Dreaming Cow Creamery uses milk from a small farm called Jumping Gully Dairy. Jumping Gully is one of three grass based, New Zealand-style rotational grazing dairies owned by our family. Our grazing dairies are unique in that, due to our climatic advantage (lots of sunshine and precipitation and it doesn’t snow!), we are able to graze high quality grasses year round. This of course has a great effect on our milk quality and taste, and thus on the products that our family is able to produce. We like to think of it as our regional flavor not unlike those differing regional flavors found in Europe and Asia. It is important to note that the farms are not organic, as we have consciously reached out to hybrid ecological and biological farming methods instead. As a consumer you have a right to know where your food comes from and how it was grown and processed, and Dreaming Cow wants to be transparent and open to you in order to fulfill this right.
Dusk grazing in South Georgia.
Our family’s farms practice biological farming methods which nurture the animal from the soil upwards by maintaining a high level of soil organic matter which behaves as a magnificent nutrient sponge, clinging onto all the many different minerals while creating an ideal landscape for beneficial soil micro-organisms to thrive in symbiosis with the grasslands. A soil which is rich in life and nutrients yields those very same characteristics to the plants and the animals which coexist alongside it. This is the core concept of both our animal health and our food quality philosophies.
Cows head off to graze a new pasture.
Our cows are mostly Jersey genetics with many other breeds mixed in to help create our unique southern adapted herd of cattle. Breeds you may find on our farm include Jersey, Holstein, New Zealand Friesian, Dutch Belted, Milking Shorthorn, Brown Swiss, Guernsey, and even beef cow genetics for heat tolerance. We use no bST or rBGH, the artificial bovine growth hormone, and we do not breed cows solely based on milk production. The farms primarily focus for genetics which are conducive for the cow to have a comfortable and stress free life. Not only does a low stress cow enjoy a better life, but with significantly less sickness and incidence of culling (removal from the milk herd), the farmer is also better off. During the summer time, a small volume of water is misted over top the grazing animals through a central irrigation system, effectively cooling the air around the cows by 15 to 20 degrees.
The cows under misters in late summer.
In the rare occasion that a cow gets sick, we will treat her as necessary to help her get better, whether it is by vitamin injection or antibiotic use, we do what is needed. However whenever antibiotics are used, the cow is removed from the milk herd for a set time to rid her body of all antibiotic residue before being allowed back into the herd. During this furlough she of course has access to the same lush pasture as her sisters in the milk herd.
Any planting that is done, for instance seasonal winter grass, is done with a no-till drill. A no-till drill is a seed planting tractor implement which deposits seeds in the ground without the need to till or turn over the soil. This is an amazing way to plant because it eliminates much of the soil erosion that occurs from human management of farmlands. Disturbing the soil by tilling releases soil sequestered carbon dioxide and depletes soil organic matter and soil nutrients through volatilization and erosion loss.
This young cow is in her first lactation (milking).
Organic matter consists of clumps of decaying plant matter, dirt, silt and clay which are held together by organic glues created by the soil life. Soil organic matter is extremely absorptive of water and soil nutrients. The result of having a significant presence of soil organic matter in our soil means that when we fertilize with nitrogen, phosphorous or any other soil nutrient for that matter, it has a far greater chance of being absorbed and held onto by the soil and oftentimes even metabolized and made into soil life before being leached away off the farm, or into a stream or even into the water table. In a mature pasture based biological system, with cows fertilizing the soils with their own nutrient dense wastes, there are great thriving soil micro-ecosystems which are in a constant state immobilizing and releasing great swathes of nutrients for the grass.We can literally see the difference in quality of our milk versus what you may find elsewhere, and it is largely because of our system and the expertise of the farmers who make it all happen.
If you wish to come see the yogurt facility or dairy, please give us a call or an email.
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