Mapledale Farm, Part II
As we walked the farm, we learned more about the Green family. John’s grandfather lives just above the main farm, and still works driving and offering advice as needed. John’s mother is in charge of the calves, and the children also assist with taking care of them. That is part of the equation of operating a dairy – the farm has to be big enough to support all of the family members depending on it, including the potential farmers-to-be and the retired farmers. So, farms, like all other businesses, must grow to accommodate that. Even so, 98% of dairy farms in the United States remain family owned.
The process of milking is pretty interesting – great care is taken to clean the cow, which signal’s to the cow and helps them relax so they can be comfortably milked. It takes about 8 minutes to milk a cow, and they produce on average about 70-80 pounds (or 8 gallons) of milk per day. Cows are eager to be milked and need very little help moving into the milking barn and getting into the herringbone pattern stalls that make the operation effective and safe. The milk goes into a holding tank that cools it off quickly. The Garelick Farms tanker truck picks up the milk at a specific time and brings it back to the processing plant in Rensselaer, twice per day, every day, Christmas Day, bad weather day – no breaks. The tanker arrived while we were at the farm, and we saw the same tanker at the plant that same day, literally following the milk from cow to cup!
![pretty babies](https://www.pricechopper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/pretty-babies.jpg?w=300)