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dairy farm

Robot cheesemakers and bovine pickpockets: What you don't know about life on a dairy farm.

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If you ask Warren Chamberlain, Dairylain Farms could easily be the inspiration for a pastoral landscape painting.

The dairy takes up about a quarter of the 400 sprawling acres of wide-open farmland that Warren and his son, Jason, own and operate alongside their wives, Lori and Mary.

All photos courtesy of Dairylain Farm.

"We have sunshine year-round, pretty much," Warren says. "We get very little rain. We’re actually in a desert, but it’s all irrigated, green, trees."

To the west of the farm sits a small mountain range, capped with snow that shines a brilliant white against an almost always blue sky.

"It’s just a beautiful place. You can’t beat it for raising kids and grandkids. And for livin'."

To the uninitiated, running a dairy sounds like hard, dirty, exhausting work. But according to the Chamberlains, the dairying life is worth the sacrifice of a little sweat.

Part of the joy they get from their work, says Warren, comes from the love of animals, specifically cattle, that's been passed through three generations. "I believe anybody that's in dairy loves animals," he says. "Animals and land — you gotta love 'em both."

Dairylain Farms is home to a herd of about 450 Jersey cows that produce milk that the Chamberlains then sell to a mozzarella plant in Idaho to be made into delicious cheese. (Fun fact: The milk produced by Jersey cows is higher in butterfat than that of other cows, so it's prime milk for cheesemaking.)

Warren explains that the cows are very curious animals. "You walk out into our pen, you’re gonna get surrounded by 50 to 80 animals all wanting to smell you," he says.

And that curiosity can verge on the nefarious — farm workers have been known to have their barn radio switched off or their wallet picked by a mischievous member of the herd. "Anything you have in your pocket, you’d better hold onto it ‘cause if they see it, they’re gonna grab it and take off," Warren laughs.

The cows are so friendly that even Warren’s kids and grandkids can work with them. In fact, that’s another reason he loves the dairy so much.

"What other job can a dad or granddad have that they can have their kids or grandkids with them all day long — watch them grow up, teach them?" he asks. "Most people get their kids from five o’clock in the evening 'til bedtime. We get ‘em all day."

As enjoyable as the work is, Dairylain Farms is a business, and the Chamberlains, like many dairy farmers, have continuously needed to find ways to innovate to keep up with the times. For them, that involves ... robots.

That's right — instead of milking the cows, the Chamberlains own robots that automate the entire milking process. "The cows come to the robot whenever they want," Warren says. "It cleans her, milks her, feeds her a little bit of grain, and sends her on her way."

The cows wear collars that monitor their health and activity levels, keep track of how often they’re milked, and send all that information to the Chamberlains. Each morning, Jason reviews the data to see if anything seems out of place — if a cow isn’t milking or if it’s walked less than normal or something else that might indicate a problem — and goes to check up on the animal himself. Automating the process helps the Chamberlains keep better, more accurate track of the health of their herd.

And for Warren, the health of the farm is the most important thing.

"You want to pass this stuff on through generations," Warren says. "And if you don’t take care of your cattle, you don’t take care of your land, you can’t pass it on."

Heroes

Running a dairy takes a whole lot of love — for the cows, the farm, and the Earth.

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“I didn’t go out in life saying I’m gonna marry a dairy farmer,” Leann Krainick laughs, “but Cupid had other ideas.”

Leann started out her agricultural career creating specific feeds for different farm animals. She met Mike Krainick when the two were introduced by a mutual friend (a bull insemination specialist, no less) and the rest is, well, the rest is our story.

Today, the two have been married 18 years, and together, they run Krainick Dairy in western Washington, a farm that Mike's grandfather started in 1912. They raise Holstein, brown Swiss, and Jersey cows — smallish brown cows that produce high-butterfat milk, used to make cheese, ice cream, and other dairy products.

They've been operating the dairy for more than a decade, and one reason they still enjoy it so much is because it offers them such variety in their lives. “The day is never the same," Leann says. "We try very hard to make it routine because that’s what cows like, but you always have to expect the unexpected.”

All images courtesy of Krainick Dairy.

If Leann loves anything as much as her husband, it's their cows.

She knows each of them individually — there are quiet ones, cranky ones, silly ones, and ones that cause trouble. “We can walk through the barn and just by knowing their different characteristics or their hierarchy in the herd, we can tell if something’s wrong," Leann says.

Like what, you ask? It could be a health problem or it could be a mess caused by one of the more mischievous members of the herd.

“They like to find trouble,” Leann laughs. "They've opened a gate in the middle of the night, gotten into our yard, managed to turn on the faucet, and flooded our basement."

It's the Krainicks' love for their animals that drives them to run their dairy in the most environmentally friendly way possible.

They care deeply not only about their own farm, but also about the welfare of animals and the environment in general.

“The first thing people say when they come here is that it’s very green,” Leann says. And that’s true in more ways than one.

The dairy farm is not only green in the picturesque sense, but also when it comes to its sustainability goals. In fact, the other thing that people notice when they arrive is the odor. The air doesn’t smell like cows or manure, but like beer.

“Farmers have been feeding spent grain from breweries to animals for over a century,” Leann says. And that's exactly what Krainick Dairy does. It's also why their farm often smells like beer. It’s a sustainable way for local breweries to get rid of their waste and it also cuts costs on feed for their cows because spent grain makes economical and environmental sense.

That's not the only way they are working to be more sustainable. Another practice became so successful it formed a new offshoot of their business.

When the facility that hauled away their manure became full, the Krainicks had to find another way to get rid of their waste. Instead of carting it away, they bought a machine that turned the waste into bedding for the cows and sustainable manure for the soil.

Not only do they use this soil on their own farm, but they also started packaging it and selling it to other growers after a local pumpkin farmer began swearing by it to grow his prize-winning giant pumpkins. Now, the Krainicks go to the giant pumpkin competition every year, where the huge gourds are tapped and filled with beer for the fairgoers before being brought home for — you guessed it — the Krainicks' cows to eat and turn into more of that prize-winning soil.

Leann and Mike's soil business is just the most recent green initiative in the long history of their dairy.

Krainick Dairy has been passed down through generations, and with each owner, "sustainability and environment, they've always been at the forefront," Leann says. Mike's father and grandfather each did what they could to develop the farm with better, more accurate practices.

To demonstrate that, Leann collects old farm equipment to show how different technologies have been invented and used throughout time as farmers tried to take better care of their animals and land. In just the same way, Leann and Mike are constantly looking for the next bit of technology that will move their farm forward.

Though times and technologies will change, and Krainick Dairy with it, there's one thing above all that is always at the heart of their dairy. "The number one is family," Leann says. "That's top of the list."

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