Hunkering Down on a Farm in the Winter
Photos by Aimee Dilger Video and Article by Kelly Dessoye
Chet Mozloom leads the way to the barn, the crunch, crunch, crunch of snow underfoot, pointing out the sheets of solid ice embalming grass and mud. “We can’t throw down salt because of the hooves,” a plume of frosty air surrounds his frame.
“It was zero degrees last night. It’s not the worst day but it’s probably in the top ten worst days for us - of all time. It’s just a constant chase between ice, snow, keeping water and feed available for these animals, making sure that they have windbreaks and making sure they're dry because if you’re wet and you’re in the wind, no matter what you are [human or animal] you’re in trouble in this weather.”
Watch the video above to see how the farmers at The Lands At Hillside Farms care for their animals and the land during Pennsylvania’s harsh winter.
A calf looks at Funky Toes the chicken in the nursery barn.
The thermometer read 3 in the parking lot of The Lands at Hillside Farms. A steep plummet from the 13 degree reading down the mountain in Wilkes-Barre and 2 degrees warmer than dawnbreak, when dairy barn manager Troy Pensak opened the upper barn to greet his herd of sleeping cows. “When I walked in this morning…you could just see the steam in the room,” he observes. That steam is the payoff of a carefully tended bedded pack made of heat-generating compost, a protein-rich diet, and the cow’s own biology.
“These animals have god-given tolerance to this - to some degree. A cow is probably more comfortable in this [cold] than in 85 degree weather,” Chet ponders. That’s because cows are ruminants. Part of their stomach is dedicated to fermentation; so when fibrous, nutrient dense food like hay, alfalfa, and - in the warmer months - clover, first enter a part of the stomach called the rumen, food is bathed in bacteria that turn vegetation into energy and protein, then regurgitated to be chewed again for complete digestion. In effect, Chet calls the cows “little heaters.”
If it weren’t for perilous ice, they'd be outside grazing in all dry weather. In the colder months this helps the cows develop a thick coat, but slick conditions lend more to broken legs and other injuries that can be devastating for cattle and farmers alike.
In all likelihood, frigid temperatures are hardest on the farmers, who rely on synthetic layers to warm their flesh. “My hands are actually starting to hurt. I can’t believe it - I should have worn gloves,” Chet vents into the abyss of a chicken barn. “The most important ingredient for this is the staff. It really is. We have a relationship with these animals,” he says of his farmers who live symbiotically with the animals - ready to jump out of bed at 2 am to tend to an emergency, whether animal or structural. They recently overcame an issue with frozen water lines. “You’re never off because you have 700 animals here.”
Steam causes ice to form on whiskers of cows as temperatures hit 2 degrees.
Dairy Manager Troy Pensak checks on the milking cowns inside a large barn after their morning milking and giving them alfalfa.
Dairy cattle are given different and more food to help to keep their bodies warm.
Peaches a week old calf stands under a heat lamp to keep warm.
Ice forms on the whiskers of a pregnant cow laying in the barn.
A Brown Swiss milking cow takes a break from eating alfalfa.
Chet Mozloom Executive Director of The Lands at Hillside Farms an educational and regenerative farm checks in on the milking cows.
Farmer and Dairy Manager Troy Pensak looks back to the lined up cows in the milking parlor that he will milk.
Dairy farmer Troy Pensak adjusts a pump before milking the herd of 64 dairy cattle.
Dairy cattle are herded into the milking parlor.
A cow is milked in the milking parlor.
A chicken roosts on a wheel barrow in the chicken coop.
Farmers in the chicken coop discuss how the cold temperatures are effecting the farm.
Hens lay eggs in nesting boxes while others sit in the windows for the warmth of the sun.
The extreme cold temperatures keep the chickens inside where they are gives a mash feed mix to compliment grain and what they would normally eat while outdoors.
Farmer Joe O'Brien handles the chickens, and the severe cold temps call for picking eggs multiple times a day so they don't freeze even though the chickens are producing less in the winter.
A gloved farmer holds two freshly layed eggs.
The cows bed down in recently turned bedding for the night, the manure and bedding mix helps to keep them warm during extreme cold.
Chickens sit near the sunny spot in their barn to keep warm.
Farmer Joe O'Brien checks on the gravity feed bin in the chicken barn, during the winter the chickens are fed differently than when the are free to roam in the field.
A chicken and calf keep warm inside the calf barn.
Chet Mozloom the Executive Director of the Lands at Hillside looks over the milking cows.
Troy Pensak
Troy grew up on a family farm. It’s all he knew and it made sense to build a career as a dairy farmer. He’s been tending to the cattle at the Lands at Hillside Farms for 5 years. In the winter that means tilling manure to preserve traction for the cows’ hooves and twice a day milkings that bookend meticulous feedings to keep the cows healthy and warm. Summer grasses are replaced with alfalfa - a hearty, protein rich green - and bales of hay wrapped to preserve nutrients, then topped off with a grain. “That’s their candy - it makes the milk taste a little better.”
Chet Mozloom
Chet came to the Lands at Hillside Farms 17 years ago at the behest of its founder Doug Ayers - a longtime friend. Hillside offered Chet a chance to pour his pedigree - a degree in molecular biology and career in finance - into maintaining Hillside’s dairy farm, milk production, and education apparatus as the executive director. “It brought together everything I sort of worked for to that point,” he reminisces. “Do you wanna live in the now or do you wanna live for the future,” he says of leaving a lucrative life with the financial firm Prudential behind for the farm, “as a family we decided to live in the now and my kids got to grow up around this.”
Troy Pesnak is the head of the dairy barn.
Joe O’Brien
Joe O’Brien is the brains of the regenerative farming operation - a harmonious farming practice that accounts for the health of animals, soil, and vegetation. “Every inch of the farm is an opportunity for growth [of] a vegetable, for a cow to graze, for the chickens to utilize.” Among other benefits, the practice of permaculture farming nurtures the growth of diverse grasses to be harvested for nutrient dense food up until the land ices over, ensuring the animals can consume adequate vitamins and minerals through winter. “The neat thing now is we get to measure [the improvements] year over year.”
Joe O’Brien collects eggs more often in the winter to avoid them freezing and cracking.
Joe O’Brien holds two fresh eggs.
Joe also tends to the chickens. During winter that means optimizing for natural sunlight in the retrofitted cattle barn they call home, creating spaces for the birds to comfortably huddle up for warmth, and adjusting their diet. “Chickens are omnivores - they love diversity.” He likens the typical winter fare for a chicken to eating a saltine cracker all day - boring - so he created a “kombucha cocktail” using grain pellets. “We started fermenting our grain on a three-day ferment. That grain has been inoculated [through] released enzymes and we have probiotics and prebiotics adding to the nutrition of the birds….by giving them a wet mash grain, that’s kind of compensating for what they’re missing in the summer - a worm, a bug, something juicy, something with really good nutrition.” The Lands At Hillside Farms stands out from other dairy farms in that they process and sell milk and eggs. When temperatures drop into the single digits, Joe sweeps the barn 3 or more times a day, collecting eggs before they can be rendered unusable by freezing and cracking.
Chickens are fed a mash to keep them healthy over the winter.
The mechanical barn door jolts open - “There’s the queen!” laughs Chet with the excitement of a kid. His pride and joy Penelope sizes the crew up with big brown eyes while she munches on protein rich alfalfa. “She’s my favorite but she doesn’t like me,” Chet muses at the gentle giant. Her mother, Precocious, was gifted to the farm when Chet’s daughters were little.
Peaches a one-week old calf stands under a heat lamp in the nursery
Now she’s continuing that lineage with her own daughter Peaches - “All P’s!”- a recently born calf huddled below a heat lamp in the carriage house.
Steam freezes to the whiskers of the cows in the cold.
This is Director of Education Sierra Krohnemann’s domain where newborn calves are dried under heat lamps and fed a nurturing diet until they grow big enough to join the herd, effectively living out the cycles of their lives at the farm. Chet points to a grazing cow. “This cow is never going to become meat. Ever. So if she couldn’t milk anymore and she’s 11 years old, and she gave us everything she had, then we’re going to retire her. We literally have a retirement herd.”
Chickens huddle near the windows in the sun while inside in the winter.
The crest of winter is set to bring about a bevy of challenges for the farmers and animals.
“We used to get minus 3 (degrees) once in a while. You’d get it for two days. The problem is, now it’s cycling and happening and cycling again. We’re getting hit one after another.” Chet warns, “You get 40 some degrees. Rain. Animals get wet. Then you go down to 5 degrees. That’s when you’ve got problems that you have to avoid.”
And here’s the thing - as this report publishes, the temperature is set to soar upward 50 degrees in the first week of February - ushering in the potential for this exact scenario. But the staff - they’ve signed up for this; and the animals are ready too.