Editor’s note: This weekly series will focus on the people who grow our food – the ranchers, growers and farmers of Colorado.
The growers: Meg Cattell, 43, and Arden Nelson, 54, Windsor Dairy, Windsor
Their products: pasteurized milk for Organic Valley, raw milk, eggs, beef, chicken
Their story: Meg and Arden, both veterinarians and international experts in cattle nutrition, realized the key to healthy cows was growing right outside their door. The native wheatgrass and green needle grass on the Poudre River floodplain 60 miles north of Denver have been proven to be the no-duh alternative to antibiotics and vitamin supplements.
Meg balances her tearful 3-year-old, Sam, on one hip and promises to put a Band-Aid on his owie, and answers a call to her cellphone with her other hand, ignoring the string of mucous a nuzzling cow has left on her leg. If she’s stressed, she doesn’t show it as she gives yet another tour of her family’s organic dairy farm.
Meg and Arden bought this traditional dairy farm in 2000, and converted 1,000 acres of prime farmland to organic growing methods.
They now milk 400 cows that produce 16,000 gallons of certified-organic milk every week.
Beaming with maternal pride for her bovine babies, Meg unhooks the yellow electric gate that looks like an innocent bungee cord to city folks, but will zap trespassers with a powerful current.
“C’mon ladies!” Meg whistles to the queenly creatures strolling out of the barn looking as though Meg had interrupted their pedicures.
The black-and-white ones are Holsteins and the rusty brown cows are Tarentaise, a French breed with rounded features and dark-lined eyes that give them the glamorous air of Brigitte Bardot. Said to be the oldest breed in Europe, Tarentaise descended from the cattle that crossed the Asian steppes and were first domesticated in the Neolithic period, 5,000 to 8,000 years ago.
During a photo shoot in the pasture with Butterscotch, Smushbucket, Princess and other cows, all activity stops so the two scientist-farmers can inspect a cow pie bigger than a serving platter.
“Look at that!” says Arden, poking the fresh dung with a blade of wheatgrass. “That’s unheard of!”
The prairie pie is abuzz with activity. Dung beetles are never interested in grain-fed, mass-produced cattle manure, he says, since it contains too many chemical byproducts for their taste.
Later, Meg recalls the discovery. “It looked like chocolate mousse, and there must have been 30 beetles doing the backstroke in it.”
From the cow pasture, Meg leads guests to the farm’s front “yard,” actually the free range of the gold- plumed, fluffy Araucana hens and their new patriarch, a Partridge Rock rooster named Chanticleer.
Descended from South American chickens, the hens sit like royalty on their pale green eggs in a small white shed with a tar-paper roof. “Chanticler took to the ladies right away. He’s their escort,” says Meg, telling a visitor there were three foxes in the free-range pasture last night.
She sets some still-warm eggs in a red wire basket next to her cellphone and continues the tour.
“We’re gonna extract the milk from those who made it.”
Six brown and black flanks line up in milking stalls, stomping to shrug off the flies that gather on their legs. For about six minutes, the milk flows through suction tubes into a stainless-steel tank, where it’s kept cool until bottling on the farm or shipping to the Organic Valley processor. Meg says her unpasteurized milk lasts three weeks in her fridge because it’s bacteria-free.
These cows give about 6 gallons a day, much less than confined cows, she says. “On pasture, these girls make two-thirds of what they would if they were inside, but the nutrients are more concentrated.”
Meg and Arden met through their work in preventing disease through nutrition, “grass and hay and silage, all the green things – they’re better for cows than grain. We realized you could prevent disease in dairy cows by feeding them a traditional diet,” says Meg.
That diet results in milk with higher levels of heart- and brain-healthy omega-3 and other fatty acids, vitamin E, beta carotene and other antioxidants than milk from conventional cows raised in confinement.
“The omega-3 stuff got us so excited about grass-fed that we said we’ve got to do this for the people and the cows. Dairy products are the best way to increase your omega-3s. Every cell in your body needs those omega-3s,” says Arden, explaining that the typical Western diet contains too many omega-6 fatty acids, and too few omega-3s.
“My opinion is saturated fat and cholesterol have little or nothing to do with cardiovascular disease. It is the myth that the medical profession has promoted,” says Arden, the son of farmers and ministers, who now preaches dairy nutrition to anyone who will listen and lives among its beneficiaries.
Meg and Arden invite visitors into the modest but air-conditioned house to sign papers for shares in the milk cows, the recently legalized method of getting fresh, unpasteurized milk. Children’s watercolors paper the walls of the dining room, and Fiona, 4, watches TV while her dad rests in the cool recliner.
The new customers sit at a large, round, oak dining table, and Meg presents the contract and cold glasses of water. Members of the cow-share association pay $35 to join and $28 per month for four gallons of fresh, whole, raw milk. The cattle are tested for tuberculosis, staph and other infections, but their high-grass diet reduces the risk of bacterial contamination, says Meg.
“I thought, if there’s raw milk nearby, I’m not gonna miss out on it,” says Kurt Hackler of Bolton, Mass., who found Windsor Dairy on realmilk.com, before coming to Colorado for a cycling vacation. “If you can get clean animal products, it’s worth it.”
Where to buy: Look for Rocky Mountain Pastures labels on Organic Valley half-gallons at Whole Foods, Wild Oats, Vitamin Cottage, Sunflower, $3.50. Raw milk, beef, eggs and chickens are available at the farm, open to the public 9 a.m.-noon Tuesdays and 1-5 p.m. Saturdays.
Food editor Kristen Browning-Blas can be reached at 303-820-1440 or kbrowning@denverpost.com.
