I have a increadable feeling of love for this people. Even though I'm not an american. I can always relate to people who try to survive bringing a honest product to the market. Please buy from your local producers while they are needing you the most during this pandemic!
Thanks for finding these people, Josh. Much like Larry on blacksmithing, Randy speaks about dairy farming as though he's been educating people for decades. You can tell he really loves what he does.
What a great interview very eye opening. I love what he said about support your local farmer when you don't need them so they will be there when you do need them. Buy Local from small farmers that are happy to let you come visit their farms.
Always humbling to see honest, hard working farmers doing their craft regardless of the challenges faced. Hopefully you keep finding local craftsmen like Larry with his Broadforks and other small scale farmers like Randy to share their stories and why they do what they do. Really shows the importance of community and supporting local. They will be the ones we need more than big corporate companies in the end. props!
I adore these farmer interviews! So much valuable information. It’s great to learn the progression of his journey. This video makes me want to take a road trip over that way to try his milk. Well done, lad! Garden on...
This was a great interview. Eye opening for me. My family is from East TX and all agriculture talent has been lost. This gave me a glimpse of what goes into this.
I don't drink a lot of milk but I love driving out to the farm to pick up a bit of milk and gelato and see the "puppies." The calves always poke their little heads out of the pens and are so adorable! Great video.
There is one 50 cow dairy still hanging on in our county. He uses all antique equipment and lives a spartan lifestyle. May God bless Randy. I hope he continues to prosper.
Thanks for taking the time to put this one out there. Really enjoyed Randy's interview. It was very informative and he made some great points about the dairy business on a local and national level. I also really respect and loved his comment about local producers.
Wow, loved this Josh. This man pretty much told the story for you. I loved how he didn't decide to fold up but rather to transform with the times. I like what he said "If you don't support local when you don't need it, it won't be here to support you when you do need it" He is right, the pandemic has taught us that buying local means everything. How did people service pandemics back before in history? Well, everything they needed was local to them. Just this week the US largest beef plant was shut down due to a hacker similar to the one to the Gas Pipeline.
What a great old school dairymen with a mind for business. and who ever said you need a co-op to sale and market your product. I learned something today I wish I had learned 40 years ago when I dairied which was how to thing out of the box. One other thing i found amusing , the similarities, we would clear out our barn of what hay we had left and would have us a party it was elbow room only. I salute you, Carry on sir!
This was absolutely phenomenal I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it and it was very informative this is the way it should be done smaller operations serving a smaller area providing better quality.
This was awesome. I could listen to old school farmers all day. The part where he talked about community moved me to tears. That's what I ache for, and hearing him describe it makes me feel like I've found my tribe. I want to be a grower so bad it hurts. One day, I swear it.
Will you share the milk with the calves, milking just once a day? We're getting Jerseys and are going to do it that way. Just seems so unnatural to take _all_ her baby's milk, while it lives.
@@LilacDaisy2 We are going to share and let the baby be with it for four months or so. I can see why bigger farmers do it. We have a Jersey also , who is due in one month!
Couple of local dairy farmers started their own milk company around here over a decade ago because they were sick of being screwed by multinational milk processors. They started selling out the back of a truck at the local farmer's market and have been going absolutely gangbusters ever since, recruiting more local dairy farmers, getting state-wide distribution and last I heard they have over 60 employees now. Their non-homogenised full-fat jersey milk is expensive compared to mass-market milk, but it's the bees knees.
I'm not a dairy farmer but grew up farming in Canada. Supply Management seems like a dirty word in the USA. In Cananda this has allowed Canadian farmers to make a living without being forced to grow to intesive industial sizes. This is not to say that farmers in the north aren't stressed by the market and try to optimise their operations or that capitalism is eliminate. My limited and personal opinion is that flooding any market with a product that relies on the partnership with the land or an animal will result in some explotation and apathetic interests.
Absolutely fantastic video so in depth and I would’ve never known so thank you for putting this type of information out for people to understand more of how the process works
Thanks for putting this out! It is sad that the small farmers are getting pushed out. My uncles were pushed out a couple years ago here.... incidentally the beard situation seems to be similar. Lol.
Even the big dairies are struggling. One of the biggest dairy farmers near me said he couldn't continue if not for his wife's income. He wasnt drawing a salary from the farm. All of the farm income was paying employees and paying debt...
Wow. I actually started to get a tad bit emotional on this one. Not just because Randy has my ginger beard and hair before I went totally gray and nearly bald, but it reminded me of the summers (before I became a dumb, know-it-all, teenager) when I worked on my great-uncle's dairy farm. Hard, but honest, work where you got up before the sunrise and worked till sundown, dropped into bed exhausted and repeated the next morning. I really miss those days now.
Hahahaha, had to laugh! I grew up in the Midwest and moved to the Southeast 20 years ago. To this day, I still automatically shake the milk gallon every time I pull it out of the refrigerator lol. It is just a habit lol.
It might be a little bit of a drive for you Josh, but you should totally interview Milky Way Farms in upstate South Carolina, in Anderson I believe. They are a Raw Milk Dairy farm grass fed milk, really awesome and healthy because it’s Raw milk (meaning not pasteurized
This man is so very wise. I've milked 1 to 200 cows a day, throw in a few goats just for variety. The " industry " part is the problem. Industry created monocrop agriculture. Horizontal and vertical diversification is the key to Farming and community. Fluid milk is only a small component of dairy products and ingredients. Good thing it's expensive to transport or it would be coming from China. I love everything about milk and cows. I may have taken it to far. I raised the cows, milked them, bottled it, loaded a semitrailer, drove the truck,15 to 18 stops, loaded the fridge at the latter shop at the mall, and get home to feed. If you are it,a farmer grew it, and everything you have came on a truck! Give them a break!
"Can you talk a little bit about the dairy industry? No, I don't know anything about it." 😄 Where can I buy a ticket to that barn dance? I don't care about New York or LA, If I go to the USA I want to dance in a barn with local people.
Dairy farmers,as someone that delivers to dairy farms daily, I can say you can solve alot of your problems by having a maximum of 25 cows. 25 is all you need, not 900
It's interesting that no one has commented about calves being removed from moms after 24 hours and them being kept alone in tiny pens. While I can appreciate his focus on milk, I would hope there is a better (less cruel) way to meet his business goals. I appreciate seeing this dark side of dairy because the knowledge helps me make decisions about the animal products I choose to consume .. or not consume.
You perceive it to be cruel. But is it? Randy said they did it to minimize disease and it was only for 60 days to give the calves a better start in life. Be cautious of applying your perceptions onto a farmer who obviously has the best interests of his cows in mind.
My land, animals and equipment are paid for, and I’m beef on Dairy / Dairy on Beef, depending how you look at it. I have one heck of a genetics barn though. Jersey Dams receiving Dexter steer embryo’s, that I’ve tickled with some Wagyu generics, there isn’t enough to earn the label “Wagyu” but it’s good enough to grade 70% prime. Plus, Dexter is a value adding label in its own right. Dexters don’t damage cropland either. They can do all that on grass! I also do a dozen Wagyu’s, my replacement heifers, and I sell those genetics. I only milk my girls for 3 months if they calved a beef steer. I don’t wean until 6 months. There is plenty of money in all areas of agriculture. You just have to stop doing what everyone else is doing. All the debt, the inputs. The whole system is designed to enslave us.
