About
Our family has been dairy farming in the Finger Lakes region of New York since 1995, when we moved to our current 150-acre farm in Lodi with our children, leaving behind a “real” job to become full-time dairy farmers. We began milking a small herd of organically-fed Jersey cows who produce the best milk we’ve ever had! For 11 years we made our milk into the renowned Meadowsweet Yogurt and sold it locally and around New York State.
At that point we decided to begin providing raw milk to the growing number of people in our area who were yearning for high quality raw milk! So, in 2007, we stopped processing our milk into yogurt and began bottling it in glass bottles and delivering it to share holders in the area. In spite of legal hassles with the state of New York, which you can read about elsewhere on our website and in the movie Farmaggeddon, we continue after 8 years to provide the local community with superb raw milk – some of our customers even coming from as far away as Rochester to get our milk.
Our healthy cows are grazed every day the weather will allow and are supplemented as needed with a very small quantity of organic, soy-free dairy mix. In the winter they are out eating hay unless the weather is truly frigid, in which case we keep them in the barn to stay snug and warm. We raise all the calves on the their mothers, so they are never fed artificial formula, and can enjoy the great outdoors with their moms. This is better both for the moms and the babies and produces very strong and vigorous calves and subsequently cows.
All of our farm practices are organic and we do not use any artificial chemicals or drugs on our animals nor on our farm. When the animals are sick, which is very rare, we treat them only with homeopathy.
In addition to our dairy cows we also raise chickens, some pork and some beef. Our bull calves and some of the heifers are raised for beef. They are either Jersey crossed with Angus, or straight Jersey. The resulting beef is tender and juicy and never needs marinating or special treatment. The animals are butchered around age 3, having been grass-fed that whole time. The beef is usually available in the fall, either by the piece (see our Grass-fed Beef page), or by the half or whole beef.
Pork is available sporadically, so if you are interested in pork email us.
Please feel free to call and arrange for a visit to our farm! We are happy to have anyone who is interested learn how we raise our animals and run our farm.
You can contact us at:
Steve and Barb Smith
2054 Smith Rd
Lodi, NY 14860
607-582-6954
email address dairy at meadowsweetfarm dot com