Thickes named Organic Farmers of Year

The Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service will honor Fairfield dairy farmers, Francis and Susan Thicke, as the 2012 Organic Farmers of the Year.

The owners and operators of Radiance Dairy in Fairfield have been recognized during the past 11 years with other awards, mostly from within Iowa.

?It?s always an honor to be recognized by your own industry,? said Francis Thicke. ?This award is more regional. The conference will have 2,500 organic farmers attending.?

Susan Thicke agreed. ?It?s a nice verification from peers,? she said. ?We appreciate the people who honor us. And we enjoy attending the conferences. It gives us a chance to network.?

Radiance Dairy, 450 acres of rolling hills north of Fairfield, houses two families separately, the Thickes and one of their employee?s, as well as a milking parlor, a cattle barn and the on-farm dairy processing plant. About 120 acres of pasture is divided up into 60 small pastures, called paddocks.

?We came to Fairfield in 1992, bought a small organic dairy farm in a different location and moved to this farm in 1996,? said Thicke. ?We started with 20 cows and keep expanding, as our market expands.?

The Thickes? farmland in 1996 had been previously planted for many years the same as much of Iowa ? in corn and soybeans ? and had been cash rented from an absentee landlord. At the top of some of the hills, all the topsoil was eroded away. Gullies creased fields, with the deepest gully nearly 4 feet deep, Francis Thicke explains in his 2010 book, ?A New Vision for Iowa Food and Agriculture, Sustainable Agriculture for the 21st Century.? The only structure on the land was an old wooden corncrib.

?We had to design and build the dairy from the ground up,? he wrote.

He describes the farm?s state in 1996 as ?conservation had been neglected. The land is rolling and steep in places,? and while that makes navigating combines or planters more challenging, it works out well for Thickes? Golden Jersey herd.

?Our cows are out in pasture whenever weather allows,? he said. ?Bad weather doesn?t affect them as much as does the wind. Among our pastures, there?s many little vales and they shelter in them, out of the wind.?

The farm also is wooded and the cows huddle under trees some days for shelter and shade, added Susan Thicke. They also can keep the herd in the barn during bad weather.

?We repaired the gullies and planted the cropland on the farm to a mixture of grazing forages, consisting of grasses and forbs, including legumes,? Thicke wrote in his book.

Radiance Dairy is certified organic, which requires the land to be three years without synthetic fertilizers or other applications. Animals need to be eating totally organic feed for one year to be certified. And certification requires organic dairy herds be pastured, not confined.

The paddock system the Thickes use allows the cows to be turned out into a fresh pasture twice a day, during the growing seasons.

?After each milking, our herd is turned out into a fresh paddock,? said Francis Thicke. ?After they?ve grazed a paddock, it gets rested for 30-40 days, allowing the grass and clovers to re-grow and not be decimated.?

During the winter months when grasses don?t grow, the cows are still fed Thicke farm-grown grass, hay and soybeans, harvested earlier and set-aside for this purpose.

They count nearly 90 cows that are milked twice a day, but also have other cows.

?We have three groups of cows,? he said. ?We have our ?dry? cows; those are the pregnant ones. We stop milking them about two months before they give birth. And we keep the calves separate.?

He keeps one or two bulls from those born on the farm and sells off the other young males. He also has bought semen to artificially inseminate cows to get new genetics into the herd.

Because new calves replenish the herd, older cows that might be less productive to milk are sold ? to families looking for a family cow, he said.

Visiting the dairy herd Tuesday in a paddock, it was easy to see the cows? curiosity and familiarity with both Susan and Francis, and that each cow wore a name tag around her neck. Macey licked Susan?s gloves. At mid-afternoon, udders looked to be a half to three-quarters full.

?They begin heading up to the milking parlor on their own,? said Francis Thicke. ?It?s a few hours away yet.?

He and Susan take an active part in all phases of dairy operations. With four employees, the Thickes help with milking and in the processing plant.

Radiance Dairy processes and packages its own milk ? whole, 2 percent and skim; cream; yogurt; and three types of cheeses ? a type of Jack cheese, paneer, an Indian type of fresh cheese and a ricotta cheese, said Susan Thicke.

The products are marketed locally, to retail stores and restaurants within a 5-mile radius.

The Thickes will be awarded Organic Farmers of the Year at the 23rd annual Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, Wis., later this week.

Since 2003, the annual M.O.S.E.S. Organic Farmer of the Year Award has been presented to an outstanding organic farmer or farm family to recognize those who practice outstanding land stewardship, innovation and outreach.