Pasturing Stock, Producing Cheese
By Deborah Wechsler (2004); updated by Karen Adler (2008)

Green Hill Dairy and Grassy Flats Dairy
Al and Desiree Wehner
Quitman and Pavo, Georgia

Sweet Grass Dairy
Jessica and Jeremy Little
Thomasville, Georgia
www.sweetgrassdairy.com

Green Hill Dairy
Al and Desiree Wehner were once partners in a conventional dairy in Florida, milking 1,100 Holsteins three times a day, triple-cropping 500 irrigated acres, cutting 250 acres of hay four times a year, and winning awards for milk production. However, when they bought out their partner (who owned the land) and moved the equipment and cows to a new farm just over the Georgia border, they also decided to change their lifestyle—and that of their cows—to a grazing system of dairying. The new Green Hill Dairy, started in 1993, was a pioneer among American dairies in adopting New Zealand-style rotational grazing.

Green Hill Dairy, in Quitman, Georgia, currently milks about 600 cows, predominantly Jerseys, with about 400 heifers being raised as replacements. Pastures are Bermuda grass-based; 260 acres are overseeded with ryegrass in the fall. Center pivot irrigation supplies water to 220 acres, and corners can be watered with a traveling gun. Desiree notes, “In our area it would be next to impossible to operate our system without the access to a good supply of water due to the area’s climate, soil types, and rainfall patterns.”

The farm is divided, according to season and grass growth, into temporary paddocks with polyrope. Cows have access to the entire farm via a raceway that extends the entire circumference of the pivot, dividing the area into outside and inside paddocks. There are about 50 permanent water troughs throughout the farm as well as water troughs on each side of the barn. The Wehners pasture their cows 365 days a year. Heifers are reared completely on pasture and learn to rotate pastures from birth.

The Wehners supplement with haylage in fall and winter “flat spots” when the grass is limited. They put up the haylage during the summer months when the grass is growing faster than the cows can eat it. “Harvesting the excess keeps up the quality of the grass,” explains Desiree, “and in this humid climate, haylage is easier to handle than hay.” Milking cows receive 15-20 pounds of feed a day.

Fish/kelp hydrolase, molasses, and microbial supplements are applied to the pastures regularly, along with macro and micro nutrients according to soil and tissue tests. “We are really trying to become more biologically sustainable,” says Desiree, “which is a challenge, especially with the number of cattle we maintain.”

When the Wehners switched to grass-based dairying, they also switched from Holsteins to Jersey cattle, and reduced their herd by half, a number that the land could support on pasture. Though the Jersey is the basis of the herd, crossbreeding, using many different breeds, has been a major influence. For example, recently the Wehners chose to use Holstein sires for artificial insemination to increase milk per cow averages. About half of the cows are bred by artificial insemination, the rest by their own Jersey bulls.

The Wehners select for a January–March calving window and sell cows that don’t fit into this window. This timing allows them to use their highest quality forage for fresh cows. Plus, explains Desiree, “Managing cows in blocks allows us to concentrate our labor on specific tasks, therefore reducing the need for year-round labor for watching springer cows, raising calves, taking care of fresh cows, breeding cows, etc.”

Grassy Flats Dairy
In 2006 the Wehners started another New Zealand-style rotational grazing sustainable dairy, called Grassy Flats Dairy, just outside of Pavo, Georgia. It is about 15 miles from Green Hill, in Brooks County as well. They are also grazing about 500 cows at the new dairy, although Grassy Flats calves in October through December and Green Hill Dairy still calves in January through March. Grassy Flats has the same swing style milking parlor, the same crossbred cows, and they graze about 300 acres there.

Sweet Grass Dairy
In 1995, because their children were going to high school in Thomasville, about 30 miles from Green Hill Dairy in Quitman, the Wehners purchased a second farm near Thomasville and moved there. Instead of the kids driving to school, their parents began commuting to Quitman to manage the dairy. In 2000, Desiree decided to set up a cheesemaking business at their new farm, partly because she loved making cheese, and also because she had a strong desire to show people the difference between the grass based milk and the milk they had formerly produced conventionally. Desiree’s daughter Jessica Little says, “Out of all of the dairy products, such as yogurt, butter, ice cream, and cheese, cheese was by far the most challenging, yet creative and exciting for her.” Desiree could make the cheese by hand, and it was an enterprise she could launch without having to invest big dollars on a processing facility. Adds Jessica, “Cheese is the most scientific, yet artistic, milk product.”

Desiree had been making cheese off and on since 1990 and acquired a small initial milking herd of eight goats in 1999. “I wanted goats because I love goat cheese,” comments Desiree, “though it would be much easier only working with one species’ milk.” To learn more, she also visited cheesemakers in Italy and France and attended a cheesemaking short course at California Polytechnic.

This new business was named Sweet Grass Dairy. The goat herd at Sweet Grass has now grown to about 200 milking goats. These goats are raised under a rotational grazing regime similar to that of the cows, but the farm has no irrigation and more wooded land— just fine for goats, which are browsers more than grazers. Only a small portion of their cows’ milk is used in the cheesemaking operation. The cows’ milk from Green Hill and Grassy Flats is sold to the dairy co-op. Sweet Grass Dairy buys back the cows’ milk used for cheesemaking and pays the co-op to haul it to them.

Al adapted old farm equipment to get them started with cheesemaking at Sweet Grass Dairy. Their coolers for storing and ageing the cheeses were old refrigerated truck bodies. Since then they have upgraded the facilities and built several “real” climate-controlled 10’ x 10’ coolers that allow them to better regulate the temperature and humidity to produce a high-quality, consistent product.

In 2002, the Wehners’ daughter, Jessica, and her husband, Jeremy Little, joined the business. The Littles bought Sweet Grass Dairy from the Wehners in 2005. They now live there, and oversee making, shipping, and marketing their cheeses. Jessica, who has a degree in marketing, and Jeremy, who is the cheesemaker, consult with Desiree about cheese questions, and Desiree still helps with the goats on health-related issues. As of 2008 there are about 200 milking goats at Sweet Grass Dairy.

Sweet Grass Dairy currently produces four goat cheeses and six cow cheeses on a regular basis, but they are always experimenting and refining their cheeses. They offer three to four seasonal cheeses over the holidays. Many of the cheeses, such as Georgia Gouda, Georgia Pecan Chevre, and Thomasville Tomme are their own regional versions of classic European cheeses. Several of their cheeses have won awards at cheese competitions. Their most popular cheese by far, says Jessica, is the Green Hill, a double cream, soft ripened cows’ milk cheese with a white, bloomy rind. It is similar to a brie.

Demand and production have both grown. They now have a variety of outlets for their cheeses. They no longer take their cheese to a farmers’ market in Atlanta, more than four hours away, but they do sell at the nearby Thomasville Farmers’ Market once a month and the Fernandina Farmers’ Market once a month as well. They sell their cheeses through mail order, offering several styles of gift boxes with a variety of cheeses plus crackers, Georgia pecans, and Savannah Bee Honey. They have an online retail shop as well as an on-site retail shop, which allows them to maintain personal contact with their customers, and they wholesale direct to specialty stores and restaurants. With their backgrounds in marketing and restaurant work, both Jessica and Jeremy know how to talk to and work with chefs, a useful skill for gourmet cheesemakers.

Previously they felt they were too small to sell to distributors due to low profit margins, but they now have three large distributors that they sell to—Atlanta Foods International that sells in the South, Cheeseworks East out of New Jersey that sells on the East Coast, and Cheeseworks West in San Francisco that sells on the West Coast. Instead of prohibitively high shipping prices for sending small lots to many individual small accounts, they now send large quantities to the distributors, who can include their cheeses with other shipments.

In the past, the Wehners had been known to joke that Green Hill Dairy was where they made their money and Sweet Grass Dairy was where they spent it. However, Sweet Grass Dairy, after only a few years, can sell all the cheese it produces, and is currently supporting Jessica and Jeremy’s family. The Wehners have not had to infuse capital from the parent farm since 2004.

Al and Desiree still manage Green Hill Dairy themselves and have moved back to this farm now. All three farms have several hired helpers as well; Green Hill and Grassy Flats have about four employees at each farm, and Sweet Grass Dairy has seven full-time employees, not counting Jessica or Jeremy. They also have one part-time person in the retail shop at Sweet Grass Dairy.

At all the farms they have high line swing parlors—“New Zealand” style parlors. With 36 milking units that swing to both sides of the parlor, they can milk around 250 cows per hour at Green Hill. With 12 milking units that don’t swing at Sweet Grass, they can milk 75 goats per hour. Desiree points out that their barns, while quite efficient, don’t have bells and whistles like rump shields and automatic take-offs. She adds that their barns can probably be built for less than half the price of the “state-of-the-art barns recommended by ‘experts.’”

The Wehners also raise hogs on a small scale at Sweet Grass, keeping a dozen sows and a boar. They started out with a commercial strain of hogs, which did not do well on pasture, but then acquired hogs from a Georgia farmer who had developed his own local Landrace. Based on Irish breeds, these hogs thrive on pasture and successfully wean litters as large as 16-18. The hogs are fed whey, scrap cheese, leftover grain, and whatever they can forage. Most of their offspring are sold as suckling pigs to Atlanta restaurants.

Location: Three farms in South Georgia, 30 and 15 miles apart. Green Hill Dairy is near Quitman, Sweet Grass Dairy is near Thomasville, and Grassy Flats Dairy is near Pavo.
Climate zone: 8
Soil type: Sandy loam
Years in commercial production: 25
Acreage: 150 acres at Sweet Grass Dairy; 340 at Green Hill Dairy; 300 at Grassy Flats Dairy
Livestock: 600 milking cattle (predominantly Jerseys) at Green Hill, plus bulls. 500 milking cattle at Grassy Flats. 440 heifers on 150 acres at a separate grazing farm About 200 milking goats (multi-breed) plus about 50 non-milking goats at Sweet Grass. 20 sows and a boar; a few laying chickens.
Crops/products: Most of cows’ milk wholesale to co-op; goats’ milk and some of cows’ milk used in cheesemaking. Suckling pigs, eggs.
Value-added products: Goat and cow milk cheeses. Gift boxes.
Notable facilities and equipment: 5 cheese coolers (walk-ins and old truck bodies). All dairies have high line swing parlors, 36 milking units at Green Hill, 12 at Sweet Grass.
Weeks in production: Year-round.
Markets: Most cows’ milk sold through dairy co-op. Cheese sold at farmers’ market, mail order and online retail shop, wholesale to stores, restaurants and distributors, and at on-farm store. Suckling pigs to restaurants in Atlanta.
Labor: Al and Desiree Wehner, full-time; their daughter Jessica Little and her husband Jeremy Little full-time. About 4 employees at both Green Hill and Grassy Flats; 7 full-time employees at Sweet Grass, plus one part-time employee in the retail shop.