Pleroma Farm: Biodynamic Farm and Therapeutic Retreat

We Raise Your Food

About our cows.
All in all our herd counts now eleven adult Dutch Belted Cows and seven Dutch Belted calves. Working with these cows is a pleasure: friendly, hardy, sensitive and beautiful as they are. The history of this breed goes back to Austria in the late Middle Ages, from where it has made its way to Holland and then to the US. The dairy breed of choice at the end of the 19th century, it was abandoned for the Holstein cow which produces more but leaner milk. The breed is now nearing extinction with less than 2000 registered animals worldwide. Cows have distinctive markings: all black but with a white belt around the waist, black hooves, black tongues and black horns. A showstopper! A very important thing about their life is that they live on a bio-dynamic farm. This gives the cows the opportunity to live a life according to their nature. Our cows eat grass, grass, grass and harvest it themselves all summer long. That means they live in the pasture as long as the season allows that. Comes winter they move into a barn where they live on straw bedding and eat hay, hay, hay. Milking happens year round but only in the morning.

This sharply contrasts with the life of almost all cows producing milk you buy in the grocery store. Their life takes place under a roof all year round, they walk, eat and sleep on cement or rubber floors. They are being asked to eat anything that boosts their milk production. Their feed is ground down so that they cannot select as to what they feel is good for them, but eat what the farmer chooses in regards to the highest milk production. Regardless of the cows day/night rhythm milking takes place two to three times per 24- hours. sometimes with robot milkers. On large farms cows are shipped between their barn and the milking stable on conveyor belts. Cows under these circumstances live short: while a cows normal life expectancy lies around fifteen years or more, these cows have lost their vitality at three to four years of age and are then slaughtered. Milk from those cows has little health to give you. In order to stay alive under these circumstances they need all the life forces they have for themselves and cannot enrich their milk with vitality.

The biodynamic cow has time to linger in the shade of a tree and can eat the grasses and herbs she instinctively knows are good for her. She is part of a thriving piece of nature and finds her own health in that. On Pleroma Farm we milk only in the morning and the cow is glad to give us her creamy milk. With a comfortable life like this our cows have enough life forces to share with us through their milk.