Meet MI Farmers at Emerald Acres

Emerald Acres with Caroline Clough

“We operate a small dairy farm.  When we bought the farm in 2012 we had all the machinery that we needed we were just purchasing the land, buildings and some animals from my husband’s parents.  We started with 20 cows in a 20 stall stanchion barn with two milkers and two pails.  We milked two cows with one milker then dumped the milk into pails which we would then carry to the milk house.

Each cow is milked in a stall - Photo by: Caroline Clough

 In the milk house we would dump the milk through a strainer where then it would go into the bulk tank to cool.  In 2014 we bought two more milkers and two more pails.  We planned on adding on to the barn and the herd, which we did a year later.  We added 22 cows to the herd and we were working on an addition to the barn to house the new cows, in the meantime we had to switch groups of cows while we milked.  Three months after we added the cows the barn was finished and we were able to milk all of our cows in their own stalls without having to switch them.  In the summer of 2015 there was a little falling out between my husband and his dad leaving myself (7 months pregnant) and my husband to do all of the chores.  We were still milking with four milkers and four pails, carrying pails after every two cows.  I couldn’t keep up anymore so we cut back to only using three milkers and eventually got a step saver/milk conveyor (basically a portable receiving jar).

Milk from the cows is dumped into the step savor which filters and pumps
the milk to the bulk tank, eliminating the extra step of carrying each pail
into the milk house. - Photo by: Caroline Clough

 We also had to sell 10 cows to handle everything without it being too much for just the two of us.  Now we milk 30 cows with three milkers and a step saver, the step savor makes it so we don’t have to dump our milk into pails and carry it to the bulk tank.  We just dump our milk from the milkers to the step savor and that filters our milk and the pump then pumps our milk to the tank.  We are currently caring for 50 animals total including our dry cows, heifers and calves.

With the way the milk prices are right now we are struggling with farming and it affects our family tremendously.  I am currently working one full time job and a part time job and my husband has recently started working with an oil company where he leaves for weeks at a time.  We have two children, a boy who is two and a half and a daughter who is 11 months.  While my husband is gone it is up to me, my father in law and brother in law to do chores.  Luckily our kids are getting to ages where they can be with us on the farm and our family helps out a lot with them when we are doing work they are too young for.

Cows have room in their stalls to stand and lay down. - Photo by: Caroline Clough

My husband wanted to farm the way they did back in the 50’s and 60’s.  He wanted to milk in a stanchion barn which is why when we made the addition to our barn we added more stanchions.  He wants to teach our children that farming is more than riding in tractors and cows being milked automatically.  We want to keep it this way to show people that there are still small family farms that have one on one contact with each cow rather than in a parlor, not that milking in parlors or robotics is bad.  Our goal for our business is to milk 40 cows and have farming be our only source of income, and we also hope that our children will want to take over the farm.”

-  I would like to thank Tyler and Caroline Clough for sharing their farm story.