In a push for added sustainability, the lush vegetables and bright flowers that grow on the seven farmed acres at Swallowtail Farm in Alachua will be joined by four new mooing members come January.
The 5-year-old farm will be adding a creamery to its landscape early next year, serviced by the four new cows along with its current Dexter cow and calf pair: 2-year-old Grainne and 4-month-old Brie.
Founder Noah Shitama said the idea of the creamery has been a work in progress for the last year, with the goal of the farm becoming completely self-sustainable.
“I feel like that kind of gets at the heart of what the local food situation is about, for consumers to be able to have a good trusted source for their food,” said Shitama, 35.
Fellow Swallowtail farmer Emily Eckhardt, who will be managing the creamery once it’s in business, spent the last six months training through an apprenticeship with Temple-Wilton Community Farm in New Hampshire to learn dairy farming and animal husbandry.
This January, she expects to extract about 8 gallons of milk per day to make cheese, butter and yogurt.
For now, the dairy products made at the creamery can only be sold to pets because of a Florida law that makes it illegal for farms to sell unpasteurized milk without a federal license.
“For us, it will be a very slow build,” Eckhardt, 29, said. “I believe in raw milk. I feel like it’s the healthiest thing. I also believe that we need to do it right.”
She said the farm will look into obtaining a license in the future to sell dairy products to customers.
In the meantime, the new cows will primarily serve to create usable manure to fertilize the crops.
“No one else in our area is really attempting that kind of farming right now,” Eckhardt said.
The farm will launch a crowd-funding campaign in the next two weeks on barnraiser.us to build the creamery and buy a new delivery vehicle that would help fulfill the farm’s growing demand.
Shitama, who is a Gainesville native, started the community-supported agriculture farm with only one acre of cultivated land and 30 shareholding households — “shares” the farm sells to the public in return for delivering a box of seasonal produce to the houses at regular intervals.
Now Swallowtail services about 240 households and sells produce to local farmer’s market patrons and Gainesville restaurants like the Top and Satchel’s Pizza.
On Monday afternoon, Shitama fed grain to light brown Grainne as calf Brie snuggled close to her mother and shied away from his other outstretched hand.
“She’s kind of a diva cow,” he said of Grainne.
Looking forward, Shitama said the cow will be a large part of Swallowtail’s ultimate goal.
“We are striving to be the first farm in our area to offer a whole diet,” he said.
[A version of this story ran on page 3 on 10/21/2014]
Swallowtail Farms founder Noah Shitama feeds grain to 2-year-old Dexter cow Grainne and her calf, 4-month-old Brie, on Monday. The two will be part of the farm’s new creamery set to open in early 2015. See story on page 3.
