Spring Milk: A Delicious Way to Welcome Springtime
Written by Kevin Allman
Photo by Carrie Branovan
For Spring 2007
THE WINTER SNOW IS GONE, and grass is sprouting in the paddocks of the Double J Jerseys organic dairy farm in Monmouth, Oregon, an hour’s drive south of Portland. Several large barns in the distance hold nearly 200 cows, but farmer Jon Bansen isn’t letting them out just yet. For three months, they’ve been inside, eating a diet of harvested alfalfa, clover, and grain, but soon they’ll be grazing in the fields, eating the chlorophyll-rich grass that will result in spring milk. Fall milk, which is richer in fat, is better suited to cheesemaking, but spring milk has charms of its own.
“It has a lower protein and butterfat content,” Bansen says. “It has a sweeter smell, a lighter smell. And you can really taste the difference. Milk is just sweeter in springtime.”
This is the seventh spring for Bansen’s organic farm, but he’s been a dairyman all his life. Dairy farming is a Bansen family tradition, though Jon is the first to operate an all-organic farm. Since he converted from traditional to organic farming in 2000, his father and his brother—convinced by Jon’s success and the quality of his milk—have also gone organic. But Bansen says his approach is really nothing new: “We’re just using the same techniques that my grandfather used, but they didn’t call it organic back then.”
The father of four children and husband of Julianne (the other J in ‘Double J’), Bansen has an ingratiating smile and piercing blue eyes courtesy of his Danish ancestors. He was a conventional dairy farmer for eight years before making the transition to organics. He came to his current strategy slowly. “My father shunned pesticides. He believed in zero sprays, because he knew it got into the milk, but he wasn’t organic. Now he is.”
“I don’t even think of myself as a dairy farmer. My role is to be a grass farmer,” Bansen adds, looking over his 32 paddocks, which are ringed by Willamette Valley hills and, in the distance, ghostly Mt. Hood. “I provide the grass, the cows eat and make milk, and that’s how it works. Circle of life.” He laughs.
To Bansen, organic dairy farming isn’t any more trouble than conventional farming; he now operates with smaller herds, but the financial benefits have stayed constant. “We lost some production,” he admits, “but the cows are eating a lot less purchased grain.” When they’re not grazing, the animals subsist on a healthy, natural diet of plants and grasses grown on the family farm, supplemented with a reduced amount of grain. The hardest part, Bansen says, was giving up antibiotics for his herd, but he’s found other methods to keep them healthy, with help from alternative medicine: “We use aloe vera juice and garlic for mastitis, and it works better than shots. Really!”
In the barn, the cows are munching their fermented alfalfa. “When springtime starts to arrive,” Bansen says, “you can feel it. They want to get out in that pasture, and the first day they do, they run around, jumping and dancing. And then they settle down and really start eating.”
But organic farming extends beyond the animals to the farm itself. Besides the banning of pesticides, Bansen rotates his cows among the paddocks in 12-hour shifts to preserve the soil from their hooves—which also serves to fertilize the ground naturally. They’re milked twice a day, and their health is monitored constantly. His herd is all Jerseys, a smaller breed whose hooves are easier on the soil, and whose brown hide is better suited to the occasional Oregon heat wave than that of a dappled or black cow. “My philosophy is that if it’s too hot for me to be out there for long, it’s too hot for them, and we take ‘em back into the barn for the day.”
Bansen belongs to the Organic Valley farming co-operative. Some of his product is turned into powder, some is sold to Springfield Creamery to be turned into Nancy’s Yogurt, but most is sold as milk under the Organic Valley brand. On his mailbox is an Organic Valley logo, and he says that he’s had strangers pull up the driveway to thank him for his efforts. “That never happened when the mailbox had the name of a regular dairy on it,” he says, laughing.
“It all comes down to treating your cows with respect,” he adds. “You take care of your cows, and they’ll take care of you.”
Kevin Allman is a Portland writer.
