Many of us townies move through high school and/or college to seek a vocation that grabs our heart, but for many who are born into a farm family that vocation finds them much earlier. Farm life sets the rhythm of their days and the cycle of their years; it binds them to a way of life that is as hard to change as the way they walk.

So it has been for Barry James, 68, of Tomaquag Valley Farm in Ashaway, and for Glen Cottrell, 47, of Cottrell Homestead in West Kingston, and for the family members who work the dairy farms with them. James’s nephews John and Jacob Silva can’t remember a time when they didn’t work with cows; Cottrell’s brothers Gary and Matt, his sister Julie, his niece Jessica and his father Oliver have had the same experience.

James’s long days of overseeing a dairy farm involve growing feed crops, bringing in the hay, repairing equipment, installing a new milking parlor and balancing the books—but he gets the most enjoyment from just “being around the cows.”

Cottrell has such a fondness for the animals, he waxes downright poetic: “I like to look out and see them camped out on that knoll, the moon rising over them. They get a circle all matted down; you can see their breath—they love it, even sleeping in snow.  Sometimes people don’t think in animal terms—the cows are very comfortable outside in their winter coats.”

A lifelong attachment to their cows and their farms is not unusual for dairy farmers, and it makes worries over their financial futures twofold. Not only could they lose their family’s livelihood but a whole lifestyle as well. At a time when dairy farmers across the country and across Europe have been protesting low milk prices plus their on-the-brink economic situation, the five original members of the dairy cooperative Rhody Fresh, including James and Cottrell, are feeling very grateful to be a part of the 5-year-old organization.  “If it weren’t for Rhody Fresh,” declares Cottrell, standing just outside his barn at the late afternoon milking time, “we’d be outta business. Rhode Island was ahead of the curve in forming this co-op. Absolutely. We lit a brush fire.”

James, blinking into the morning sun of a bright autumn day, feels the same: “Without Rhody Fresh, we’d be in a hole so far we couldn’t get out. That’s helping us struggle along. But with the price of milk so low, it’s costing us more to operate than what the milk’s generating.”

That hasn’t always been the case for this cooperative.  As Cottrell tells it: “For 2 years, we got a price we could live with and then the large corporations said, ‘We’re gonna show you who’s boss.’ They found that loophole in the federal farm bill [which allows milk dealers to import milk product concentrate, MPC], and they’ve been punishing us ever since.” The price of milk is set by the federal government and calculated with a complicated series of mathematical formulas. Four different classes of milk, coupled with regional prices for milk proteins, butterfat and solids, go into the calculations that set the national price for milk.  As a commodity, milk prices experience higher highs and lower lows, according to Rhody Fresh director Jim Hines.

Hines worked in Massachusetts as the state director of dairy services and animal health until his retirement a few years back. He stayed active with the Rhode Island Department of Agriculture, and when he noticed that a group of westernMassachusetts dairy farmers had organized a co-op, he felt strongly that such a concept would work even better in Rhode Island. And so it has.

“Our sales have not gone down, but they have leveled off,” Hines admitted.  “We’re not seeing that steady growth that we’d had since our inception. But we’re looking at continued growth, improved distribution, and new members.”

One thing that has separated Rhody Fresh farmers from many large dairy corporations is that Rhode Island’s small dairy farmers have never used bovine growth hormone, and they feel justified in charging a premium price for a premium product. They have to add vitamin D, by federal law, but they don’t add vitamin A, and there are never any antibiotics in the milk. They pastuerize using HTST (for high temperature, short-time).  “I’ve never been one to do things artificial,” Cottrell stresses. “Monsanto declared there were no problems with BST [the growth hormone], but if I saw 1,000 cows, I could pick out the ones that have been on it. And if the cows get it, then the humans are going to consume it too.”

Rhody Fresh milk is not, however, designated organic, since the corn the cows are fed is not organic and even the grass they graze may have herbicides on it, drifted over from the cornfields. Both Cottrell and James have a mix of cows: Holstein, Brown Swiss, Milking Shorthorn, Dutch Belt, Ayrshire and Jersey.  Both farmers milk between 60 and 80 cows a day. Typically, the colored breeds have more fat and protein in their milk, John Silva pointed out.

The Silva brothers and James let the Tomaquag cows out for a couple hours a day, and they wander up into the woods behind their pen. According to Jacob Silva, the cows know exactly when to come back for the late afternoon milking, sometimes running all in a clump, to the amusement of James.  “If cows could speak,” Cottrell states, “they’d say, ‘Put us the heck out!’ So they’re outside unless it’s a howling snowstorm. People tell me our cows have the most beautiful legs, and I tell ‘em ‘You would too, if you’re not kept on concrete all the time.’“ The Cottrell Homestead was bought by Glen’s great-grandfather, Caleb, in 1900. The James family has been farming in Ashaway since the mid-1960s and moved to the current location in ’67. They’ve also operated a milk trucking business since 1970, and they collect the milk from Rhody Fresh farms to take to Guida in New Britain, Connecticut, for processing, before it is brought back to Little Rhody Farms in Foster for distribution around the state.

The milking itself is done a bit differently on these two farms. At the Cottrells, 48 cows are brought into the milking barn, where their heads are placed in old-fashioned stanchions, iron loops that keep them lined up for the milking machines. At the James farm, a modern milking parlor holds 12 cows at a time, their heads also guided into frames, lined up on a diagonal, and the farmer is on a level just below them, adjusting the milking tubes onto the cows’ udders at eye level.

Both farms are in an almost year-round process of calving, though they try not to have calves arriving in the heat of August or the bitter cold of February. The Cottrells often use sexed semen that will determine the gender of the calf; the Silvas and James use it less often.  One of John Silva’s favorite farm tasks is delivering calves.

On both of these farms, the work is seven days a week, 14–15 hours a day. But despite all the hardships on a farm, from bad weather for feed crops to an ailing cow to older equipment that needs constant repairing, both farmers clearly love the life that chose them.

Glen Cottrell smiles broadly as he calls up another memory of his herd: “When the snow

gets to drifting up to a foot or so, the cows beat their heads into it. The snow goes down their backs, their eyes are blinking, and they’re licking it off their noses. They’re like little kids— it’s the funniest gosh-darn thing.” eR

Johnette Rodriguez is a food, travel and arts writer published in Yankee, Saveur, New England Travel and Life, the Boston Phoenix and the Providence Phoenix.