CHANGE FOR THE FUTURE
Hoosick farm bustling after switch from dairy to beef cattle
HOOSICK, N.Y.>> At 55, Dan Tilley decided he needed a change.
He’s still farming, but now instead of getting up at 5 a.m. each day to milk cows, he can rest easy for a couple of extra hours before heading out to do a day’s work.
Tilley and his wife, Joanne, run Tilldale Farm, where they raise 150 head of certified organic beef cattle, with about 50 new babies expected this spring.
Their 300-acre property is near the intersection of routes 22 and 7, not far from the Vermont border. It was a dairy farmfrom1938 to 2008. Dan and Joanne bought it from his father in 1980 and switched from conventional to organic milk production in 1999.
“We were small, and it paid a little more, plus I’d been cultivating corn and not using sprays or antibiotics in the milk cows,” Dan Tilley said. “I just believed it was the good way to do it.”
The transition to organic beef was fairly easy because the land was already certified, he said.
“Beef cattle are pretty hearty animals,” he said. “They don’t need a lot of treatments.”
“I’m a nutritionist by trade, so it was a natural transition in my mind to go all organic and make the best possible food we could for people,” Joanne added. “It makes us healthy, the customers healthy and cows healthy.”
Their herd is primarily comprised of Red Devons, an old English breed, with some Black Angus and Hereford cross-breeds mixed in. The animals’ diet is strictly grass and hay, including finishing -- the final few weeks before processing.
“Some herds seem to need grain to finish,” Dan said. “These don’t. This meat is always the same.”
“People are looking for grassfed,” Joanne added. “They’re looking for that flavor now. It’s a robust, hearty flavor.”
Strictly grass-fed meat is also
healthier, as it’s high in omega-3s and conjugated linoleic acid, a good fat that combats cholesterol, cardiovascular disease and some types of cancer.
Joanne Tilley, with help fromthe couple’s middle daughter, Erika, is constantly on the lookout for new places to sell the farm’s beef.
“It took quite a while to get enough markets to sell everything retail,” Dan Tilley said
About one-third of sales is at farmers markets in Delmar and Manchester and Londonderry, Vermont. The remainder is through an online market to 800 families in Boston. A business called Farmers to You in Calais, Vermont, is a partnership of Vermont farms that makes weekly shipments of fresh goods and products to Boston.
“Word-of-mouth is a big part of it,” Joanne said. “We actually developed the online sales due to a friend of ours who is a Red Devon producer. Some of our farmer’ s markets were small, but they lead to another one and another one .”
The Tilleys previously sold meat to restaurants in the Berkshires, but trucking and transportation became too much of an issue.
The farm has about 100 acres of pasture, and the Tilleys also rent another 100 acres of pastureland. Hay production is a big part of the operation, but, unlike dairy farmers, Dan Tilley doesn’t have to worry about planting corn, which is a big part of dairy cows’ diet.
That’s another benefit of raising beef cattle, especially this year, as fields have been difficult to get on because of relentless spring rains.
With an eye toward the future, the Tilleys are working with the non-profit Agricultural Stewardship Association in hopes of obtaining a conservation easement for their property, whichwould protect it forever from development.
“That way, it can never be used for building lots or businesses because this is a commercial highway,” Dan Tilley said as he watched traffic rush past cows grazing in a field of lush grass. “That way, we can keep it farmland forever, and, if we get a little money from it, we can knock the price down for the next farmer and he can afford to buy a farm.”