It may be home to Ben & Jerry’s Factory Store, but Waterbury’s last three dairy farms were driven out of business. Their former owners struggle to let go.

By Sarah Andrews, for the Community News Service

WATERBURY – For 48 years, George Woodard woke up before dawn and milked his cows. His day would end the same way, in his barn with the herd. 

For many of those years, Woodard’s 200-acre farm was booming. Now, the milking stalls in his barn sit empty, only occasionally visited by Woodard and his tabbycat, Jack. 

“It was a time which was precious. And it’s gone,” Woodard said.

Waterbury was once a dairy town. It’s home to Ben & Jerry’s Factory Store, a magnet for tourists seeking socially-responsible, locally-sourced ice cream.

But if they want to see a working dairy farm, they’ll have to go elsewhere. Rising costs of production and competition from ever-growing commercial dairies have driven out Waterbury’s dairy farms.

Until recently, Waterbury was home to three commercial dairy farms: the Wallaces’, the Davises’, and the Woodards’. Today, there are none.

Ten years ago, a fire destroyed Rosina Wallace’s dairy barn, killing her entire herd of 23 cows. After that, it was too expensive to start over. 

“The dairy industry does not want small farmers,” Wallace said. “Financially, it was just impossible for me to get back into it.”

In 1943, Mark Davis’s grandparents bought nearly 200 acres of grazing land to start their farm. 

Davis started milking when he was 14. Later, his wife, Maureen, and their children all took part in managing the herd of more than 40 cows – it’s not a job that can be done alone. 

Davis stopped milking about two years ago, after years of losing money.

“It was a great job, a great way to grow up, a great way to raise our kids. But it’s a very

hard way to make a living,” Davis said. 

“It’s bad for a while, and then it gets worse”

Woodard’s grandfather bought their Loomis Hill farm in 1912. He used the land for logging and sugaring. 

In 1973, Woodard graduated from Vermont Technical College and returned to Loomis Hill. He started by buying 10 heifer calves. Then, he bought 10 more. By December of 1975, the Woodards started shipping milk.

Across town, Wallace’s great-grandfather bought their Blush Hill Road farmland in 1866. For many years, it was mainly operating as a maple farm and fruit orchard. Wallace’s father decided to transition the farm to dairy after he finished college.

As Wallace’s father got older, he asked her to take over the farm. Wallace couldn’t wait. 

“I grew up helping on the farm all the time. It just never occurred to me that I could be the farmer,” Wallace said.  “I gladly came back to the farm and worked with my dad to learn everything.” 

In the 2000s, the price that large milk buyers offered small farms plummeted. They reduced the amount of milk purchased from small dairies. 

Woodard and Wallace, like many other small dairies, started producing organic milk. The buyers were willing to pay more, and demand was higher.

The costs were higher, too. Organic feed was expensive, and the demands of keeping the herd healthy were high. 

“The last 10 years that I farmed, I was organic,” Wallace said. “I thought being organic would help me to be able to stay healthier financially, but then the price of the grain more than doubled.”

Davis didn’t go organic, but expenses still soared. The price farmers received for their milk just couldn’t keep up with the rising costs of feed, maintenance, labor, and processing.  

“My dad had a saying about it. The milk price goes in cycles; it’s bad for a while, and then it gets worse,” Wallace said. 

Dairy Death Spiral

Those rising costs led to a loss of the support businesses that dairy farms depend upon – a sort of dairy death spiral.

Throughout the 20th century, Waterbury had an agricultural economy. There were two creameries in town, and a large animal veterinarian.

Over time, as small dairies started to close, so did those supporting agricultural services. Emergency veterinarians became harder to find, coming from Waitsfield or Warren. When Waterbury’s creameries closed, shipping milk became more costly. 

As processing shifted to larger plants, milk had to move larger distances, putting small dairies at a disadvantage, said Silene DeCiucies. She’s with the Center for an Agricultural Economy, a nonprofit that advocates for local farmers.

“The economy of scale is very real in dairy, and there’s nothing going against it currently in Vermont,” DeCiucies said.

The story of dairy in Waterbury mirrors the trends in Vermont as a whole. Over the last decade, the number of dairy farms in Vermont has fallen from more than 900 to fewer than 500 today.

Meanwhile, the size of those remaining farms has increased. Only 2% were considered large farms a decade ago; now, 9% have herds of 700 or more cows.

These changing economic factors slowly pushed Davis, Woodard and Wallace out of milking. Davis says 2014 was the last year his farm turned a profit. 

“I should have stopped 20 years earlier than I did, because, you know, we were feeding a lot of money that was made in the past back into it, just to keep things going,” Davis said.

In 2021, Woodard stopped milking. Davis followed two years later. Now, both farmers run small beef operations. Beef requires less labor, and the costs of production are lower and more stable. 

Woodard now has 10 cattle, Davis has 26. Instead of going to the barn every 12 hours to milk, the farmers spend their time managing the pasture and feed. It’s a much easier way to farm. 

Dairy farming is hard work, and after almost 50 years, Davis welcomes the change of pace.

“I’ve spent my whole lifetime looking for an off switch on a cow, and I’ve never found one,” Davis said.

After the fire destroyed Wallace’s barn and she lost her herd, dairy farming was no longer an option. 

“I really miss it. And if I’d had my choice, I’d still be dairy farming.” Wallace said. “The good thing is I never would have been smart enough to stop when I should have.”

Wallace doesn’t plan to make the transition to raising beef. For her, sending her animals to be processed for beef is too emotionally difficult. 

“For me, the hardest part of dairy farming was determining when I had to pronounce a death sentence for an animal,” Wallace said.

She now takes care of two alpacas, whose wool she processes for textiles. Her farm also is home to her two beloved steers, Ferdinand and Gad.

But that farm no longer turns a profit. Wallace now works at the Cabot Creamery Store, another tourist-focused dairy attraction down the road from Ben & Jerry’s. 

“It’s what I really, really, really like doing, but as long as I have my animals and I’m not making enough money off my animals to keep going, I keep my day job,” Wallace said.

Can small dairy farms survive?

Waterbury’s experience begs the question— Is it possible for any small dairy farm to survive in today’s Vermont?

Laura Ginsburg, an expert at the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food, and Markets, thinks so.

“People sometimes get stuck at looking at what’s worked in the past, that it should work into the future. But we’re in a very different place today than we were even five years ago,” Ginsburg said.

There is a stable market for organic dairy, and she said innovations can cut costs. 

“I do think there is opportunity, it’s just going to look different than it’s looked in the past,” said Ginsburg.

Young farmers are struggling to start their own dairies. Land costs are just too high. 

“You can only get so much manure in a 5-gallon bucket. And when the 5-gallon bucket is full, there’s no room left for anything else,” Woodard said.

“The same thing has happened with land. You can’t buy a farm anymore,” Woodard said

Today, dairy farming is gone in Waterbury, and it doesn’t seem likely to return. Wallace recognizes that large dairy farms are likely to continue to outcompete smaller ones. 

“Some things change, but some things stay the same, and the whole idea of getting bigger in order to survive probably isn’t going to go away,” Wallace said.

High land prices offer an easy way for struggling farmers to exit the business. But even though they are done with dairy, Wallace, Woodard, and Davis plan to continue farming on their land as long as they are able.

“You’re sitting on a gold mine, but the only way you can, you know, retrieve the gold is to get off the gold mine,” Davis said.

Woodard doesn’t know what the next century will bring to his farm. He says it’s unlikely his kids will want to farm.

But running one of the last dairy farms in Waterbury was a good life, he said – one he would not trade.

“If you’ve got a farm, okay, you’re not going to be making a whole crap load of money, but at the end of 50 years, you still have that place, and you’ve made a living on that place,” Woodard said. 

Wallace has no children, so her niece will take over the fifth-generation farm someday. She hopes her niece will continue to run it as a farm.

“Brown cows and green grass is a beautiful sight,” Wallace said.