{"id":399,"date":"2011-06-08T14:00:12","date_gmt":"2011-06-08T14:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/?p=399"},"modified":"2012-03-02T14:19:18","modified_gmt":"2012-03-02T19:19:18","slug":"flexibilty-helps-thinking-outside-the-barn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/2011\/06\/08\/flexibilty-helps-thinking-outside-the-barn\/","title":{"rendered":"Flexibilty Helps Thinking Outside the Barn"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Paul

Paul \u201979 and Shirley \u201980 Hoover milk about 70 Jersey cows at their farm in Greencastle, Pennsylvania. They let their cows go dry each winter to give themselves a break, and feed them almost entirely with grass \u2013 unusual approaches they\u2019ve adopted to minimize cost and stress.<\/p><\/div>\n

The fact that Paul \u201979<\/strong> and Shirley \u201980 Hoover<\/strong> had no background or experience in the dairy industry did little to stop them from entering the business in 1991. Neither did the fact that they had five children at home.<\/p>\n

And after two years in partnership with another couple, they struck out on their own, founding Willow Bank Jerseys with 30 cows and a bit of beat-up equipment on a rented farm beside I-81 near Greencastle, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

The Hoovers\u2019 inexperience led to plenty of rookie mistakes at Willow Bank. The time the cows\u2019 teat dip got accidentally switched with an acid solution was an early lesson, generating some ugly veterinarian\u2019s bills.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe school of hard knocks is no joke,\u201d says Paul, able to chuckle now over the early follies. But at the same time, the Hoovers\u2019 inexperience blessed them with an enormous asset \u2013 open minds.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou learn to think. You don\u2019t just do something because that\u2019s the way Grandpa did it,\u201d says Shirley. \u201cYou be flexible. You change course in the middle when it makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Change course they did in 1997, after they\u2019d paid off their start-up loan and gotten their farm legs under them. Then, after consultation with friends and mentors, the Hoovers decided on an unusual, seasonal approach to milking, allowing their entire herd to go dry for about seven weeks each winter.<\/p>\n

A major advantage of seasonal management is simple economics. Utility costs, for example, are far lower when the Hoovers aren\u2019t milking. The dairy herd\u2019s synchronized lactation cycle allows the couple to minimize expenses by buying supplies in bulk quantities, drastically simplifying farm management.<\/p>\n

At least as important, though, the dry weeks give Paul a much-needed annual break from the daily farm grind (Shirley works part-time off the farm at a hospital in Hagerstown, Maryland.) Almost every year, he\u2019s gone on service trips with Mennonite Disaster Service and other groups during the farm\u2019s idle period, and each time, he returns refreshed and eager to start up again.
\nWhile Paul is \u201cnot a die-hard\u201d on by-the-book organic agriculture, his 70-some Jersey cows are almost exclusively fed on grass \u2013 an approach that made economic sense for the farm, and one that happens to carry a variety of environmentally friendly side-effects. By grazing the pastures, the cows harvest and fertilize their own inexpensive and healthy food, also allowing Paul to spend far less time on the tractor and far less money hauling feed in and hauling manure back out of the barn than his conventional dairy neighbors.<\/p>\n

The Hoovers have been members of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture ever since they began farming, in part due to the group\u2019s willingness \u201cto think outside the box,\u201d says Paul.<\/p>\n

Change on the farm is afoot again; the spring of 2011 will be the last milking season at Willow Bank Jerseys. An intermodal rail terminal is going up a few fields away, and the Hoovers\u2019 rented pastures will grow warehouses soon. Besides, Paul and Shirley\u2019s mission all along had been to raise their children on the farm, and with their youngest graduating from college this spring, that goal has been met. They\u2019ll be moving to Harrisonburg, Virginia, where Shirley\u2019s sister, Sharon Miller<\/strong>, EMU assistant professor of music, lives. Shirley is looking for a hospital job, and Paul is open to ideas, as they embark on a new season of their own lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fact that Paul \u201979 and Shirley \u201980 Hoover had no background or experience in the dairy industry did little to stop them from entering the business in 1991. Neither did the fact that they had five children at home. And after two years in partnership with another couple, they struck out on their own, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":400,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8],"tags":[157,179,181,183],"class_list":["post-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine","category-spring-2011","tag-paul-hoover","tag-sharon-miller","tag-shirley-hoover","tag-sustainability","issues-spring-2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":940,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions\/940"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}