Gen-O Part 3: The Hardie Family Farm Story

Editor’s Note: This is the third in a three-part series written by young organic farmers traveling the Midwest on Organic Valley’s Generation Organic™ “Who’s Your Farmer?” Bus Tour. Click here to read part 1 and part 2. Generation Organic is a program by Organic Valley which provides leadership opportunities and mentors to young farmers ages 18 to 35 with a mission to inspire the next generation of organic farming.

We have just returned to our duties as graduate students at UW-Madison after having spent an exciting few days on the Generation Organic “Who’s Your Farmer?” Bus Tour. Though we both feel an energetic lull without the fast-paced adventure that surrounds the Gen-O bus, we have a reborn enthusiasm for completing our graduate research and, ultimately, sharing our knowledge to positively influence an industry we love–organic dairy farming.

Our love for farming started when we were seven years old, after proudly showing our first 4-H calves at the county fair. Today we milk a herd of approximately 30 cows of five different breeds. During the beautiful, warm Wisconsin summers, we intensively rotationally graze the cows on our pasture. In the chilly winters, we house them on a composted bedded pack–a fancy term for a warm, comfortable bed of sawdust.

The Hardie farm has experienced many changes within the last year and a half. After outgrowing our weaned calf pens, we set up a mobile super hutch to rotationally graze the weaned calves, and we built a series of small paddocks for our older calves in a nearby hayfield. This summer we put up two new buildings on our farm. One was a versatile heifer shed, and the second was a replacement machine shed after the original was ripped to pieces during a brutal spring storm.

Following that storm, our farm looked shockingly empty. However, the birth of new calves, the sprouting of plants, and the support from family and friends who helped pick up the pieces and rebuild our farm was inspiring. It reminds us of the special, cooperative spirit of farming.

Three years ago, we became involved with Gen-O largely to meet peers with whom we could share farm stories and acquire new ideas to improve our farm. While we've accomplished some of this, perhaps the most pleasant surprise is how much we’ve learned by sharing our story with consumers. People have responded so positively to our message about the benefits of sustainable, organic farming that it’s helped us realize the importance of carrying forth the Gen-O mission.

This has been epitomized and particularly rewarding with this year’s Gen-O bus tour. By joining a diversely talented group of young farmers, we were able to not only use our skill sets, but also become more equipped to explain why we farm the way we do, how that translates into healthy food, and the importance of making wise food choices.

One of the best parts of the Gen-O tour has been sampling new restaurants where we can put to test our own decision-making and see how others provide healthy food options. We especially loved the local food experience at Graze, a Madison-area restaurant neighboring the Capitol, where we were drawn to a large map that identifies the local farms that supply the food–everything from greens to meat.

The Gen-O Tour was an amazing, unforgettable experience, but we’re also happy to be back home. Our farm is where we thrive. It has been a place for us to learn and put into practice life skills such as patience, hard work and effective time management. It is also our laboratory—a place to experiment and apply what we have learned through classes and from our fellow Gen-O farmers. And perhaps most important, our farm has given us the satisfaction and comfort of growing and eating our own food. If response to the Gen-O Tour is any indication, we think more young individuals will enter into farming for this same reason.