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Farm Beginnings™ Profile: Matt Fendry
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Matt Fendry |
It’s a wet October afternoon and Matt Fendry is seeing the downside to redirecting a farm’s trajectory.
“When it’s not a dairy farm, it doesn’t have any of a dairy farm’s infrastructure, not even the cement,” he says as he skates his way through the greasy mud.
But as Fendry, 22, pauses on a hillside overlooking the homestead and pastures, it’s clear that the young farmer is fast creating his own dairy infrastructure. Behind him is a recently built hoop house, which serves as a tie-stall barn for cows. To the right are carefully managed grass paddocks, where a healthy herd of Jerseys is grazing. At the bottom of the hill is a milking parlor, which Fendry had custom-built based on designs he had seen on other farms.
Before the fall of 2001, virtually none of these elements of dairying were present on this former crop farm tucked away in a long valley just outside the southeast Minnesota community of Lanesboro.
Fendry’s family moved to the 40-acre hobby farm in 1998. Matt, who had always wanted to farm, had raised vegetables and eggs to sell direct to consumers in the area. But dairying was his real interest, so he began putting in motion a plan to create the dairying infrastructure both he, and the farm, needed. While in high school, he worked as a relief milker for two dairy farms—both grazing operations—and in 2000-2001 took the Land Stewardship Project’s Farm Beginnings™ course. Soon after completing the course, Fendry’s farming plans accelerated. He graduated from high school in May 2001, and the next month broke ground on the parlor. By late fall of that year he was milking.
Fendry’s milking herd got its start with 15 cows he obtained through a Heifer International revolving loan. The loan, which is administered through the Farm Beginnings™ program, provides recipients with livestock interest-free. It’s a five-year loan, with recipients making payments the last three years. Fendry, who made his first loan payment earlier this year, says not having to pay anything on it for two years was a huge benefit. The loan also required him to take a close look at his financials and to come up with a cash flow plan.
“It helps you solidify your goals that you have in your head,” he says.
Farm Beginnings™ also exposed Fendry to established farmers who were showing that it is possible to make a go of it in agriculture. Some of the farmers were also dairying, but he said he also learned a lot from producers involved in other enterprises, such as hogs. No matter what type of agriculture they were involved in, they shared one thing that Fendry thrives on: a passion for farming.
“I knew what I wanted to do, so anything short of going bankrupt there was nothing that could stop me.”
That passion and hard work have paid off. He now has a 22-cow certified organic milking herd and is selling his production for a premium to Coulee Region Organic Produce Pool, which markets it under the Organic Valley label. The last two years have been profitable, and Fendry wants to grow the herd to 30 cows by the end of next year. For now, he feels that’s the size of herd he needs to stay viable while keeping the workload manageable (Rebecca, one of his two sisters, assists with the farming, and his father, Hugh, who has a town job, helps as well). The Fendry family recently purchased a neighbor’s land, bringing their farm’s total size to 110 acres.
Not that there haven’t been some difficult times. The first couple of years drought hit the area. Even worse, his newly acquired cows had somatic cell counts so high that Fendry risked not being able to sell their milk. Since he was working toward being certified organic, he couldn’t use antibiotics to treat the problem. But through careful management of the cows and the building of the tie-stall hoop house to shelter them in rough weather, the young farmer was able to make the herd healthy. Fendry also credits Jeff Mattock, a nutritionist with the Fertrell Company and his livestock mentor through the Heifer International loan agreement, with getting him back on track. The young farmer, who tends to look on the bright side, is philosophical about that rocky start.
“I learned a lot about cows those first few years. It accelerated my knowledge so much to have all those problems, where if I’d had the top herd I wouldn’t have learned nearly as much.”
And there are advantages to remaking a farm from scratch: there is no old dairy infrastructure to get in the way. Fendry knew from the beginning he wanted to do managed rotational grazing on a smaller scale. He also wanted a “step-up” milking parlor—one that allows him to manage each cow on a more individual basis. He didn’t have to monkey with dilapidated facilities, and from the start was able to set up things the way he wanted them. That can cost money, but Fendry has figured out how to cut corners. For example, his milking units and bulk tank, which he got from area farmers going out of business, cost $800—brand new the price would have been more like $10,000.
Building your own dairy farm from the ground up also means not being able to blame mistakes on what was already there. But the knowledge gained through such missteps is yours to keep.
“You don’t look at a mistake and call it a mistake, unless you don’t learn anything,” says Fendry. “If you do it twice then you can call it a mistake.”
—Originally published in the Oct/Nov/Dec 2004 Land Stewardship Letter
Click here for more on Farm Beginnings™. You can also call 507-523-3366 in southeast Minnesota or 320-269-2105 in western Minnesota.
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©Land Stewardship Project, 2001
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