, I must be the change I wish to see in the world! I wanted to produce grass-fed raw milk, one of the most natural, most wholesome and most delicious foods on the planet; I wanted to keep Jersey cows, as they are brilliant grazers and produce the richest, golden-yellow milk; and I wanted to allow the cows to graze all year round, milking them in the field rather than making them walk back to a static milking parlour each day.
Our Sustainable Business Model (a work in progress!)
In 2010 when I was preparing for my Nuffield scholarship (see above) I came across something called "Holistic Management" and was immediately hooked. Traditional businesses are driven by economic profitability: They measure success by how much money they generate and how much profit they make. It is their one measure of success, their key metric. You will often hear that such and such a business has shed so many thousand jobs following poor trading results, or that another business has generated so many billion £'s profit.
Each of these three strands are given equal weighting when measuring the success (or otherwise) of your business and they should guide every decision you make, but what are they?
To start with, economic profitability is no different to that found in traditional businesses. You have to set prices, purchase inputs and produce goods at levels which create a cash surplus, which can then be reinvested in supporting and growing the business. A business that is trading at a loss will not be around for very long!
Social profitability is the impact your business has on the people around you: for example your family, your employees, the wider community and your customers. It encourages you to consider the impact of a particular decision, so for example in my case I could buy a robot milking machine (yes they do exist and are very successful!). This could milk upwards of 60 cows at a time, with only one person required to look after it and the cows. But would this benefit the community? How many jobs would be lost or, conversely, how many jobs could I create by making a different choice? I explain more below.
The third strand is the environmental profitability. This demands that management decisions look at the environmental impact of your business. Are you trading in a way that is ultimately environmentally destructive or in a way that is environmentally sustainable?
Our 'Holistic goals' mission statement is:
We never want to use artificial chemicals or sprays and we want to use the cows and their forage crops to create natural fertility in the soils so that we may grow other food in that fertilised soil as healthily as possible. We want to give job opportunities to people who may otherwise not be able to find work and we want to be flexible and tailor the hours to fit in with childcare and other commitments - part time working is a key to this. We want to use labour wherever possible to carry out milking and bottling activities, even when a machine may be more efficient. We want to generate a cash profit to allow the business to grow and we want to give a proportion of these profits to charities to help those who are less fortunate.
I hope to expand on how we are meeting our holistic goals at a later date.
We saw the problem on the horizon. However, there were several hurdles we needed to cross before we could solve the issue. The first was to save up for some replacement cows: Having invested heavily in the parlour and the original animals, not to mention the working capital needs of the business, funds have been tight and the cows had been put on hold until now (more about that in a moment).
The good news is that we are now in a position to rectify the situation. I visited a high-health Jersey herd in Norfolk this morning (it's the same herd that my original cows came from) and have picked out and agreed to buy two very pretty heifers. One is already milking and the other is due to calve in September. This means I will have more milk to sell and so you - my very important customers - should always be able to make your milk purchase.
Good news! The second heifer I bought last month calved overnight. The heifer - Gloria - and her calf (yet to be named so feel free to send me suggestions) are both doing really well and enjoying today's sunshine.
In a few days the mother - due to her breeding and genetics - will start to produce far more milk than the calf can drink. This is good news for us as it means the surplus is available to sell. This is timely as milk from the other three cows is declining every day as the days get shorter and the weather turns inclement. The challenge I am now wrestling with is how to keep them milking and healthy through the winter when they're 100% grass-fed (no corn for them) and are outside throughout (albeit with a very adequate shelter which they retreat to during the worst of the weather).
We have also been on a steep learning curve regarding grass-fed milk production during the winter. There is a practical reason why farmers feed grain: It is packed full of calories, energy for the cow to produce large quantities of milk and to keep warm. We have chosen a different route and have forsaken grain in favour of an all-grass diet. This means that the cows' energy intake is lower and so a greater proportion of that energy is used in keeping warm, at the expense of milk production.
Up until last week, the cows were outside too, and although we had them wrapped up well (in horse rugs - I've never seen anyone else do this with cows!) I made a decision that, for the welfare of the animals, they needed to be inside, sheltered from the worst of the winter weather. Fortunately I knew of a neighbouring farmer with a spare cattle yard which he has agreed to rent to me for the winter months. I've shipped some preserved grass (silage) in for the cows to eat, given them a lovely straw bed to lie on and have brought my mobile milking parlour along too. Hopefully this will make them even more comfortable and contented and will help milk yield to increase too.
