|
Our Personal Story
Clear Spring Creamery, owned by Mark and Clare Seibert, is located in the foothills of Fairview Mountain in Washington County, Maryland. The farm, home to dairy cows, chickens, seasonal hogs and various pets has been in the Seibert family for approximately 150 years. When we (Mark and Clare) married, we knew that it was one of our goals to raise our family back at the farm. At that time both of us were working on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and spending a lot of weekends driving back and forth to the farm. When Mark was given an opportunity to take a transfer back to Washington County, the time was right. The night of Mark’s going away dinner, his former coworkers presented him with a heifer calf. Little did they know what a premonition that would be! We raised that first calf and quickly added more. For the next 10 years we raised heifer calves and expanded our knowledge of grass management and rotational grazing. Each time the cows would reach calving age we would sell them to a milking operation, keep the calves and start all over again. After several years of this our thoughts progressed to building our own dairy. In the fall of 2006 when we had a herd of 20 springing heifers, the decision was made to keep them at our farm and build a dairy in time to start milking them. It didn’t take long after that until our thoughts began to drift to adding value added products to the farm business.
Being grass based enables us to utilize less fossil fuels to produce crops (grasses are a perennial crop), increase the sustainability of our farm and allow the cow’s natural biology to work as nature intended, allowing them to harvest most of their own food and fertilize the soil at the same time.
We are constantly reevaluating our practices in order to ensure that we are utilizing the most up to date information regarding pasture management, animal health and dairy science. With milking cows there are no absolute rules and it is essential to constantly evaluate your decisions, taking all of the variables into account.
We don’t push our cows for the maximum production. We milk them once a day, virtually unheard of in the US but common practice in other countries, such as New Zealand. Yes, we get less milk from our cows but in turn they are under less stress, we are under less stress and they should live longer, get sick less frequently and require less food. Unlike many large dairies, we never use hormones to increase our cows production.
I like to say that family farm life is like running a marathon. It can be peaceful, serene and also very tough. It is very rewarding to accomplish your goals…. but, the work is never done and we constantly struggle to maintain a good balance in life. We take a lot of pleasure in the simple things. We don’t have the freedom anymore to travel much or do a lot of extracurricular activities. We do however get to walk in our woods and meadows, enjoying the abundant wildlife and fresh air. Butterflies, songbirds, hawks and turkeys make their home here. The kids learned to swim in our farm pond and are unphazed by the snapping turtles, snakes and other interesting creatures that share it with us. We do not have to worry that our children are being exposed to chemical fertilizers or pesticides. We are teaching our children to protect and respect the natural world and enjoy the lessons that it has to teach them. It is our goal that our family will leave the world a better place than they found it. |
