How to Start and Manage a Micro Dairy, Step 9: Location

Reader Contribution by Steve Judge
1 / 3
2 / 3
3 / 3

In 2006, I founded Bob-White Systems in order to serve what I recognized to be an emerging market for Micro dairy equipment and supplies. After many years of being involved in all aspects of the dairy industry, I could see that consumer demand for safe and delicious locally produced farm-fresh milk was quickly growing. I believed then, and still believe now, that a Micro dairy is the only consistently viable model that can satisfy that demand. As I begin to wrap up this blog series I want to share my experiences building the Bob-White Systems Micro dairy in Royalton Village, Vermont including the decisions I made and my reasons for doing so.

In 2001, my wife Wendy and I purchased a long-abandoned farmstead consisting of forty acres of abandoned gravel pits, plateaued hillsides and a small mountain that overlooks Royalton Village called The Pinnacle. It is an ancient tract of land first farmed in the late 1700s. Our farmhouse was built in 1798 by Zebulon Lyon, a Revolutionary War veteran and founder of Royalton Village. When we bought the farm, the house had been restored structurally but lacked plumbing, wiring, a well, a septic system, etc.

By the fall of 2002 I had made enough progress restoring the house to start considering restoring the land. We had a two-acre field behind the house that a neighbor hayed so I decided to create more hay land. I started with a two-acre, ugly, played out gravel pit filled with junk and overgrown by brush that coincidentally would become the future site of the BWS Micro dairy barn (then still unimagined). I cleared and burnt the brush by hand and then hired a good bulldozer operator to grade it off. I planted grass and suddenly I had two more acres of pasture/hay land in addition to the two acres directly behind my house.

In 2004, I decided to improve a seven-acre tract of heavily wooded, abandoned pasture land that had been horribly abused by a previous owner. He had logged it several times leaving a thick understory of immature northern hardwood trees and brush. That fall, I hired a local logger to remove the White Pine and Hemlock over-story to release the immature hardwoods. The two acres I cleared in ‘02 became the log landing. The change to the landscape was dramatic. My wife and kids thought that the land would never recover. My neighbors were shocked. But I knew that the land would recover and it has.

Comments (0) Join others in the discussion!
    Online Store Logo
    Need Help? Call 1-800-234-3368