When grass is healthy, it’s full of protein and easy for cows to digest. Sometimes the summers are unbearably hot, and the grass dries up and energy is sent instead to the seed. The grass becomes less nutritious and the cows don’t produce as much milk. If the summer then becomes unusually wet, the withered grass will struggle to recover.
Over her 12 years as owner of the North Country Creamery, Ashlee Kleinhammer has seen these unusual weather patterns become more common. To make their pastures and their 100% grass-fed herds more resilient in any kind of weather, Kleinhammer embarked on a project to plant trees. The trees help enrich the soil, protect from erosion and give the cows someplace to escape the sun — and resulting heat stress — that can affect their milk production. They even provide an alternate snack for the cows to munch on.
The funding that was promised by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to buy these trees is now on hold, perhaps indefinitely — just one example of how farmers and nonprofits that work to support the pieces of the fragile food system in the Adirondack region are now facing uncertainty, loss of funding and layoffs resulting from USDA cuts.
Jon Ignatowski works with a team at the Adirondack North Country Association that oversees programs related to food systems. ANCA serves as the lead manager for three USDA grant programs that benefit a variety of small businesses and farms in the North Country.
North Country Creamery is one of eight farms that ANCA is working with as part of the Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities program. This program supports $3.09 billion for projects across the U.S. and $1.08 billion in New York, according to a USDA dashboard. These North Country projects are agroforestry projects like Kleinhammer’s.
Read the full article in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise.