What am I doing at a Dairy?

I have spent many years in the non-profit "professional" world. About 6 months ago, it was time for a change. I accepted a position at an Organic Dairy in Scio/Crabtree Oregon. This blog is my adventure working in an enviornment I have never been in before.

A little about me: My name is Dani. I am 30 years old with a wonderful husband and son as well as 3 dogs and 3 cats that were all adopted from local humane societies. I worked in non-profits for the last almost 10 years actually and specifically animal welfare (I worked at a humane society) for almost 5 of those years. I am a sucker for animals but also belive in animal rights. I want to clarify I am not a "tree hugger" or a wackadoodle "animal rights activist". I belive that we should treat animals with respect. If I had to choose between a human and an animal, I would always choose the human, that doesn't mean that we can't do a lot to better the lives of animals in our world as well.

A little about the dairy: The dairy is Noris Dairy. We are actually a rather large dairy out of Scio/Crabtree Oregon. We have a lot of cows :) Our owners are Franz Wenz and Angela Spalt, both European and wonderful caring people. I was amazed when I interviewed here, how much that Angela and Franz love their cows, I mean really think of them as living beings that need to be taken care of and not just property. They believe in sustainable farming, humane treatment of their cows the environment. As I pointed out before, I am not a "hippie" but this sounded refreshing.

I could back up and tell you about my exciting first summer on the farm with Angela's mother (who is an amazing woman) visitin from Germany, but personally, I think that would be boring. let's just pick up where we are right now (I mean who knows if anyone is actually going to read this anyhow).

I have a mission to trap a feral barn cat here that I have fallen in love with. This is big excitement for me during my breaks and lunch....I love this cat, and I have finally gotten him to eat in front of me. This has taken me weeks but I am progressing nicely. I don't know what I am going to do with the cat once I have caught him/her. My husband will NOT let me bring home cat number four, however, I may be able to talk him into fostering until we can find him a new home....hmmm...gotta think on that one.

We are building a new baby calf barn right outside of my office window. I am sooooo excited for this spring when we will hopefully have another full house of calves. They are so stinking cute and so fun to bottle feed. When they are in their individual pens and playing....well it is just to cute and funny.

We are getting ready to produce some more cheese. Angela has said that I can assist with this round of cheesemaking. I am pretty excited as I have watched it done in large plants on tours but this is different, Angela is a true artesian and making small batch specialty flavored cheese seems really cool to me. I have been working on getting the dairy into the "now" in technology so I have created a website for our cheese sales www.mailorderorganiccheese.com and hopefully this helps with our cheese output in the long run. I never really thought about the difference between "regular" cheese and organic cheese until I started working here. You really can taste a difference which I think is really cool. The real test was if my husband - the self proclaimed cheese king could tell the difference. He loves to each cheese but I always wondered if he actually tasted anything that he has eaten. He said that organic was definatly better than processed stuff. So I am excited. We are also supposed to be starting to make some spreadable cheese. I think that too would be cool to make, we will have to see.

I think that is all for now!