This article by David Corriveau was published by the Valley News on Sept. 19.
HARTFORD — Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Anson Tebbetts could hardly ask for a better day than Thursday to visit Jericho Hill Farm — and not just because a clear September sky was showcasing George and Linda Miller’s 135 green acres and their 30 milking cows on day two of Tebbetts’ tour of dairy operations around the state.
The fifth stop on the tripartisan tour of dairy operations around the state, aimed at giving lawmakers more insight into Vermont’s farming landscape, also coincided with the news that Tebbetts’ agency received more than $450,000 in federal money to jump-start a program encouraging dairy producers to diversify their product lines and adapt to economic and regulatory changes.
“It’s going to help our farmer community look at choices they can make to stay viable,” Tebbetts said before heading to the Sprague farm in Brookfield on a tour with Republican Gov. Phil Scott. “We want to offer people options. We’re going to look at markets and see whether farms like this one can hook up with partners the way the Millers have with Spring Brook Farm.”
That would be Spring Brook Farm in Reading, to which in 2013 Jericho Hill started selling its raw milk to for processing into cheese, at a higher price than the Millers could get from dairy cooperatives for milk for drinking.
“So without Spring Brook,” state Rep. Jim Harrison, R-Chittenden, began, “this-size operation …”
“… wouldn’t make a dime,” George Miller finished.
Miller said while the price Spring Brook pays them for the raw milk hasn’t gone up since 2013, “the price hasn’t gone down, either.”
The arrangement with Spring Brook, which Tebbetts had visited earlier in the day, is one of several innovations in which the Millers, now in their early 60s, have invested in recent years, including a solar array on the barn roof that now more than offsets their power costs.
“Their success is our success,” said Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman, a Progressive who runs a vegetable farm in Chittenden County and who joined Tebbetts and several legislators on the tour. “It’s great cheese with great management.”
Throw in a maple-sugaring operation that produces 200 to 300 gallons of syrup a year and sales of surplus hay not needed to feed their cows — mostly Jerseys and a few Holsteins — and the Millers are managing to maintain a farm that George’s great-grandfather George Nelson Miller bought for $1,800 in 1907.
“We’re not ready to sell it for the development rights,” Miller said of the farm, which sits in the heart of Hartford’s Jericho district. “That’s pie in the sky. Somebody’s going to make money from it, but it’s probably not you.”
State Rep. Carl Demrow, D-Corinth, declared himself encouraged to see a dairy farm making do on the kind of steep terrain that a dwindling number of his constituents tend in Corinth, Vershire, Chelsea, Williamstown and Orange.
“When I was campaigning in 2018, I met a number of farmers who were really, really struggling with the geographical challenges,” said Demrow, a former farmhand and carpenter who now works for a company that builds trails. “And on top of price fluctuations and everything else, they’re getting older.
“My fellow district rep, Rodney Graham (R-Williamstown), one of the few dairy farmers we have left in the Legislature, is in his mid-50s,” he said. “You hear all the time that the work is year-round, 24/7.”
Growing up watching George put in such hours, the Millers’ son Alex and daughter Hannah evinced little interest in becoming the fifth generation to keep the farm going. Now in their 30s, both live on the southern New England coast.
“Alex used to say, ‘I’d have been a good farmer if I wanted to work that hard,’ ” George Miller said. “He didn’t, and you can’t really blame him.’ ”
Tebbetts said that he used to think he had “a pretty good overview” of the challenges facing farmers because he grew up on a farm in Cabot, covered agriculture during his 20-plus years at WCAX-TV Channel 3, and served two years as an assistant secretary of agriculture under then-Gov. Jim Douglas.
Then he took the reins in Montpelier in January of 2017.
“This has been a deeper dive,” Tebbetts said. “I didn’t really know the extent of the issues. When I was with the agency 10 years ago, the price of milk was what farmers most wanted to talk about. Now it’s, ‘How am I going to comply with the water-quality regulations?’
“It’s yet another aspect of the job on their plate.”
Correction: Raw milk from Jericho Hill Farm in Hartford is used in the production of the cheese at Spring Brook Farm in Reading, Vt. An earlier version of this story incorrectly listed several brands of cheese no longer produced at Jericho Hill.
