Thousands of school children pay virtual visit to Townville dairy farm

Apr. 8—STEUBEN TOWNSHIP — If you were a youngster unfamiliar with the everyday realities of dairy farming — a youngster who couldn't define terms like "heifer," for instance, and who had never gotten past "the fridge" when wondering where cheese comes from — you might have questions for a dairy farmer.

You might ask, for instance, "Do farmers wear Crocs or boots?"

The answer at Apple Shamrock Dairy Farm, located just outside of Townville, is clear, according to farmer Chris Waddell.

"No Crocs here," Waddell said. Unlike the men at the farm, who are generally anti-Croc, Waddell said she wears them all the time, just not when she's out and about. "They don't do real well in the potential mud."

Schoolchildren from all over the country had a chance to ask that question and others more directly related to the dairy industry when Waddell hosted two livestream events Wednesday. About 6,400 students representing nearly all 50 states, plus a few from Canada, registered to participate, with about 5,500 following along on a virtual tour aimed at elementary students. Another 900 tuned in for a "deep dive" tour aimed at middle and high school students.

Apple Shamrock hosts numerous in-person tours for students from nearby Maplewood Elementary School and other groups throughout each spring and summer, but working with a team from the American Dairy Association North East trade organization allowed for a different level of connection outreach.

"It's a really great way to reach a lot of people," Waddell said shortly after completing the two late morning livestream sessions. "We think it's really important to educate the children, educate people, because they need to learn — they don't know."

Part of the reason the average person is unfamiliar with how milk is brought to market or even what agriculture generally involves, Waddell pointed out, is that very few of them are involved in food production. According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, farm families make up less than 2 percent of the population.

"Even the people that live right in this community don't know what's going on in their backyard," Waddell said.

And what's going on at Apple Shamrock is impressive. The farm, which is owned by Waddell, her husband Rob and their son Josh, employs 25 full-time and three part-time employees. About 1,100 cows are milked three times each day for a daily output of 12,000 gallons of milk.

While about a dozen staff members spend most of their time focused entirely on cow care, another group grows the food required to feed the cows. The farm currently cultivates about 3,000 acres, Waddell said, and is the second largest dairy farm in Crawford County behind Bortnick Dairy LLC in Beaver Township.

The farm is not only productive, it's also managed with an eye toward the future, having last month been recognized as Outstanding Conservation Farmer of 2022 by Crawford County Conservation District. Among the practices cited in the award was the farm's "closed loop" use of fine sand as animal bedding.

The sand, Waddell explained to students in the virtual tour, is bacteria resistant as well as comfortable. And when sand is spread to the aisles between bedding areas, it provides a bit of grit to walkways that might otherwise be made more slippery by waste.

The livestream used a "green screen" effect in leading students through the sand bedding: Seated in a farm office, Waddell and Kelsey O'Shea, an industry relations specialist from American Dairy Association North East, were superimposed on previously recorded video of various spots on the farm.

"Oh my gosh, so these cows basically get to lay at the beach all day," O'Shea said as video of cows sprawled on sand beds inside one of the farm's barns played behind her.

"They do," Waddell responded, "they're beach living."

Nearly all of the sand, Waddell explained later, can also be reclaimed from the manure produced on the farm, and the manure itself is used to fertilize the fields that produce the crops fed to the cows.

The tour followed the cows from the barn to the milking parlor and then led students to the calf barn. The dairy association has been producing similar videos since 2018, O'Shea said, and usually the farmer would walk from place to place during the livestream. Apple Shamrock was the organization's first visit to western Pennsylvania, however, and concerns about broadband reliability led O'Shea's team to shoot video in advance this time and to rely on the green screen effect during the livestream.

As the tour reached the calf barn and Waddell pointed out the sawdust used as bedding instead of sand and explained how the calves expand their diet from milk and water to grain and eventually hay and silage, O'Shea incorporated additional questions from students watching along. The inquiry about Crocs did not make the final cut but another student, seeing calf after calf with numbered ear tags, wanted to know, "Do you ever name the cows?"

"We do name some," Waddell said, explaining that it's hard to name all of them at such a large dairy. "My son and his kids, they like to go to some of the shows, so those particular animals, they will name them because those are the ones they're going to sort out as maybe a little special."

Cows are also born with teeth — 32 of them — but only on the bottom, Waddell explained in response to another question.

As for where cheese comes from, it was obvious by the end of the tour that it comes from Apple Shamrock Dairy Farm — or at least quite a bit of it does. Waddell said all of the farm's milk is shipped to Middlefield, Ohio.

There it is made into cheese by Rothenbuhler Cheesemakers and travels through the distribution network to a retail outlet before eventually finding its way to — that's right — a fridge near you.

Mike Crowley can be reached at (814) 724-6370 or by email at mcrowley@meadvilletribune.com.