food and drink 25 to 30 gallons of water,” he said. “They make a lot of milk — and they make a lot of mess. As suburbia closes in on farmland, it’s more difficult to take the manure out to the fields and spread it because your neighbors are having a cookout and they don’t really appreciate that {aroma}. We’re always trying to adjust and improve our methods for waste management and disposal.” Manure isn’t the only problem odor. The fermenting process when preparing the feed for the cows can be quite pungent. “If you do it right, it doesn’t smell too bad, but if you do it wrong, everybody in the area knows that you did it wrong today,” Whitman said. New England is one of the hardest, most expensive areas of the country to dairy farm, according to Whitman, but a half-gallon of milk from High Lawn costs just $2.75, delivered. That’s about a dollar more than the price of a half-gallon of Hood in local stores but about 25 cents less than Organic Valley milk at Price Chopper. The math is impressive: Four stomachs per cow times 400 cows plus 100 pounds of food per day per cow on a 1,300-acre farm, with 18 employees and 900 delivery customers — and it all fits into the heart of just one herd manager. So, stressed, irritated or just thirsty? Don’t have a cow. Try visiting High Lawn Farm and pet one instead. And don’t forget the chocolate milk.