Addison County economic report

Vermont Business Magazine, Sep 01, 1998

This year alone, the Middlebury plant has taken first for cheddar at the 15th Annual American Cheese Society competition in Wisconsin, and first for cheddar and flavored cheese at the 22nd Biennial World Championship Cheese Contest.

Watchers of the rural landscape have observed a distinct pattern of change in Vermont dairying, which has apparently continued through the past year in Addison County: A tendency to divide into very small and very large farms. It's no longer a surprise to hear that a dairyman has 200 or 300 cows, and Wellington said the best of these operations, with their economies of scale, are making excellent money.

But at Field Days, coordinator Melanie Carmichael reported that in the dairy shows, Holstein participation was down -- these being the high-volume-production cows typically used by the big dairies. Those farmers are too busy managing their spreads to take time off for something like the fair, she said.

On the other hand, the colored breeds were so popular that it was difficult finding barn and shed space for all those who wanted to participate, Carmichael said. Jerseys, Guernseys, Ayrshires, Brown Swiss, Milking Shorthorns -- these are breeds that are returning to favor because they are more adaptable to making milk "on grass," as the farmers put it.

Rotational grazing, the practice of sectioning off pastures with mobile electrical fences and moving cows every day to the feed that is at exactly the right stage of growth, has been shown to reduce feed costs dramatically while providing high-enough quality feed to keep production at economical levels. There isn't the same concern on these farms with getting cows to eat as much as possible to yield as much milk as possible, but rather there is an emphasis on getting the most profit per cow. Indeed, some operations have started making milk seasonally, letting the cows go dry in the winter as in the old days.

Animals that are surer-footed, more intelligent, and longer-lived tend in the long run to create the profits without the cost of cow replacement (which in a maximum production dairy can mean a six-year life-span or less, especially if there are problems with walking or the udder infection known as mastitis). As in the days when the colored cow made it onto the Vermont flag rather than the black-and-white cow that has become almost a Vermont logo, the colored breeds tend to have the qualities that the grass farmers prefer.

Another major part of Addison County agriculture, the apple industry, continues to be on hard times, and not just because of the weather. With Washington State adding to its orchards, the Upper Midwest competing, and foreign fruit now available in all seasons of the year, the market seems permanently down. The old strategy of keeping apples in cold storage to sell during times when they would fetch a premium price no longer works as it did, because there's always fresh fruit at hand.

Still, the lakeside "Banana Belt" climate is ideal for growing McIntosh apples, which have proved popular in the United Kingdom as well as at home. Diversification helps some, such as the Douglas Orchards in Shoreham, where a poor pick-your-own strawberry crop (the weather) was supplemented by an unexpectedly strong crop of sweet cherries (the weather).