The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - 3.37 Lisa G.K. on Starting a Raw Millk Dairy on the 53rd Parallel

Episode Date: February 19, 2015

Lisa Graham Knight's story begins like a lot of new farmer stories do: a kid in her twenties, high on idealism and extremely low on any actual farming experience, decides to apprentice on a veggie farm. But the veggie farm Lisa chose? It was in the Queen Charlotte Islands, which are clustered at the 53rd parallel, a twenty hour drive north of Vancouver, and then a seven hour ferry from Prince Rupert. During that apprenticeship, Lisa realized just how precarious her new community's food security was, so she did what any good farmer would do. She went back down South, learned animal husbandry, bought some cows, and returned to start the islands' only dairy. Recently, she told me all about her adventure.

Today's guest has an incredible story to tell about her path to becoming a farmer. Lisa Graham Knight's story begins like a lot of new farmer stories do. A kid in her 20s, high on idealism and extremely low on any actual farming experience, decides to apprentice on a veggie farm. But the veggie farm Lisa chose? It was in the Queen Charlotte Islands, which are clustered at the 53rd parallel, a 20-hour drive north of Vancouver, and then a seven-hour ferry from Prince Rupert. During that apprenticeship, Lisa realized just how precarious

her new community's food security was, so she did what any good farmer would do. She went back down south, learned animal husbandry, bought some cows, and went back to Haida Gwaii to start the region's only dairy. Recently, she told me all about her adventure. I'm Jordan Marr, and this is the Ruminant Podcast. The Ruminant is a website that wonders what good farming looks like. This week, I posted a short essay I wrote in response to a piece that California farmer Jacqueline Moyer wrote for Salon.com. Her piece is about how hard it is to make a living as a farmer. She's certainly right about that, but my essay asks whether part of the problem is that some of us are just bad at farming. I really hope you'll check it out. Okay, let's go. Hi folks, I'll keep the intro

short this week, and for the next few weeks actually. I'm going to be away at farming conferences, and so I'll be recording my intros ahead of time. I will repeat, however, my reminder that I'm looking for ways to incorporate your tips for other farmers into my podcasts. One way to do so is to leave a voicemail at 310-734-8426. Or email me at editor at theruminant.ca and tell me about the idea you want to share from there we can set up a time to chat that's all here's my interview with lisa and i'll talk to you at the end so first off lisa i'll just i'll just ask you this like do you come from any kind of farming background no no i didn't i grew in Kelowna and my mom was a doctor and yeah, just went to school and hated it and tried to find something else. Yeah. Uh, you went, sorry,

you went to, you hated all school or you hated? Pretty much. Yeah. Oh, like are you talking about your first post-secondary or do you mean just like... Like everything. I, yeah, doing, I really did not apply myself at all in high school. Yeah. To the frustration of many of my teachers. Like you mostly just got like fistfights and stuff? In the smoke pit. Yeah.

No, I just very laxity. Like I would never study. Like it would be like the night before. And I always got by right but it was just not interesting for me at all it wasn't I didn't see the application for either where my life was going or yeah I didn't stimulate whatever there was inside me to push myself to be self-disciplined how old are you now I'm 28 28 and I was just going to ask you what was the first major work either of writing or you know film that on on food and food security that influenced you or if not the first just a really important one in those in the early early days yeah I think I think probably one of the most prominent ones for me

was reading the grapes of wrath by johnson really oh wow I didn't expect you to say that but I totally I get it yeah yeah and I did that when I was uh traveling around Peru actually and I was visiting these really poor people that were producing food in their back here like so many potatoes right and um yeah that was that was neat because i was also being able to observe the amazing agricultural technology that the incas put in in previous civilizations before them so i just got really interested in the design and kind of carving out the earth and terracing the hills and I was reading this book Grapes of Wrath about the industrial revolution I was like huh this is really interesting so yeah and then um

I think that's what made me want to just get my hands dirty too. Like I wanted to be part of it. I didn't want to be an observer about it anymore. Okay. Didn't want to be an observer. So what was your first foray into moving from observer to kind of, I guess, actor within some sort of farming context? Yeah, that was definitely my apprenticeship apprenticeship at maude island farms in

haida guay so okay so you got set up to do an apprenticeship there what what was the production of the farm at the time um it was a market garden so a two two and a half acre market garden which was very labor intensive and they had some chickens too which was really neat um and some fruit trees and stuff but they're real they were really hoping to be um off the grid well they were off the grid in in a lot of ways and they wanted to um especially the wife who ended up being my mentor throughout this apprenticeship. She was the main gardener farmer. And she was a big advocate for food security, especially being in a remote island up north.

So she really drove this two and a half acre market garden to support both the family and bring it to the farmer's market but the farmer's market was not on the island no the farmer's market was in the bigger city in queen charlotte village so we on a larger island yeah yeah so you was there were there any other other properties or residents on this smaller mod island yeah there was just one and it was a fishing resort that had caretakers staying there year round but no not not any kind of big population on this on mod island no we we were really it right so then you would take you would take the ferry across to the main island it was their private boat they were responsible for their own transportation yeah

so like during the market season once a week they'd be heading over by boat to yeah it would be twice a week because it was both a csa which would be delivered on the wednesdays and then also the farmer's market on the saturdays okay okay so they had the market garden and uh some fruit and some chickens and stuff but what what about cows? Because I know at some point there's cows. and I just got really wrapped up on being a part of this local food security, which was really obvious when you're there because everything comes in in the ferries. What's produced there was very minimal, but there was this growing urge and support in the community

to foster these gardens and to have local meats. And I was like, oh, this dairy thing seems, seems pretty neat. So at that point I wasn't vegetarian or vegan anymore. Right. I was living in a, in a place where it didn't really make sense to, to be like that. We were catching fresh salmon. We were foraging, um, for yeah, all sorts of stuff, hunting deer, shellfish, you know, like it didn't make sense. So in the context of Haida Gwaii, things that make sense there and are really emphasized there are maybe a little more how do I say it a little more like unclear in the mainland so it was very extreme in that way it was like I guess and I guess I mean what a cool place to be exploring just you know these notions of food security because I guess it takes on a much bigger or greater urgency in a

place like that where you I mean all most of the food is being coming from the mainland and you're dependent on a ferry that travels through some pretty rough waters in the winter and that sort of thing exactly yeah and so lots of times the ferry would just be cancelled and the grocery store shelves would be empty and there'd be like no milk for for example. And this was also the time when the regulations for slaughtering your own meat was being really clamped down on, so we didn't have a local abattoir at the time. Even the meat, there was a ranch there, so beef had to be shipped off to the mainland. Yeah, I remember this. This was in 2006.

British Columbia's slaughter regulations changed in what many in the small scale farming community deemed to be a really really terrible way and I remember there were there were some some ranches up in the Queen Charlotte's that were shipping their cattle a few hours by ferry to the mainland to be slaughtered and then hours back with the meat yeah because because farmers could no longer slaughter on their own farm and sell to their neighbors or anything like that. Okay, so just, I need some other background. Like, what was the population of Haida Gwaii, approximately? About, for all the islands, about 5,000.

5,000 people. Yeah. And would you say because, I mean, was everyone, were, were, were, were a much, was there a much higher proportion of the people in that population who were, who were really sensitive to, um, to the food, food security, um, issue and who cared about really like a strong local farming economy? Or did you still see tons of people who were like completely sourcing all their food from from you know from what came in by far well like anywhere i think money was a big driver like up up there the industry like logging was a big thing it's resource-based industry

um that was all kind of going in decline so people were definitely shy to pay expensive prices. You mean for local farm stuff or you mean for what was coming in? Just for whichever. Yeah. Just for whichever. So usually that unfortunately would mean that grocery store stuff was a bit cheaper because even farms had to bring stuff off island to produce.

So yeah, it was kind of complicated but I think a lot of people moved there or grew up in a place where food it was a food centric kind of place whether you were native native Haida and were really into foraging and eating like your ancestors once did or you uh just wanted to live kind of on the on the fringe I guess and be a bit more extreme and and um just want to it's hard to it's a really hard thing to put into words I find because um people that live there really wanted to live there and nowhere else. And they respected that place and usually held a lot of strong philosophies about what it meant to live there and be responsible for that land because the natural beauty there was just outstanding. And you wanted to preserve that.

and you wanted to preserve that you didn't want to um just take that for granted and it possibly ruin it right so um yeah there were there were definitely people that would go that extra mile to support whether it be with with money or even just being kind of outspoken about it and writing in the local paper well and let me just put it this way like did mod island farm have any trouble selling its produce from the market garden um certain yeah that no i would say no in the end no um because there were other farms on island though um this was um the only certified organic farm so that was that was kind of an interesting thing about mother island farm but there were other farms on island and there was definitely competition between the farms like if another farmer would show up to the market

the you would go home with a lot more produce or be trying to sell it wholesale to to restaurants or something like that so there still wasn't enough i guess like you could produce too much yeah i guess in a population of 5 000 that's not all that surprising um okay so all right so you finish a season i suppose of of learning about veggie production. In the meantime, you've just immersed yourself in this culture of self-sufficiency and trying to maximize food security. And you become... So are there dairy cows already on the farm when you're there? No, no, there wasn't. There wasn't milk being produced commercially on the islands at all. And it's also just a great way to contribute to a vegetable farm. Because we were bringing amendments in from off island.

Wouldn't it be cool if we just had the fertilizer there? wouldn't it be cool if we just had the fertilizer there and also the composter for any you know vegetables that might have like for example like a fungus on them or something yeah like a potato that you can't replant so um yeah i heard about a possibility to go and well it wasn't really a possibility to go work on it I heard about this this farm that was doing something really different in the Fraser Valley and thought that it would be neat to go learn dairy farming from them I don't know it's really hard to like okay so so hold on you, you finished the first season. You're, this is what you want to learn about. Did you leave Maud Island to go down to the Fraser?

I did. Ah, I had it. I didn't realize, but you just, just, we'll come back to this, but you ended up back up at Maud then, didn't you? I did. Okay. Okay. So, so I was driving at something that wasn't true.

So, okay. So you, so you, you left Maud Island for a time then. You go down to the Fraser Valley, uh, where there's a farm that had be started to become well-known for, uh, operating a raw milk dairy, uh, which is not technically legal in BC and to, to a fair degree, it was public about this, right? Like it certainly wasn't, it wasn't super secretive so tell me a little bit about about that farm and that experience okay yeah so um yeah i thought if if i was going to learn dairy farming i'd want it to be as i want to say as pure as possible, I guess. At that point in my life, that's probably what I was thinking.

And also it kind of went into the food activism part of me, really got me stirring on the inside. So I literally just kept emailing them until they agreed to meet with me. I just kept emailing them until they agreed to meet with me. So, yeah, I left and I met with them at their house in Chilliwack. Did they ask if you were wearing a wire? No, I think they could tell that I looked like some shaggy hippie, so I probably was pretty... Well, that's just how a dairy narc would dress, though, you know. Yeah, try to throw him for a loop.

Yeah, I think the nose ring probably convinced them. She can't be undercover. She's got a nose ring. Okay, so yeah, you met with them? Yeah, so I met with them and they had like five young children running around this small house and they were like I said there was a strong religious presence in the house and I was like okay well I'm gonna I'm gonna make this work so we went to the barn to do the the afternoon chores which was milking right and just kind of observed and kind of did some stuff.

But I didn't know anything. Like I'd never milked an animal at that point or even really been around cows. But I, for a moment, loved it. I just thought it was so cool to be working with large animals like that, to be working really hard at something that had his passion really it was like a decision it was uh both intellectual and heartfelt for me and so yeah I was pretty sold and luckily they said that I could stay okay so before So before we proceed about your experience there, let's just kind of rapid fire, get a sense of this farm.

Okay. So I'll just ask a bunch of questions. What were their main outputs? Like what were their main products that they were ultimately selling? Raw. Well, that's another. I was very strictly trained on that. Like they weren't able to sell anything because it's that co-op situation, but their main output would be the raw milk, the raw milk, any other dairy products

that ultimately they were doing. Yeah. Uh, we did butter and yogurt and butter milk. And I think at that point that was it. There was such a demand for the raw milk itself. Yeah. And that's when you get your highest return, too. Right, yeah, yeah. Okay, which is kind of funny because usually value adding is where the higher profits are. But I can see in that case, that milk in the case. Okay, so, all right, how many animals, how many milk cows did they have? There was, at that point, I want to say about 1920.

Were these jerseys? Yeah, yeah, mostly. So 20 jersey calves? Yeah. Okay. How did the, I mean, in a nutshell, okay, did they have, were they like pasture raised animals? Yes, yeah, yeah. So there's a whole animal husbandry kind of school that goes along with the raw milk like it is a entire system view not just the raw

milk so to have high quality raw milk you have to treat your animals really well raise them organically have them on live foods so that's either foraging or um a lot of people try to give sprouts or some sort of live food to keep the animal really healthy throughout the throughout the winter I want to say simple animal husbandry but you also had to know a lot about it and how did you end okay and so I imagine you learned a ton how did you end up back at mod island to do to raise to raise jerseys yeah so they we it dawned on me that i could do this and that this was actually a very reasonable thing to do in the queen charlotte's okay so you you really want to help improve the food security up at maude island at haida gai and so you you're you it's so crazy by purchasing some jerseys yeah going 20 hours by vehicle six hours by ferry and then hiring a

barge to get them over to maude island where you intend to start up a small version of what you were doing in yeah so how'd it go it went it went really well obviously there was various complications with being on a smaller island off a large island um which made it um you know kind of stressful at times but really there was a lot of oh sorry i have to stop i just want to know about how you got the animals there just where did you did you did you buy the animals from from this farm you were on yeah so i bought a trailer and i bought the cows which i knew um were good and healthy right and could do it okay so they were already like how old were they then when you bought them um one was a bit younger she was about three and milking and one was older um she was probably about

nine at the time and she was how much did they cost um they were both around a thousand okay so you spent two thousand dollars on a couple milking cows and what fifteen hundred bucks on a trailer yeah that's yeah exactly yeah and and what, $1,500 on a trailer? Yeah, that's, yeah, exactly. And you hitched the, you put them on the trailer, you hitched them up to a vehicle, you drove up to Prince Rupert. Yeah. You caught the ferry to Haida Gwaii. Yeah. Did that all go fairly smoothly?

Kind of smoothly. I mean, I was so stressed, right? Because I was, like, cows don't travel well at all. And that's a really long car ride to have cats. So they're not really eating during you milk them? I remember milking them in the park in Prince Rupert. And like a taxi driver would come up and be like, what are you doing? Oh, just milk my cows. And yeah, it was pretty funky. I can't believe this. Like, I can't believe you took that on.

Yeah. Yeah. I think. I don't. Yeah. I don't believe this. Like, I can't believe you took that on. Yeah, yeah. I think, I don't, yeah. I don't know. I think I had something to prove. But I also just really wanted to be part of it, right? And I knew what it could mean for the community. And it also gave me a way to really contribute to, because no one else was doing this up there for sure.

Yeah, so I remember a lady took us in, and we spent, like, waiting for the barge. We spent a night at this, at this house where the cows could hang out overnight, so we just, like, waited for the barge, and it's like, ah, we have, like, pictures of us with the cows outside the Tourist Information Center in Queen Charlotte Village. Yeah, it was pretty. It was like getting to the island was an amazing feeling, for sure. Because it felt like, oh my gosh, we're really going to do this. So very quickly, how did you lay out the share?

How did you structure it? I assume there was an upfront purchase of a share yeah like yeah there was um yeah and it was for it depended on the milk the amount of milk that you're anticipating and getting so if you wanted a full share it was such amount i think i want to say like 150 bucks i can't i can't really't really remember. And then, and then that, um, reserved your, your right to purchase each month.

Yeah, exactly. And then what, so what did it cost each month? Um, if you got two liters, it was per week, per,

yeah, yeah. Per week. Some people got that. Some people just got a liter and I, it was all in like glass bottles and stuff too. So week. Some people got that. Some people just got a liter. And it was all in, like, glass bottles and stuff, too. So I think people really liked that. Hope they did because it was heavy.

It was $12 for two liters. So pricey by Southern population standards, but I'm sure up there reasonable for what you were offering. Yeah, yeah. I mean, no one else was doing it so I tried to make it so that it could sustain itself right because I was planning on doing it for a long time at the time and um it was hard to to really put a price on it because so many things vary. For example, like I ordered Canadian organic grain and getting that to the, like the amount of freight that they tried to charge me.

Like I remember like calling them being like, I can't like, you just charged me more for the freight than the product cost me. Like this isn't going to work. And then the amount for hay and stuff was just it was so I mean I wanted to ask you like how how closely could you stick to what you've been taught in terms of care and husbandry feeding into like what you learned in the Fraser Valley I mean like did they have fresh pasture or was this yeah they did they had they had some that was something that we were

working on for sure um but there were cows on island right so it like the the land can support cows you just have to know what is in the the forage that they're getting and how to supplement that so that they're getting all getting all their minerals and the right proteins and stuff. So, yeah, I was able. I was pretty structured in that I didn't want to take any risks on the health of the cow because that just wasn't good for the people that were into it. I said I was doing one thing for all these people, and I really wanted to stick

to that so i was i was able to but it was expensive oh i bet and i think they understood that but they still you know wanted it and you could really taste it too right like the milk itself tasted delicious so that kind of sold it itself not to mention that it was raised in such a neat way and we had like share members come out to the farm and you know milk the cow for the first time and see how they were doing it and it was pretty neat wow so how long how long did you stay up there doing that that lasted that was about a year and in the summer it was much easier than the winter for sure and then yeah it was just there was lots of stuff going on with the farm and it was just like they were just too big and it was just too much for the farm all at once and so I figured that I needed two cows to make it worthwhile for

me to be there um to make a profit off it um well a living off of it and then um yeah it just kind of got too too complicated especially with the storms in the winter and having to rebreed the cows because you need to keep them in milk production and they're not like goats you have to rebreed them um so as wonderful as it was it was just kind of straining people too much so i went on to the bigger island with the cows with the cows yeah yeah and then um with the cows yeah yeah and then um continue to do it there for a little bit and then the idea dawned on me that it would be really neat to start expanding my product line because I started to dabble in cheese making at home and so I was like okay well I gotta learn how to make cheese properly now too because I wanted something that could bring income if the cows were dry um you know

if something happened um also start creating product that was not being created on the islands and it was really it's really neat cheese making is really cool so that's where you started cheese making pretty much i guess so yeah i started cheese making in my kitchen i guess from from the raw milk for my cows just learning from a book yeah learning from a book and i wouldn't say really doing it that well like you know did lots of mozzarella and stuff like that but yeah that's and then that's why I knew that cheese making was more than just reading it in a book that's why I wanted so how long you moved around a little bit on the main island but how long how much longer did you stay up there with these cows running this milk share? Yeah, I think just over a year, I want to say.

And so my plan, though, was to take a break, like let all the share members know that this is what I was doing. I was going to go pursue this cheesemaking internship that I had discovered. Back down south in the province. Yeah. Yeah. cheese making internship that I had discovered back down south in the province yeah yeah um yeah so so I just kind of lined things up and yeah let people know that that's what was what I was going to do and everyone was really supportive because who doesn't want awesome cheese added to their to their food and so the idea was to return back to Haida Gwaii and just continue on but with but things went in a

different direction yes they did so that concludes the first part of Lisa's story a lot's changed since then Lisa went on to apprentice with a couple of cheeseries in southern BC. She decided to sell her dairy to another farmer in the Queen Charlotte's. She attended culinary school. And now she lives in the Okanagan Valley, making cheese at a cheesery and also as a chef. I may share this part of her story on the podcast, I may not. It depends what it sounds like. I still haven't given it a full listen since we recorded back in December, but I hope you enjoyed what you heard. That's it. And hey, if you like this podcast, please tell your like-minded friends about it and share the hell out of it on the Facebook. I'd really appreciate it. Bye for now. of thieves and live life like it was meant to be because why would we live in a place that don't want us? A place that is trying to bleed us dry

We could be happy with life in the country With salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands. I've been doing a lot of thinking, some real soul searching, and here's my final resolve. I don't need a big old house or some fancy car to keep my love going strong. So we'll run right out into the wild