Greener Acres: An Upstate Organic Valley Dairy Farmer Reports Back from Visiting Milk-Making Colleagues in Oregon

Editor’s Note: What follows is a guest post from Casey Knapp, a fifth-generation dairy farmer at the 600-acre Cobblestone Valley Farm in Preble, N.Y. In addition to milk for Organic Valley, his family’s farm produces 10 acres of organic strawberries, pastured poultry, beef, pork and free-range eggs plus 3,000 yards of compost. Knapp is a also a senior in agricultural science at Cornell University, and recently took part Organic Valley’s 2011 “Who’s Your Farmer?” tour, a three-week fall road trip for 18 young farmers to colleges, fields, greenmarkets and community events through the Pacific Northwest and California on a veggie-oil powered school bus.