From Farm to Table: Coldstream Farms and Darigold Milk
Since the majority of our own food shopping is done at grocery stores, it’s easy to forget the story behind the food. Most of us just step into a grocery store and grab whatever we need. But where is that food coming from? This post is written in partnership with Darigold.
Recently I took a tour of Coldstream Farms, a dairy farm in northwestern Washington. Coldstream Farms provides dairy to Darigold, a farmer-owned brand that our family loves. Visiting Coldstream gave me a behind-the-scenes look at how these farmers bring milk and cheese to our table.
The first part of the story is all about the cows. We heard all about how the cows have their own nutritionist who tailors a diet to meet their exacting needs. They mix different food ingredients, like silage and barley, to a very specific percentage formula. Then this food is fed to the cows freely to allow them to eat what they need. Feeding the cows is one of the highest costs for the farm.
We also toured the milking facility where we learned that dairy farms have moved far from the stool & bucket method of the past. The milking barn is filled with efficient and awesome technology, certainly not what you’d picture in a milking barn. All of it is designed to optimize milking and decrease the cows’ stress.
As the cows freely wander into the barn, they load into a circular station that loads them one at a time. Workers clean and attach the milking machine to each animal. The cow then rides around the circle station while being milked, a process that takes about five minutes. The cow then reaches the end of the circle and exits the milk barn back to their living barn. The machines also track how much milk each cow gives, which helps the farmers manage diets and identify problems.