Today we visited
Noblehurst Farm in Linwood, NY (www.linwoodag.com/noblehurst.html). “Established in July 1960, Noblehurst Farms
Inc. is a seven generation, multi-family farm. Milking 1,800 cows and working
over 2,500 acres of corn, alfalfa, and wheat this farm business has roots
dating back to the very early 1800s.” We
saw the barns in which the cows are “housed” and the “carousel” on which the
cows are milked. The cows are milked
three times a day, and it takes a few minutes for them to be milked. Noblehurst generates energy by collecting
methane, and produces enough energy to operate the farm, and provide energy
back to the grid. We saw baby calves,
one born about 1.5 hours before we visited.
Noblehurst works closely with the NY
Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health (www.nycamh.com)
to provide safety and health training for their employees. NYCAMH is one of 10 NIOSH-funded
Agricultural, Forestry, and Fishing Centers.
Thank you John, Kitty, Sarah (and others) from Noblehurst Farm for providing a great tour, and opening your operation to our trainees. Also, thank you Jim and Marci from the NY Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health (www.nycamh.com) for arranging the tour with Noblehurst.
3 comments:
What a great sustainable farming operation. This is a model for all in the industry to follow. Hats off to the Noblehurst owners for investing in methane reclamation to not only generate power for the neighboring community, but also to recycle organic waste and decrease odors in the community. Best of luck expanding this renewable energy technology.
Glad I learn that the cows supplying us with milk have a nutritional and balance diet of hay,corn, and whey protein.
Noblehurst is a very well run modern farm, family-run operation. I have observed how clean they keep their cattle and their facilities, how much they have adopted technology (i.e. methane digester, food scrap processor as feed stock to the digester, converting the methane they produce for their farm energy requirement) to be sustainable milk producers. Not only do they care about their employees' safety, they think very long term in the way they conduct their business, their investments, and their relationships.
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