[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 143 (Wednesday, September 7, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4468-S4469]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





        RECOGNIZING THE CONTINUED SUCCESS OF ANIMAL FARM BUTTER

  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, in my home State of Vermont, where there 
are more cows then people, the local dairy industry is the bedrock of 
our communities. From Derby to Pownal, small dairy farms provide honest 
jobs and produce fine dairy products sought after by Michelin Star 
restaurants across the country. These farms also provide the beautiful 
backdrop of green pastures, grazing livestock, and the iconic bright 
red barns that attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to our picture 
perfect little State every year.
  Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, consolidation within the 
agriculture industry, falling milk prices, supply chain delays, and the 
rising costs of equipment and other goods, small dairy farms have been 
hit hard. These difficulties, both longstanding and recent, continue to 
lead some lifelong Vermont dairy farmers to move on to other careers or 
to retirement, where they are often faced with the difficult decision 
to either sell their business and livestock to large, industrial 
factory farms, or undertake the difficult journey to find a local 
farmer who can take on their business and beloved cows.
  Today, I would like to highlight a piece of good news from the 
Vermont small dairy industry, a story of how the retiring founder of 
the most sought-after small-batch cultured butter operation in the 
country found a graduate of the University of Vermont's animal science 
program to continue a famous Vermont tradition. Together, Vermonters 
Hilary and Ben Haigh, learning from Shoreham's own Diane St. Clair, 
have continued a boutique butter business--yet another example of 
Vermont perseverance, and the high-quality products coming Vermont's 
small family farms, like the Animal Farm Creamery.
  I ask unanimous consent that the June 10, 2022, New York Times 
article titled ``America's Most Luxurious Butter Lives to Churn Another 
Day'' be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, June 10, 2022]

       America's Most Luxurious Butter Lives To Churn Another Day

                           (By Melissa Clark)

       Shoreham, VT.--In a wooden barn perched on a grassy hill, 
     some of the most celebrated cows in the dairy business--the 
     bovine royal family of American fancy butter--sampled hay in 
     their new abode.
       Diva, the bossiest of the group, hovered regally over the 
     shy, gentle Cinnamon. Lying down were Ruby and Lacy, who were 
     chewing cud over their folded forelegs. Rutabaga, May and 
     Patch ruminated impassively as Dell peed, effusively, in 
     greeting.
       A few months earlier, in February, the herd's former owner, 
     Diane St. Clair, loaded them onto a trailer and drove them 
     seven miles down the road from her Animal Farm Creamery in 
     Orwell, Vt., to Rolling Bale Farm in Shoreham, a 100-acre 
     organic property nestled into a clearing about an hour south 
     of Burlington.
       ``That was a hard day,'' Ms. St. Clair said. ``But there 
     was no way for me to continue.''
       Ms. St. Clair had spent the previous 22 years making the 
     most sought-after small-batch cultured butter in the United 
     States. It's the same butter that the chef Thomas Keller 
     serves at the French Laundry and Per Se--and that retails for 
     an eye-popping $60 per pound.
       But at 65, she was ready to retire. Decades of twice-daily 
     milking, barn mucking and hoisting 70-pound jugs of fresh 
     milk into the butter churn had taken a toll on her back. Her 
     husband, Al Clarisse, a large-animal veterinarian who was her 
     only helper, had developed knee problems. And although her 
     heart still clung to her cherished Jersey cows (her ``other 
     family,'' as she called them), her creative urges had shifted 
     from butter to a new, more sedentary, but just as aromatic, 
     passion: blending exclusive perfumes.
       The question was, would she be able to find the right 
     people to take on her treasured herd and her churn? Or would 
     her extraordinary butter, with its subtle nutty, grassy 
     flavors that changed with the seasons, simply disappear?
       For many small dairies in Vermont, retirement can be a 
     heartbreaking matter of selling off cows and equipment to 
     large agribusinesses and calling it quits. In 1969, Vermont 
     had 4,017 dairy farms, most of them small, family-run 
     operations. By 2020, that number had dropped by 84 percent to 
     636, with many having consolidated to benefit from economies 
     of scale.
       Even at farms where the next generation wants to step up, 
     dairy farmers are finding it increasingly difficult to make a 
     living. A national oversupply of milk, made worse during the 
     pandemic, brought down prices to the point where it may no 
     longer make financial sense to keep going.
       All of this has caused the demise of many beloved farms and 
     dairy products, including the prizewinning cheeses from Orb 
     Weaver Creamery, whose owners spent years trying to pass on 
     their dairy to young cheesemakers before finally having to 
     sell off their last cow and close down. This was something 
     Ms. St. Clair intended to prevent: Keeping her business 
     intact and her bovine ``other family'' together--and far from 
     any industrial mega-farms--was her top priority.
       ``I wanted my cows to go to a farm that would treat them 
     like I did, with people who would know their names, and who 
     would name their calves,'' she said.
       Happily, Ms. St. Clair's story is a rare piece of good news 
     in the world of small dairies. It's an example of how one 
     single-minded, cow-loving farmer was able to create a market 
     for the kind of handmade cultured butter that had nearly gone 
     extinct in the United States. Then, through a combination of 
     resolve and serendipity, she was able to pass that business 
     to a young family with exactly the right kind of grit, 
     experience and disposition to carry it on. And they happened 
     to live just down the road.
       Building a Better Butter
       ``I wanted my cows to go to a farm that would treat them 
     like I did, with people who would know their names, and who 
     would name their calves,'' she said.
       Happily, Ms. St. Clair's story is a rare piece of good news 
     in the world of small dairies. It's an example of how one 
     single-minded, cow-loving farmer was able to create a market 
     for the kind of handmade cultured butter that had nearly gone 
     extinct in the United States. Then, through a combination of 
     resolve and serendipity, she was able to pass that business 
     to a young family with exactly the right kind of grit, 
     experience and disposition to carry it on. And they happened 
     to live just down the road.
       When Ms. St. Clair started Animal Farm in 1999, she knew 
     she wanted to raise Jersey cows. With them came a seemingly 
     endless river of milk that needed a purpose.
       ``Everyone else in Vermont was doing cheese,'' Ms. St. 
     Clair said, ``I saw a niche with butter.'' Specifically, the 
     kind of tangy, high-fat, marigold-colored butter she'd eaten 
     in Europe, for which the ultra-creamy milk her Jersey cows 
     produced was perfectly suited. (Most dairy cows in the United 
     States are Holsteins, which yield a larger quantity of milk 
     with a lower fat content.) Back then, no one she knew in the 
     United States was making small batches of European-style 
     butter from their own cows, and there were no guidelines for 
     how to do it. The nearby Vermont Creamery had started making 
     European-style butter a year earlier, in 1998, but from 
     purchased milk, which, like making wine from purchased 
     grapes, puts the agricultural part of the equation out of the 
     producer's control.
       Besides, Ms. St. Clair said, ``I was in it for the cows.''
       Relying on out-of-print dairy manuals from the 19th 
     century, she eventually figured out that culturing the cream 
     before churning it, a process also called clabbering, vastly 
     improved both the taste and the texture, making the end 
     result thicker and more pliant, and adding a pleasing 
     nuttiness.
       Culturing is a standard practice for premium butter in 
     Europe, and it was in the United States as well before the 
     widespread industrialization of the dairy industry shifted to 
     uncultured ``sweet'' butter, those pale, bland sticks in the 
     supermarket, because it was faster and cheaper to produce at 
     scale. (The intense labor involved in producing small 
     quantities of handmade butter from Ms. St. Clair's own Jersey 
     cows, along with high demand from luxury restaurants, 
     accounts for the extravagant price tag.)
       Once Ms. St. Clair was satisfied with her experiments, she 
     overnighted a sampler 3,000 miles away to a famous chef she'd 
     never met, along with a handwritten letter requesting his 
     feedback. Thomas Keller remembered the moment well.
       ``Diane sent me five little knobs of misshapen butter in a 
     Ziploc bag,'' he said. ``I called her immediately and said, 
     `How much do you make? We'll buy it all.' ''
       Eventually, she built a small dairy near the barn, brought 
     in a few more Jersey cows and, still working mostly by 
     herself and by hand, increased production to 100 pounds of 
     butter per week and the plush, lightly sour buttermilk that 
     was its byproduct.
       This was the business she had needed to sell. Ben and 
     Hilary Haigh, both 33, of Rolling Bale Farm turned out to be 
     the ideal buyers.


                 Greener Pastures for a Cherished Herd

       Hilary Haigh has always been ``a little obsessed with 
     butter,'' she said.
       When she was studying animal science at the University of 
     Vermont, her brother gave her a countertop butter churn, 
     which she used for years before switching to a food processor 
     when she and Ben married.
       The couple met, coincidentally, at Animal Farm when they 
     were both in college. Ms. Haigh, who grew up on a nearby 
     farm, was cow- and house-sitting for Ms. St. Clair. Mr. Haigh 
     was helping his uncle build the dairy's roof.
       The two started Rolling Bale Farm in 2014, raising pastured 
     beef, chicken and lamb to sell at the local farmers' market. 
     They also kept a family cow to provide plenty of milk to 
     drink and to feed Ms. Haigh's churn.

[[Page S4469]]

       Having a microdairy like Ms. St. Clair's was a dream, Ms. 
     Haigh said, ``it just happened sooner than we anticipated.''
       When she and Mr. Haigh heard that Ms. St. Clair was looking 
     for buyers, they sent her a handwritten letter expressing 
     their interest.
       It reminded Ms. St. Clair of the letter she'd sent Mr. 
     Keller all those years ago. ``Who sends letters anymore?'' 
     Ms. St. Clair said. ``It's like it's all come full circle.''
       After piecing together two loans and a grant to come up 
     with the $281,000 necessary to buy the business and install a 
     dairy at Rolling Bale Farm, the Haighs took over Animal Farm 
     Creamery in January. (Ms. St. Clair wanted to retire on her 
     farm, so the business and cows were sold, but not her 
     property.)
       Now, several times every week, Ms. Haigh makes butter and 
     buttermilk exactly as Ms. St. Clair taught her: by hand, by 
     herself, in a dairy built on the same pasture where the 
     Haighs' herd grazes, but with the addition of her two young 
     sons tumbling underfoot, eating as much butter and cream as 
     they can get their small hands on.
       Then, once a week, she ships the butter to the same six 
     accounts that Ms. St. Clair had long supplied: Thomas Keller, 
     the Inn at Little Washington in Virginia, Menton in Boston, 
     Ocean House in Rhode Island, Dedalus Wine Shop and Market in 
     Vermont, and Saxelby Cheesemongers in New York.
       So far, Ms. Haigh said, none of the accounts seemed to 
     notice the change of hands. Benoit Breal, an owner of Saxelby 
     Cheesemongers, said the transition had been ``100 percent 
     seamless.''
       ``The quality is the same,'' he said, ``it's still the 
     quintessential artisanal butter. There's no one else doing it 
     like that.''
       For her part, Ms. St. Clair misses her cows. But she's 
     happy to have the time to immerse herself in orris root, 
     ylang-ylang and the other heady tools of perfumery needed for 
     St. Clair Scents.
       And Diva, Cinnamon, Dell and the rest of the herd seem to 
     have fully adapted to their new home. ``Ben and Hilary love 
     their animals; they're good farmers,'' Ms. St. Clair said. 
     ``Now when I go to visit the cows, they're like, `Oh, hi, 
     Diane.' ''
       She paused and added, a little wistfully, ``They're doing 
     fine without me.''

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