We are a Certified Organic Vermont Grass-Fed dairy farm.

Pasture is our passion: we artfully balance sunshine, rain, and fertile soil to grow nutrient-dense feed for grazing and also for cutting and baling into hay with optimum flavor and quality for the long winter months. Just what you would want to eat if you were a cow!

Our cows’ diet of 100% grasses, legumes and native plants raised on nutrient-rich, certified organic soils has been shown to increase the Omega 3’s and CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) in the milk, in amounts above and beyond the milk and dairy products of grain-fed cows. This is the food that we want to eat and share with our family, friends, and neighbors.

Growing a diverse salad bar + self-serve farm-acy

Many different varieties of grass and legumes grow and thrive in the Butterworks fields. Timothy, brome, fescue, orchard grass, alfalfa, and an assortment of clovers feed our herd well and are essential to the cows’ health and stamina. This living mix helps our herd produce high protein, rich color, and sweetness in their cream and milk all winter long.

Beyond our focus on cow health and comfort, we also aim to:

• Increase biodiversity of flora and fauna (including microbes, fungi, insects and invertebrates)
• Sequester carbon
• Foster water-holding capacity in our soil

Compost Windrows and Biodiversity

Our focus on what organic farmers call “ecosystem services” allows us to affect our local landscape in a positive and caring way.

We strive to support and regenerate biologically active, mineralized soils that are high in organic matter and make a good home for dense, diverse, and mostly perennial plants.

Treating our soil as a living organism, we take the unique step of slowly composting the manure and bedding our farm produces in long windrows. After the compost ages and mellows, reducing in size by at least half, we spread this concentrated amendment on our hay fields and pastures to increase biological activity in the soil.

This allows nutrients to be absorbed slowly over time, encouraging good growth of the sweet hay that we bale up for our herd to eat throughout the winter months.

Soils are tested every year, allowing us to monitor where and when to add compost and trace minerals.

In addition to fresh air and sunshine, our cows enjoy improved health from access to a variety of plants.

Our diverse pasture plantings also mean that we are home to a variety of butterflies, birds, and wildlife.

Watch Jack Lazor Wax Poetic About Soil

Although Jack (our co-founder) was known as a “grainiac” (he authored the book The Organic Grain Grower), he did come around later in life to a belief that perennial grass pasture was the very best thing you could provide for a herd of cows and a community of people. Watch this super-short video to learn more about why he changed his mind.