Galen Smith of Coldstream Farms

In this episode, we’re talking with Galen Smith of Coldstream Farms. Galen shares his thoughts on dairy farming, including the role of AI and the deep commitment our farmers have to being good stewards of their resources. As Galen says, farmers “were green before green was cool.”  

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

It is Monday, which means it's a new week in June, which means it is a new episode of Have You Heard. Welcome everyone once again to Have You Heard. If you didn't listen to the first episode, I'll remind you that this is a special five-part podcast series brought to you by the fine folks at Dairy Gold and the Northwest Dairy Association. And if you didn't listen to that first episode, what are you doing? Go back, listen to it. We talked with Shane Reed out in Sunny Dean Farms, in the Yakima Valley. We talked about all sorts of fun and interesting dairy-related topics. So be sure to find that episode in our Spotify or Apple Music or whatever platform you listen to your podcasts on. That'll be there in the feed. But we hear Dairy Gold in the Have You Heard podcast. We like to look forward. Which is why I'm excited to be bringing you part two of our five-part series speaking with farmers all across our co-op, which is, of course, the Northwest Dairy Association. Today we have a great episode with a farmer up north, just 20 minutes from the Canadian border, in a little town called Deming, Washington. My conversation today is with Galen Smith of Cold Stream Farms. Had a lot of fun talking with Galen, and we hit upon a lot of topics, including one particularly relevant regarding the use of AI on his farm and across the dairy sector in general, and whether that is ultimately a good or a bad thing for the industry. We talked about that and so much more, so I hope you enjoy listening to Galen Smith, and I hope you enjoy part two of Have You Heard Conversations in Dairy. Let's get to the conversation. Hello again. Welcome back to our special June Dairy Month podcast series presented by Dairy Gold. If you tuned in last week, you know that we were in the eastern part of our lovely state of Washington. Today I am up north, about 20-ish minutes from the Canadian border, and I am here with NDA producer Galen Smith, and we are here at Cold Stream Farms. Galen, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 2:26

Excellent. Wonderful day up here and lots of work going on. So we're hot and heavy, but uh making making use of the nice weather that we have here.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

So and it is very nice weather. We were just talking beforehand, and I and I was saying how I was in Easter Washington the other day, and it was like about 90 degrees, and now I'm up here and it's 55. There's some wind, there's some beautiful mountains, just it feels very close to where we are on the farm. I think that's like is that the Cascade Range? Yep.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

So it's great to have you here in the best part of Washington State. So welcome to Wacom County and Cold Stream Farms, Mason.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Thank you, thank you. I'm happy to be here. Okay, so we're gonna start off. Could you maybe give me a little bit of an introduction on Cold Stream Farms? And maybe if you know, like how long has Cold Stream been with NDA, or maybe even just been a dairy farm in general, uh, and how long you have been dairy farming?

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Yeah, absolutely. Great, great question. And uh that's always a good uh intro. My father-in-law, Jeff Rainey, and my mother-in-law, Vicky. So Jeff and Vicki Rainey started as NDA producers in 1978. So at that time, it was Rainey Farms, and Jeff and Vicky had three daughters. They've all stayed in the dairy industry, and uh, I married the oldest daughter. So I can't I came and kind of married into the farm, I guess if you can say that, in 2000. And in 2006, became an owner, a part owner here of Coldstream, so multi-generational family farm. And uh at that point, we felt that it was important just to kind of pick a new identity, and that's when Coldstream Farm started in 2006. And so we've been uh a dairy gold producer since then, so 20 years roughly. But my father-in-law started in 1978, so we're coming up on our 50 years here, not too far away. So we've got some uh some good legacy here, and uh, we've got another generation behind us that we're really excited about, and uh, so we've we've been here for for a few years to say the least.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Congratulations on the 50 years, formerly Rainy Farms, now Cold Stream. Where does the name Cold Stream come from?

SPEAKER_02 4:24

You know what? Funny, funny story. As we made the transition, we all just started writing down names and and thought, you know, what what sounds cool, what looks cool, threw some names, not necessarily in a hat, but voted on a few different names and could have been Maverick Farms, could have been a few other things, but by uh a democratic process, we we landed on Cold Stream.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Yeah, I like the name Cold Stream. It's it's it has a great sound, has a great like mouthfeel.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

And we've got some creeks next to us, and obviously this wonderful uh landscape here. We're surrounded by a lot of water, and so yeah, it just it just felt right.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

Yeah, the the mountains are beautiful. So I'm glad you brought up kind of the the topography, I guess, kind of natural climate of like northern Washington almost getting into Canada. Yeah. What's it like dairy farming in in a place as cl, first of all, as close to the mountains and as close to like the Canadian border? And then also with weather, as I was saying, you know, it's like 90 degrees in eastern Washington right now, the the weather in western Washington being a little bit more temperate, yeah, a little bit more mild, we don't get as many extremes. What are the advantages of of dairy farming in the northern part of the state?

SPEAKER_02 5:31

There's a lot of advantages. There's a couple drawbacks where we're at, but number one, the advantages is our our daily temperatures don't swing. You might go to eastern Washington where it's 50 and then it's 110. You know, here, especially in the winter winter months, our our temperature might only swing five degrees in a day. And so, very, very good climate for cows. If it's 80, it's it's hot. And so, you know, obviously heat stress on animals, heat abatement, those types of things. Obviously, you know, as we walked around, there's fans, there's misters, there's all kinds of things that that we've seen. So we do heat abatement for cows, but it is a very climate-friendly area for cattle. And so, number one, that kind of sets the stage and and probably the biggest downfall that our our climate has. I mean, it is beautiful and green, which is lovely, but it comes with some rain. And so, is as we kind of talked, you know, earlier about our topography and us just being in off the the coast, the first kind of mountain range in, you know, you take Bellingham, Linden, you know, they see 35 to 40 inches of rain. We're in this next mountain kind of range over. We have an annual rainfall of 70 inches, and most of that comes from October to March. And so it can create challenges for storing nutrients and manure, and you know, even just wet in the spring to get into fields. So I mean, there's a lot of pros for the animal husbandry side of things, but for us to get out and get the work done, there can be a few negatives. So we gotta go by the old adage, make hay while the sun's shining, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Right, right. This is maybe more of a personal curiosity, but being so close to the border of another country, is there any weird quirks with that that maybe you know someone a little farther wouldn't have to experience, or is it pretty like business as usual?

SPEAKER_02 7:13

And that's you know, I guess maybe one thing I would say from day-to-day management of our business, no, but we are fortunate enough. There are a few grain companies across the border that uh we source a lot of our protein. We use a lot of canola meal here, and so a lot of that comes out of Alberta, it comes into BC, and we're usually able to buy some of our protein for $20 or $30 less a ton than what we can here in the States. So there is, I would say, on the protein side, some some competitive advantages, but you know, living next to Canada, no, no day-to-day different management decisions that that we need to make. So gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Can you talk to me about dairy farming? Is that kind of the main agriculture industry in this the South Fork Valley?

SPEAKER_02 7:58

Yeah, it's it's a constant change and evolution. Obviously, the dairy industry has been, you know, declining, especially here in Whatcom County. I shouldn't even say Whatcom County across the entire United States, right? One of, or I shouldn't say one, there are multiple other egg industries that are here in Whatcom County and even uh just a little further south to us here at Skaggett County. Whatcom County, you know, and I'm I'm not gonna throw out the statistics for sure, but blueberries and raspberries, I think they they produce they're some of the highest producing areas in the world. There's seed potato that that happens here as well. And then just south of us, there's there's regular potatoes, lots of row crops. So there are other opportunities and options out there, which also works well for us because potatoes, you know, for for instance, the the cold potatoes, we we feed those back to the cows. Cows are the best recycless of some of this, the byproducts that otherwise might end up somewhere else. So cows upcycling the potatoes, Brussels sprouts, bakery waste, bakery waste that we feed that comes actually out of Canada. So your dough, your bread, those things that don't make it to the actual table of people that gets recycled, it gets ground up, it gets dried, and we take that back to cows to turn that into milk. There's there's a lot of different agriculture that's here and opportunities that that exist.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Cool. And and speaking of feed, I'm curious because I hear this talked about a lot, and I hear a lot of different types of feed that gets fed to cows depending on where the farm is and the particular relationships that the dairy farmer has. How important is feed to the like final dairy product for a cow? What's what's the significance, I guess, of of having different types of feed for cows?

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Sure. Cows really need protein and starch, right? Proteins can be your nice alfalfa haze, your canola, your soy meal. And then they need energy, which is usually your grain corn or corn silage. Let's just talk about starch or energy, for instance. If if we're buying steam flake corn or ground corn, lots of times that's coming in from Wisconsin or Iowa or Illinois. It's trucked in, it's processed here. When I can take a byproduct like potatoes, which potatoes are starch and energy, and they're 30 miles down the road, and they are not necessarily looking to get rid of them, but sell them at a discount compared to corn, all of a sudden I can feed our cows for a less cost than I could have otherwise. And so, really, at the end of the day, it just comes down, you know, our our income over feed costs or our you know daily production costs versus our return. And so anything we can do to lower that on a constant basis, and that's what we do consistently, is try to evaluate opportunities, lower feed costs, lower management practices, but also at the same point elevate our level of care and consistency that we bring to the cows. When we can bring all those things together, that's a win for us. And yeah, the dairy industry is tough, margins are thin, and so we're constantly trying to push that envelope for more, more production, more milk, but you know, less less input costs. And so those byproducts become very important to us and try to utilize those as often as we can.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Right. And speaking of pushing envelopes, I'm gonna switch gear here a little bit. Yeah, in my research, which admittedly was typing in your name in this form on Google, I came across some articles and a phrase that really stuck with me that you had said was that we were green before green was cool. Can you talk to me a little bit about what you mean by that?

SPEAKER_02 11:29

Yeah, you know, there's always an environmental movement to be responsible to the land, to be responsible to our cows, to be responsible to our employees, to our community. Farmers and cattle are the ultimate recyclers. I can't go out and just completely deplete our fields, contaminate our waterways. We depend on this 100% for our income, for our for our family, for our business. Is this green movement came about? You know, we sit back and we chuckle just a little bit. We've been doing all these things for the last 50 years. It's it's that full cycle of taking a product, feeding it to cows, cows giving us the nutrients back, putting them back onto the land in an agronomic way to grow a crop. If people want paved paved land and think that's the the long-term approach, you know, I hate to say it, but pretty soon there's there's going to be more issues than what we have today. So, farmers, not just me, but farmers in agriculture across the board have been doing lots of these practices for years before they were really brought to the to the public light.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

So we were green before green was cool. I love it. And I think a lot of people who aren't familiar with the dairy industry, I know certainly when I started at Dairy Gold and was doing my rounds at different farms, the thing that surprised me the most was the amount of like technology and like scientific advancement that I feel like dairy farms have been able to push because of things like sustainability and the importance of stewardship. Can you talk to me a little bit about what sort of technology or what sort of like sustainability practices that cold stream uses specifically?

SPEAKER_02 13:03

Yeah, you know, so I would say probably on a day-to-day basis as we look to feed our crops. The biggest thing is just testing our lagoons, our manure storage ponds, knowing what nutrient levels are in there, right? We we don't want to go out and put too much nutrients on where we harm the crop, but also at the same point, we need to put enough on that we we feed the crop. So it kind of starts there, just knowing what we have available and knowing what the crop needs. So we use testing methods to figure that out. We have a company called N3 that that helps us evaluate with all our soil tests and know what crops need. So then we'll go out and use precision application equipment inside. You know, if we're doing a drag line system or even drag line, meaning, you know, we have a tractor that's hooked up to a pump at the lagoon. Just imagine a 4,000-foot garden hose, right? But the garden hose is eight inches around, and we are applying to our fields after we harvest a crop the nutrients that we have, and we can dial that up or down using Wi-Fi to go back and speed the pump up or down. We we're looking at gallons per acre that we need to apply to do that to the crop. So that's that's one technology. Our big guns also have flow meters on them. So we know, hey, we need to put you know, 14,000 gallons of nutrients on per acre. We can calibrate and and watch that exactly. In the past, 15, 20 years ago, hey, we turn the pump on, we pump on the field, we try to do our best. We we think we know what it needs, but there was no real form or fashion behind it other than experience, right? So that's just one example of you know simple technology. But we're out here planting corn today, and the planter has all GPS on it. And as he goes across the field, if there's an area that's already planted, the planter starts shutting off based on GPS. It doesn't put extra fertilizer out. So now we're conserving on fertilizer, we're conserving on seed and just becoming more and more precise in our applications and our planting methods. So, and then also maybe one other one is some of the forages and the corn and grass varieties that we're planting. There's tons of genetics that are going into that, and finding corn that is more resistant to drought can grow just as tall with less amounts of fertilizer, all those types of things. So we continually look at all those options and try to find ways to push that envelope just a little bit every every year.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

That's awesome. This might be hitting on the hot button issue of our of our current times, but with so many different industries starting to look at AI as a way to boost efficiency. I mean, some people might say cut corners. I'm not gonna make a controversial take, but I have read some things about how there are is now AI technology for seeing like the entire health of an individual cow. There are like these collars. I don't know if you've seen this, but do you see AI becoming a big thing in the dairy space?

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Yeah, so we are constantly looking at all those options and availabilities. Just what you spoke of, we have collars on all of our cows. And so we used to have a different technology that just measured, you know, if you think about a Fitbit that someone might wear, it just tracked their activity in a day. You know, how many, how many steps did she take? Today she took 5,000. Tomorrow she takes 2200. Why? She was maybe sick or foot hurt, right? Who knows? The collars that we invested in with Gia and uh Cow Scout knee DAP. Every cow has a collar around her neck and it's monitoring about nine different things. When she's up eating, when she's walking around being social, when she's laying down, resting, how much does she ruminate, meaning regurgitate her food and chew, and then just her daily activity. Um, and so we can use all of that. And I actually, if you looked at our motto basically, it's to treat every cow if she's our only one. And so, what the callers have done for us as you talk about AI, at some point, someone's gonna see this cow is sick. I mean, oh, we're pushing her to the barn, she's the last cow in, she doesn't look very good. I know she's sick probably four or five days before she would ever show any visual signs with all the AI metrics that are put in. And so now we can have better outcomes. We can identify this cow, get her into our hospital barn, lots of times just treat her therapeutically rather than antibiotics or you know, systemic treatment and have a better return, get her back into the herd and healthy again. So that's just one example of the callers we've just invested. It hasn't been installed yet with technology that's called Cattle Eye that should be coming and installed here in the next couple of weeks. And that's actually as the cows leave the parlor, it will body condition score every cow, every day, every time she goes through. So we can monitor trends. You know, is she losing weight, gaining weight? And that will also be just another tool in our tool bag to help determine the health. But the other thing it does is it does a what I'll call as a lameness score. So it gives her a score based on her gait. And so the technology is saying, you can follow up here in two or three months, and I'll let you know if it's true or not. But the camera system will physically recognize an issue with the cow 21 days before she really will ever start showing symptoms that you and I might see and look at that cow and say, Oh, she her her front foot must be a little sore. She's kind of walking funny. So, same thing. Now all of a sudden, I can have minimal treatments or you know, maybe just a general trim to improve that cow rather than having to go back and do something when now she really is lame. So those are two things. I mean, we use a ton of technology in our parlor, measuring, monitoring performance on our cows. We do it in our feed software, all of our feed system is automated. So I love investing in technology. I don't think we can ever replace people, but what it does is allows us to focus our time on the cows that truly need our attention. And so now we end up with better outcomes, right? If we've got an hour in the day to do this and I have to go check a hundred cows to find the five that might need a problem, what if I knew who the five were to start with? Right. And I just now I have I still spend the hour, but I can do a better job with those cows. So that's that's what technology has done for us. And yeah, these are computer generated algorithms that that do all this and identify it. So and it's I think in the next five years, it's gonna continue to two and three and fourfold.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

So that's great. And it's good that it it can be used in the way to cut down the time that it takes to find the issue, especially in regards to cow comfort. That that's obviously you know near the top of almost every dairy farmer's priority. Because how many cows do you milk here?

SPEAKER_02 19:42

Uh we milk 1850, 19, 1900 cows, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Right. So, yeah, the thought of having to just by eyesight alone try and figure out which cows may have issues, it sounds like it's a good thing that AI is cutting that part out so we can get the cows healthy and and back to work.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

It's kind of like the mechanic showing up to work on the on the truck, and he already knows the problem before he gets there. There you go. There you go.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Well, I guess speaking of all that, can you talk to me about cow comfort? And what was my statement generally correct? And that that's probably one of the more important things, if not the most important things, on a dairy farm. And I guess why that is such a big priority in the not only just if we're talking, you know, I guess like ethically, but also like economically, how how making sure cows are as healthy as they can be is kind of the only thing that makes sense if you're running a dairy farm.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when we when we think about uh animal husbandry in general, cattle just want to be consistent all day, every day. That means from the time they go to the barn to the time they get their feed to the time water troughs are clean to the process in the parlor over time, especially just in my 25 years, that's changed. It's changed substantially. And, you know, it used to be just, hey, here's the routine, we're gonna do it. There wasn't maybe as much focus on the cow herself. We have found over the last 20 years that the more we focus on the cow, the better returns we get. So that means stall design, our our bedding type, our the stall's full of bedding, so cows are comfortable laying down when it's hot. You know, we have a fan system that that turns on based on the temperature, and the hotter it gets, the faster the fans run. Cooling processes with with misters in the parlor. And so we've invested along the way. And and to be honest, even one of the things that we have is different than some farms. I mean, it's not a foreign concept, but we have a palpation rail and sort gates. So we don't do any work on our cows in the barn. And so our groups are about 350 cows per pen, and we might need to work on 12 cows. When those cows leave the parlor, they get sorted out based off their color and our RFID sort gates and photo eyes. They go down a what we call a management or palpation rail, and we'll do whatever we need to. Maybe they just it's time for a Vaccination, right? People get vaccines all the time. Same thing with our cows. We have a vaccine protocol that we do. So instead of going out and disrupting 350 cows, we immediately can address the 10, 12 cows that need a management practice. Maybe they're getting hoof trimmed today. And so we have found the more and more we focus on being consistent to that cow every single day, the higher return we get from that animal. And the fans was one good example. I mean, hey, just cooling abatement for those cows. Even though, you know, we we don't think, oh, it's 75, you know, most of the time they shouldn't have an issue. No, fans kick on at 42 degrees. So and they run very slow, good, just you know, ventilation into the buildings. And so all these things we have to measure and monitor. And we we can do lots of things, but they have to have a return, right? We're we're a for-profit business. And so we can invest in a lot of things, but if we don't get a financial return from it, kind of makes it it makes it tough. I think animal husbandry is at the top of the list.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

So I'm gonna shift gears a little bit now. You mentioned that you started here when you married in. What was was agriculture or dairying, was that always sort of something you were interested in? And was dairying specifically always sort of a a North Star for you? Or did you have any interest in this before you marrying into the dairy farm?

SPEAKER_02 23:17

Yeah, that's that's a great question. I mean, where where did my passion for dairy come? Yeah. I didn't think I was gonna be a dairy farmer. How about that? But growing up, grew up in a timber family, and so everybody has a little side hustle and those types of things. So as a as a young guy, my grandfather raised replacement heifers and sold those through our local auction barn to a lot of the farmers around here. And he was known for having very very nice replacement heifers. So as a young guy, I had the opportunity to work there with my my grandfather for some of the work. He would give me some bowl calves and I'd raise some some beef calves and sell those off. Probably when I was about 14, I started milking for one of my neighbors. Rode my bike there in the in the morning and at night. He was about three miles away. So I milked in a flat barn, flat 14, for five or six years. So we always grew up in agriculture. But after I graduated, I kind of joined our family's timber business and worked in the woods. I fell trees for about five years, you know, a timber faller. And my wife and I actually went to high school together, but really never dated or anything in high school. And after a couple of years out of school, we started dating and I guess married into the farm, but it wasn't an immediate take here. My father-in-law, Jeff, after I'd been uh married for about a year, he said, uh, you know, if you ever want to come farming, you can just come try it for a month and and see. Well, I've never turned back from then. So, and I absolutely love what we do every day here working with my family. Uh, my brother's a partner here, so I get to work with my brother every single day. Yeah, it's kind of where my passion's been. I'm in two feet of snow and it's raining and it's 34 degrees, those can make for long, nasty days. But I really enjoy what I do and I love solving problems and I love working with people. We have such a great team of people here, and not only from our partners and owners, but from our management team and all the guys that are here. So it's it's been a really great fit for me, and my kids are back, and that makes it pretty enjoyable.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Here you go. Yeah. And it's interesting that you mentioned that you grew up in a timber family. I grew up on the west side of Washington, even more farther west than Seattle. So I I know a lot of people who are in that industry myself. Yeah. Timber's another thing that that there's like a sustainability renewal portion of it. Is growing up around that, is is that what makes you forward focused in that regard, in regards to like sustainability? Were there any like parallels in in timber that you kind of see in dairy, or vice versa?

SPEAKER_02 25:38

You know, I guess I I wouldn't say that I ever really looked at that. I mean, I think the timber industry is another agricultural business. Unfortunately, there's been a lot of other political decisions, laws that have passed that have, you know, really restricted the amount of areas that we can harvest, good or bad. I mean, I think there's always a need to review things and make different decisions in the future. But as that pool got smaller and smaller and the acres got smaller and smaller, it's, I guess in some ways it is, it is a bit like dairy farming. We get pinched a little bit. Sometimes the rules are written for the bad actors, right? And and we're doing when when you're already doing everything right and it's just another layer of paperwork, or you know, I think that's happened to the timber industry. And so there's been drastic consolidation in these areas. Logging companies that were were based out of this area, now they're traveling three, four hours a day to work, and there's just been a real consolidation. So if we used to look back, there'd be 300 log trucks go up and down the road here in a day. And if I see 40, you know, it's like, oh, there must be a logging job going on around here. So but dairy's been the same, right? There's been a lot of consolidation. I guess the the timber companies have gotten bigger and they're willing to travel and stay overnight. And dairies have done the same thing, right? You know, when I started here, we were milking 200 cows. Well, we've taken, you know, and and farming, you know, uh, 150 acres. Well, today we, you know, we've got 2,000 milk cows and we farm 1,500 acres. So the timber industry has done the same just as we have. So economy of scale and those things that try to help us stay viable and and profitable. So there are some similarities, but I guess I really haven't put that correlation together.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

So you mentioned your children are here. Do you have any desire to push them towards dairy or agriculture in general? Or are you more on a kind of let them let them figure out what they want to do on their own? Is there gonna be any sort of like push to get into this industry?

SPEAKER_02 27:32

Yeah, you know, that's that's a great question. As parents, you know, we want the best for our kids. I have no preset path. My wife and I, Laura, we have four boys. So my oldest boy, Garrett, he's 23. He's the one that's back here on the farm. He just graduated a year or so ago from Montana State University. Uh, my my next son, Landon, he's 21. He works here locally, doing some work at one of the ports. My third son, Luke, is 19, and he is also at Montana State University in Bozeman to be an engineer. And then I have a junior in high school. When I think about all four of those boys, I want them to find the path that they're gonna have passion for. What I've tried to do, and my wife has tried to do, is to create a business with opportunities, profitability. If if I'm out here and I'm passionate about what I'm doing and I love being out here and I'm, you know, we're we're successful as a business and as a family, and we create opportunities. Why wouldn't they want to come back to that? Right. Right. But unfortunately, all too often, sometimes farmers, it can be tough. And, you know, there's maybe not, we're not creating opportunities for kids to be there. Dad maybe has too much control, or the business just isn't successful, or we're kicking the dirt every single day. And the kids have watched us do that for the last 10 years. You know, so so we want to create these opportunities, and part of that's being a good parent, and you know, also recognizing that we need probably more so than 50 years ago. We need a little bit of playtime, and you know, you've got to balance all those things out. So, my job is not only to make sure this business is successful, I do truly love what I do, create opportunities and value added that they want to come back. Right. So I have no idea what they will decide long term. If if we can enjoy what we do, be passionate about how we do it, be successful and create opportunities. Hopefully, they'll want to be a part of that. And if they don't, that's okay. Yeah, that's okay. Their path doesn't need to be mine. So uh let them figure that out. And we're here to help guide them along the way. And the other cool thing is there's tons of other things in our business that don't mean milking cows and driving a tractor, right? There's there's all kinds of things that you know, a farmer wears a lot of hats, and so it could be something that I'm not even thinking about that that that can be incorporated in the future.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

So yeah, yeah, being in dairy gold and being around like NDA folks. There's been a couple of times when I've I've had the job of reviewing like essays of people coming out of high school, going into college for agriculture, and it is a lot of like dairy accounting, like economics and stuff like that. So what I'm I'm curious about is you talk about the consolidation and the shrinking of dairy, you know, obviously economically, that's probably the biggest reality. But how much of that do you also contribute to the kind of younger generation no longer wanting to take over like the family farm, so to speak? Academic opportunities open up to future generations. We see this kind of leaving behind of like old family businesses. Do you think that's a significant contributor to the shrinking of the dairy industry? Is it kind of an insignificant, you know, spoke on the wheel?

SPEAKER_02 30:33

I guess it's yeah, I think you really just hit that on the head. And that's not just for dairy, that's across the United States, right? The the age of the farmer continues to increase. Yeah, there's been a lot of years where dad and mom worked endless hours and maybe weren't that financially successful. And is that something you want to come back and be a part of, right? And so, you know, I can just think of a in the last five years, there's more than a handful of farms that just didn't have that second generation, want to be part of that. And so it at the end of mom and dad's physical abilities, you know, lots of farmers want to work until they die. I mean, that's just what's what we're passionate about. Right. But there's no one there to take that to the next generation. But I I will throw something out there, especially for this podcast and this listener group, there has to be family transition. My father-in-law, Jeff and and mother-in-law, Jeff and Vicky have done an extremely great job of being very open. Like we're we're in 2026, and we went, if we went back to 2006, there was a path outlined in 2006 for how we could gain ownership and shares of the farm. And we brought uh partners along. My my brother's here, my sister-in-law is a partner here as well. And so my father-in-law had enough forward thinking 25 years ago to say, hey, if this is gonna go to the next generation, they gotta have some skin in the game and they have to know what this long-term plan looks like.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

Right.

SPEAKER_02 31:57

There's there's so many farms, and uh, as I've been on boards and groups, that the family farm transition conversation just doesn't even happen. And so now you maybe have a son that's 55 and still has no clear path of what what his ownership or direction will be when mom and dad pass away. So if those conversations aren't happening, it kind of makes it difficult for that second generation to come in and really be vested, right? So hats off to my father-in-law and and mother-in-law for the work that they put in to help bring this next generation in. And I have a responsibility now to do that same thing. You have to let them make some decisions. There's plenty of broken concrete around here to show my hairs. But my father-in-law kind of had some some guardrails on the side and said, Hey, you know what? If if we start bumping into the guardrails, we'll we'll work and talk about how we, you know, maybe fix that. But sometimes the best lessons are learnt by mistakes. And so he he's allowed me to do that as well. And I think it's been helpful for our growth as a business.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

And I'm curious what you think. I I have a a theory, and maybe you can discredit or or validate this theory. But my theory is that I think like the dairy industry and and maybe you know, agriculture industry in general, a lot of the reasons you see younger people trepidatious about joining this is that I think dairy and maybe agriculture in general has a bit of a marketing itself issue where you know we're speaking and we're talking about dairy and we're talking about this farm in a way that you would talk about what people think of as like normal businesses, like we're talking about technological advancements, we're talking about business meetings and thinking about dairy farms that way. Do you think that dairy still has this sort of reputation of waking up at the Krakodon 4 a.m.? And that may be true still, but but maybe if the younger folks saw it as as it truly is, which is like this this industry that is pushing science forward, it is pushing technology forward, do you think younger people would be more open to the possibility of like getting into this or getting into agriculture?

SPEAKER_02 33:56

Well, I think that's always, you know, the this this generation coming in behind me, you know, kids in their 20s to to 30s. They love technology, they love, you know, and I do too, to be honest. But the biggest hindrance, I think, is the cost, the cost to get into a business of this scale, right? Because when you're a smaller farm, your head's stuck down sometimes, just trying to get the day-to-day tasks done. One thing that economy of scale does bring is my my focus, is to be honest, I spend probably as much time in the office as I do outside getting work done. And to be honest, I'd rather just be in a tractor mowing and you know throw my phone out the window. But things have to get done, feed has to get ordered, planning has to be done. But I think it's the cost. It's the cost to get in. And if you're not working with someone or have it in the family, it's it's really tough to get in. And then now that you are in, you're the melker, you're you're the feeder, you're the cow pusher, you're the the guy that has to order feed. You have to do all of those things, and so it really sometimes makes it just difficult. You can't see the the forest because of the trees, right? Yeah, so I think that can be the hindrance for for young kids to get in. You know, I I can think of a a couple young guys that I know that uh I'm gonna lease this barn and start with a hundred cows, and you know, they're they're continuing to grow and they're they got the hustle.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

And so it's not not fully uh an old timers game.

SPEAKER_02 35:18

Yeah, it's yeah, no, I I I don't think so. I'm I'm hopeful that you know there's a generation behind us, but it's lots of work and that's not always fun.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

Right. No, for sure. So let's talk a little bit about dairy gold and NDA, and I guess specifically what being in a co-op such as NDA does for a dairy farm such as this. I I'm someone who's totally ignorant about the realities of greater dairy farming. So is it at this point uncommon or maybe totally non-existent for a dairy farm to not be a part of a co-op and just to be its own thing? Is that even a thing anymore at this point?

SPEAKER_02 35:53

Well, there's there's still a lot of dairies that sell milk to processors. Gotcha. Right. So, especially up and down the Midwest, I know processors that, hey, we got a year-to-year contract and we and we just sell to the processor. You know, there's some risk in that, right? But there's also, as the producer, I don't have to invest dollars in rebuilding the plant or marketing my milk. I'm just gonna produce milk. Here's the price you pay me for it. But there's also some risk. The plant's full, the plant closes. I mean, I guess we have some of that too, but the plant's full. Maybe they don't renew your contract. Maybe something happens at your farm that puts you at risk and they say, hey, you know what? After this year, we're not gonna take your milk. Now you got to find a new spot. There is some value to being at a co-op, right? When it's profitable, hopefully we take some proceeds on that side as well. But we're also a little bit protected, you know, whereas, hey, we know we have a home for our milk. If something's not right, that responsibility or that cost is gonna be shared across the co-op. But when things aren't great, you know, that that can be a challenge as well. Or we have to make, you know, big financial decisions. Obviously, as we talk to our group here, right? I mean, it's everybody knows, hey, we had a $4 deduct. It's extremely, extremely difficult, but it was shared amongst the co-op, right? And here's everybody that sits on the board, they're they're elected making decisions for us. And so sometimes might not be the decision that that I would have done, but it's a co-op, and and that decision was made, and we have to, you know, sit behind that. So there can be some for some frustrations, right? But there's also a lot of advantages that that come with a co-op. So gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

What would you say, I guess, is in your eyes, whether specifically for cold stream or for the farms in general, would you say that that potential protection is the the the biggest benefit of being in a co-op?

SPEAKER_02 37:44

Probably. Okay. Most definitely. Competition's always good, right? Like when you have multiple processors in a certain area, you've got 10 different automotive dealerships selling the same car, somebody's willing to sell it the cheapest. Right. So vice versa, when you have multiple processors and people are wanting milk, you can negotiate a price. Co-op, while we know we have a home for our milk every day, you know, it's it's a co-op-wide price. Yeah. So, you know, they may have to pay more in other areas, less a little here. All in all, I think that the best thing about a co-op is knowing we have a home for our milk. And if something happens, it's it's shared without the co-op.

SPEAKER_00 38:21

Gotcha. So that's the co-op portion. What do you think is the benefit about having something like Dairy Gold, which is essentially kind of the marketing arm of the NDA? Do you do you think that is circular in that one couldn't be without the other, or are they just additive to each other?

SPEAKER_02 38:40

I mean, it used to all just be one. It used to just be dairy gold. And then they broke the marketing processing arm off from the producers, which is NDA today. You know, there's pros and cons to both sides of that. You know, as as they broke apart, there's pros and cons of of each of that, right? I think when it's one entity, my feeling is we tend to be a bit more cynical about costs. And like, hey, we're we're responsible for every single one of these dollars. Once we've kind of broken things apart, it seems like when things don't go well with dairy gold, they just push that back onto the producer. Where's that money coming from? We're not operating at a profit. There's only one spot that comes from, and that's our paychecks. To be honest, I I don't know enough about why that decision was made to separate those two to say why that happened. But I don't think that we're totally accountable to each other anymore. That doesn't mean that my decision or my my idea is always right. I mean, there's three or four hundred other producers that you know have a have a voice as well. So collaboratively, we hope we make the best decision, and that's what's best for all of us. But right.

SPEAKER_00 39:46

Okay. Try to wrap this up. I know you're a busy man. Is there anything about the realities of dairy farming or or something that like a listener base who may not know much about dairy farming? Is there any is there anything that you wish more people knew about dairying that you've maybe found in your own personal experiences that people might be ignorant to?

SPEAKER_02 40:05

Yeah, good question. You know, what what what do I want the general public or, you know, the the listener group here to know about farmers? You know, I would say anybody that's a dairy farmer is is passionate about it. We all have different professions in life. Hopefully, everybody's in a path that they feel passionate about. But I think dairy farmers are uniquely passionate. I think there's been a trend over the last decades of modernization. And farming is not farmer Joe with the pitchfork. It is modern, it is high tech. As you walk around here, there's more technology here than a lot of places. And so farmers are forced to become more businessmen, more employee management, animal husbandry. We we become experts at all those things, but I think we are a very passionate bunch. Sometimes we just kind of want to be left alone a little bit, maybe, maybe a bit of an introvert. Uh, we just want to go outside and get the work done, but but we do it because we love it. We love the outdoors, we love our animals, our employees. And uh, I couldn't be more excited to be out here every single day and solve the problems of whatever the day might be and try to find ways to to manage through that a little bit better. So, you know, I hope that the public has trust in who who we are as people and that we do truly know what's best, right? Doesn't mean that we aren't constantly looking for better ideas, but have trust that, you know, when you see planters or cattle or not everybody loves the smell of manure, right? That when those things are happening, they're being done in a in a safe and practical manner to bring a healthy, rich product to to our consumers. So trust your local farmer, they're passionate about what they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 41:49

Yeah, yeah. And yes, that is that is the sort of north star of this podcast. You know, my job within Dariegle takes me to a lot of farms, and I've had a lot of conversations just like this, and kind of thought, like, oh well, why don't we just like record this? And everything you've been saying, it's it's not as if I haven't heard it before. Or being put on for you know, a listening public. You know, this is the same thing I've heard from a lot of farmers. Well, we do every day. Yeah, exactly. Galen, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day. I really appreciate it. I hope uh this is very informative to the people watching. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 42:21

Yeah, appreciate it, Mason. It's super nice to meet you and really appreciate everything you're doing for elevating the day-to-day work that we do as producers and and putting out into a form that uh can then bring a little insight to the listener. So thank you. Super nice to meet you.

SPEAKER_00 42:35

Nice to meet you too. And that is our episode this week. I want to once again thank Galen Smith for taking time out of his busy day to speak with us about all things dairy farming. If you noticed a little bit of audio weirdness there at the end with my mic, well, that was my fault. I hope that didn't cause too much disruption in your enjoyment of the podcast. And I hope you will tune in again next Monday for part three of our June Dairy Month series. This time it's gonna be a little different. We're gonna be speaking with not only a dairy producer, but also Dairy Golden Northwest Dairy Association's very own chairman of the board, Tim Kenzie, out in Oregon. That was a great conversation. He invited me into his lovely home, and we talked about balancing time between being a chairman of the board and a dairy producer. We talked about some books and so much more. I think you're really gonna enjoy that conversation. I know I had fun participating in it, and we are gonna have that up for you next week, on Monday, on all streaming platforms, so be sure to check that out. I've been Mason. This has been Have You Heard? Thank you for listening.