LEYDEN — When a visitor steps into the Bree-Z-Knoll Farm barn in Leyden, operations look a little different than expected.
Instead of farmers milking the roughly 120 cows by hand, the cows step into the Lely Astronaut automatic milking robot. As the cows munch on their grain, the machine milks the cows and monitors their body temperature, how much milk they produce and other helpful information to keep Our Family Farms’ milk at high quality.
Earlier this month, the dairy cooperative Our Family Farms earned the title of Franklin County’s Manufacturer of the Year, with milk that outlasts many of its competitors by a week, according to Angie Facey, who runs Bree-Z-Knoll Farm with her husband Randy.
The Manufacturer of the Year awards are presented by the Massachusetts Legislative Manufacturing Caucus in recognition of outstanding leadership skills in the manufacturing industry. This recognition is reserved for manufacturers who propel their industry toward continued growth and innovation.
“We are lucky to have multi-generational farms like Our Family Farms here in Franklin County that are committed to upholding our commitment to agriculture while also providing jobs that fuel the local economy,” state Rep. Natalie Blais, who visited Our Family Farms alongside state Sen. Jo Comerford earlier this month, said in a statement.
“Our Family Farms stands as a cornerstone of Franklin County’s agricultural community, known for its unwavering commitment to quality, sustainability and innovation,” Comerford said in a statement. “I am deeply grateful to Rep. Natalie Blais for nominating Our Family Farms for this recognition, and for her ongoing partnership in championing our region’s farmers.”
Eight local dairy farms started Our Family Farms in 1997 to protect their profits from the pendulum of the milk market. Now, only Bree-Z-Knoll Farm and Gould Maple Farm, a Shelburne dairy farm, remain.
With several stops between the barn and consumers’ fridges, Facey said Bree-Z-Knoll Farm’s milk endures the long road ahead of it without surrendering to spoil.
The secret to its survival?
“It’s milking hygiene and cow hygiene that gives you the quality,” said Facey, sitting at a desk outside the room where the raw milk becomes Our Family Farms’ signature white, chocolate, strawberry and coffee milk. Next door in the barn, machines clean the cows and scrape stalls clean every hour and 20 minutes.
Before the machines, she and her husband drove the herd of cattle down the road to a barn to milk them before herding them back. Now, Facey said she notices a calm in the cows as they stay in their pens and eat, sleep and are milked on their own schedule.
“It’s odd because you’re doing the exact opposite of what [cows] are meant to do, and they’re happy,” Facey said.
But the lifelong dairy farmer traced the quality of the milk to more than a few fancy robots.
Facey’s connection to cows first grew on her family’s dairy farm in Spencer. Like her husband and now her son, she spent her childhood showing her cows at fairs and other 4-H events. Decades of dairy farming later, she compared her sixth sense for the creatures to the awareness teachers have of their students and parents of their children, but with a key difference: when something is wrong, “[cows] can’t tell you, so you have to figure it out.”
“Dealing with cows, you have this sixth sense,” she said. “You walk through the cows every single day and maybe Gigi greets you and then that one day, she’s lying down with her head down. You know something’s wrong, so you go find out. You just know.”
When French Fry the dairy cow stopped producing milk, Facey knew to call the vet. Through exploratory surgery, the vet fixed a twist in French Fry’s gut. Between sighs of relief, Facey recalled the vet telling her that French Fry would have likely died without her sixth sense.
Even with the help of the robots, the Facey family works around the clock because cows never take a day off. When asked what has kept her working in the barn since birth, she replied simply, “Because I love the cows. It’s in our blood.”
“They’re always there for you, they never talk back, they don’t call out sick,” Facey said with a laugh.
She and the rest of the Bree-Z-Knoll Farm crew name every cow, treat them in hospital pens in the barn and bottle feed the calves.
“They’re giant puppies,” said Franklin County Technical School senior Becca-Anne Skelton, who takes care of the 13 calves six days a week.
Even as wobbling baby cows, Skelton said she sees their personalities.
“Some are very shy, some are in your face all the time,” Skelton said.
When shoppers pick up Our Family Farms’ milk, egg nog, half and half or heavy cream from the shelves at Green Fields Market, Foster’s Supermarket, Stop & Shop and approximately 90 other stores and food pantries across the state, they meet the cows, too. Printed on every bottle is a drawing of a Bree-Z-Knoll Farm cow above their name, like Guinness, Facey’s son’s first cow that was born on St. Patrick’s Day, or Guacamole, a cow that caused some confusion for a customer who called Facey fearing their milk might taste like avocadoes.
Besides hygiene throughout the milking process and farmers caring for the cows’ needs, Facey traced the milk’s Manufacturer-of-the-Year quality to one more factor.
“It just tastes really good,” she said with a smile.
