[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 143 (Wednesday, September 7, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4468-S4469]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
RECOGNIZING THE CONTINUED SUCCESS OF ANIMAL FARM BUTTER
Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, in my home State of Vermont, where there
are more cows then people, the local dairy industry is the bedrock of
our communities. From Derby to Pownal, small dairy farms provide honest
jobs and produce fine dairy products sought after by Michelin Star
restaurants across the country. These farms also provide the beautiful
backdrop of green pastures, grazing livestock, and the iconic bright
red barns that attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to our picture
perfect little State every year.
Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, consolidation within the
agriculture industry, falling milk prices, supply chain delays, and the
rising costs of equipment and other goods, small dairy farms have been
hit hard. These difficulties, both longstanding and recent, continue to
lead some lifelong Vermont dairy farmers to move on to other careers or
to retirement, where they are often faced with the difficult decision
to either sell their business and livestock to large, industrial
factory farms, or undertake the difficult journey to find a local
farmer who can take on their business and beloved cows.
Today, I would like to highlight a piece of good news from the
Vermont small dairy industry, a story of how the retiring founder of
the most sought-after small-batch cultured butter operation in the
country found a graduate of the University of Vermont's animal science
program to continue a famous Vermont tradition. Together, Vermonters
Hilary and Ben Haigh, learning from Shoreham's own Diane St. Clair,
have continued a boutique butter business--yet another example of
Vermont perseverance, and the high-quality products coming Vermont's
small family farms, like the Animal Farm Creamery.
I ask unanimous consent that the June 10, 2022, New York Times
article titled ``America's Most Luxurious Butter Lives to Churn Another
Day'' be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the New York Times, June 10, 2022]
America's Most Luxurious Butter Lives To Churn Another Day
(By Melissa Clark)
Shoreham, VT.--In a wooden barn perched on a grassy hill,
some of the most celebrated cows in the dairy business--the
bovine royal family of American fancy butter--sampled hay in
their new abode.
Diva, the bossiest of the group, hovered regally over the
shy, gentle Cinnamon. Lying down were Ruby and Lacy, who were
chewing cud over their folded forelegs. Rutabaga, May and
Patch ruminated impassively as Dell peed, effusively, in
greeting.
A few months earlier, in February, the herd's former owner,
Diane St. Clair, loaded them onto a trailer and drove them
seven miles down the road from her Animal Farm Creamery in
Orwell, Vt., to Rolling Bale Farm in Shoreham, a 100-acre
organic property nestled into a clearing about an hour south
of Burlington.
``That was a hard day,'' Ms. St. Clair said. ``But there
was no way for me to continue.''
Ms. St. Clair had spent the previous 22 years making the
most sought-after small-batch cultured butter in the United
States. It's the same butter that the chef Thomas Keller
serves at the French Laundry and Per Se--and that retails for
an eye-popping $60 per pound.
But at 65, she was ready to retire. Decades of twice-daily
milking, barn mucking and hoisting 70-pound jugs of fresh
milk into the butter churn had taken a toll on her back. Her
husband, Al Clarisse, a large-animal veterinarian who was her
only helper, had developed knee problems. And although her
heart still clung to her cherished Jersey cows (her ``other
family,'' as she called them), her creative urges had shifted
from butter to a new, more sedentary, but just as aromatic,
passion: blending exclusive perfumes.
The question was, would she be able to find the right
people to take on her treasured herd and her churn? Or would
her extraordinary butter, with its subtle nutty, grassy
flavors that changed with the seasons, simply disappear?
For many small dairies in Vermont, retirement can be a
heartbreaking matter of selling off cows and equipment to
large agribusinesses and calling it quits. In 1969, Vermont
had 4,017 dairy farms, most of them small, family-run
operations. By 2020, that number had dropped by 84 percent to
636, with many having consolidated to benefit from economies
of scale.
Even at farms where the next generation wants to step up,
dairy farmers are finding it increasingly difficult to make a
living. A national oversupply of milk, made worse during the
pandemic, brought down prices to the point where it may no
longer make financial sense to keep going.
All of this has caused the demise of many beloved farms and
dairy products, including the prizewinning cheeses from Orb
Weaver Creamery, whose owners spent years trying to pass on
their dairy to young cheesemakers before finally having to
sell off their last cow and close down. This was something
Ms. St. Clair intended to prevent: Keeping her business
intact and her bovine ``other family'' together--and far from
any industrial mega-farms--was her top priority.
``I wanted my cows to go to a farm that would treat them
like I did, with people who would know their names, and who
would name their calves,'' she said.
Happily, Ms. St. Clair's story is a rare piece of good news
in the world of small dairies. It's an example of how one
single-minded, cow-loving farmer was able to create a market
for the kind of handmade cultured butter that had nearly gone
extinct in the United States. Then, through a combination of
resolve and serendipity, she was able to pass that business
to a young family with exactly the right kind of grit,
experience and disposition to carry it on. And they happened
to live just down the road.
Building a Better Butter
``I wanted my cows to go to a farm that would treat them
like I did, with people who would know their names, and who
would name their calves,'' she said.
Happily, Ms. St. Clair's story is a rare piece of good news
in the world of small dairies. It's an example of how one
single-minded, cow-loving farmer was able to create a market
for the kind of handmade cultured butter that had nearly gone
extinct in the United States. Then, through a combination of
resolve and serendipity, she was able to pass that business
to a young family with exactly the right kind of grit,
experience and disposition to carry it on. And they happened
to live just down the road.
When Ms. St. Clair started Animal Farm in 1999, she knew
she wanted to raise Jersey cows. With them came a seemingly
endless river of milk that needed a purpose.
``Everyone else in Vermont was doing cheese,'' Ms. St.
Clair said, ``I saw a niche with butter.'' Specifically, the
kind of tangy, high-fat, marigold-colored butter she'd eaten
in Europe, for which the ultra-creamy milk her Jersey cows
produced was perfectly suited. (Most dairy cows in the United
States are Holsteins, which yield a larger quantity of milk
with a lower fat content.) Back then, no one she knew in the
United States was making small batches of European-style
butter from their own cows, and there were no guidelines for
how to do it. The nearby Vermont Creamery had started making
European-style butter a year earlier, in 1998, but from
purchased milk, which, like making wine from purchased
grapes, puts the agricultural part of the equation out of the
producer's control.
Besides, Ms. St. Clair said, ``I was in it for the cows.''
Relying on out-of-print dairy manuals from the 19th
century, she eventually figured out that culturing the cream
before churning it, a process also called clabbering, vastly
improved both the taste and the texture, making the end
result thicker and more pliant, and adding a pleasing
nuttiness.
Culturing is a standard practice for premium butter in
Europe, and it was in the United States as well before the
widespread industrialization of the dairy industry shifted to
uncultured ``sweet'' butter, those pale, bland sticks in the
supermarket, because it was faster and cheaper to produce at
scale. (The intense labor involved in producing small
quantities of handmade butter from Ms. St. Clair's own Jersey
cows, along with high demand from luxury restaurants,
accounts for the extravagant price tag.)
Once Ms. St. Clair was satisfied with her experiments, she
overnighted a sampler 3,000 miles away to a famous chef she'd
never met, along with a handwritten letter requesting his
feedback. Thomas Keller remembered the moment well.
``Diane sent me five little knobs of misshapen butter in a
Ziploc bag,'' he said. ``I called her immediately and said,
`How much do you make? We'll buy it all.' ''
Eventually, she built a small dairy near the barn, brought
in a few more Jersey cows and, still working mostly by
herself and by hand, increased production to 100 pounds of
butter per week and the plush, lightly sour buttermilk that
was its byproduct.
This was the business she had needed to sell. Ben and
Hilary Haigh, both 33, of Rolling Bale Farm turned out to be
the ideal buyers.
Greener Pastures for a Cherished Herd
Hilary Haigh has always been ``a little obsessed with
butter,'' she said.
When she was studying animal science at the University of
Vermont, her brother gave her a countertop butter churn,
which she used for years before switching to a food processor
when she and Ben married.
The couple met, coincidentally, at Animal Farm when they
were both in college. Ms. Haigh, who grew up on a nearby
farm, was cow- and house-sitting for Ms. St. Clair. Mr. Haigh
was helping his uncle build the dairy's roof.
The two started Rolling Bale Farm in 2014, raising pastured
beef, chicken and lamb to sell at the local farmers' market.
They also kept a family cow to provide plenty of milk to
drink and to feed Ms. Haigh's churn.
[[Page S4469]]
Having a microdairy like Ms. St. Clair's was a dream, Ms.
Haigh said, ``it just happened sooner than we anticipated.''
When she and Mr. Haigh heard that Ms. St. Clair was looking
for buyers, they sent her a handwritten letter expressing
their interest.
It reminded Ms. St. Clair of the letter she'd sent Mr.
Keller all those years ago. ``Who sends letters anymore?''
Ms. St. Clair said. ``It's like it's all come full circle.''
After piecing together two loans and a grant to come up
with the $281,000 necessary to buy the business and install a
dairy at Rolling Bale Farm, the Haighs took over Animal Farm
Creamery in January. (Ms. St. Clair wanted to retire on her
farm, so the business and cows were sold, but not her
property.)
Now, several times every week, Ms. Haigh makes butter and
buttermilk exactly as Ms. St. Clair taught her: by hand, by
herself, in a dairy built on the same pasture where the
Haighs' herd grazes, but with the addition of her two young
sons tumbling underfoot, eating as much butter and cream as
they can get their small hands on.
Then, once a week, she ships the butter to the same six
accounts that Ms. St. Clair had long supplied: Thomas Keller,
the Inn at Little Washington in Virginia, Menton in Boston,
Ocean House in Rhode Island, Dedalus Wine Shop and Market in
Vermont, and Saxelby Cheesemongers in New York.
So far, Ms. Haigh said, none of the accounts seemed to
notice the change of hands. Benoit Breal, an owner of Saxelby
Cheesemongers, said the transition had been ``100 percent
seamless.''
``The quality is the same,'' he said, ``it's still the
quintessential artisanal butter. There's no one else doing it
like that.''
For her part, Ms. St. Clair misses her cows. But she's
happy to have the time to immerse herself in orris root,
ylang-ylang and the other heady tools of perfumery needed for
St. Clair Scents.
And Diva, Cinnamon, Dell and the rest of the herd seem to
have fully adapted to their new home. ``Ben and Hilary love
their animals; they're good farmers,'' Ms. St. Clair said.
``Now when I go to visit the cows, they're like, `Oh, hi,
Diane.' ''
She paused and added, a little wistfully, ``They're doing
fine without me.''
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