Category: Agriculture

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column includes all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! Phil writes this month’s column.

The Work Has Meaning

I had a chance to travel out of state last month to celebrate my mother’s 80th birthday.  Most of my siblings made it to the party in Saginaw, MI. I stayed with my older brother in the old neighborhood around the high school we all attended.

A lot of things stuck me about the city and its citizens.

 This body has always needed movement, and on daily walks around the neighborhood I remembered the lovely uncomplicated days there. Killing time with a gaggle of neighbors, bicycles at the ready to travel about as we whiled away the summer.

The sidewalks are empty now. My daily walks held not one interaction with man or beast.  No one shooting hoops or sitting on the front porches. I’ve got theories, but mostly just sadness.

 While in Michigan, I wanted to visit my cousin. He and his family milk 130ish Holsteins that live in a free stall barn 365 days a year.  His acreage, flat loamy soil, grows hay, corn, and soybeans that then make up the diet for the cows.  Most of our tour of the farm concentrated on seeing equipment. Tractors with eight tires and 4 steps into a climate-controlled cab. 

 Very much a dying breed, this is the example of small farms that the 1950’s envisioned.  They keep no garden, they raise no critters for their own table, they do not drink milk from their cows. They shop for groceries.

 My cousin, now nearly 70 years old, has made a life and a living from his farm. His son and family will continue.  An anomaly among the 1% of Americans that are farmers.

It was difficult to travel. A mix of emotions as I spent time with family and also experienced a taste of 2026 in an American city and on an American farm that feeds into our industrial food system.

 Time away refreshes what we do at Quill’s End. It turns out that growing food for ourselves and for our community adds layers and layers of satisfaction.  From soil to patron, community to ecosystem, the work has meaning. We thank you for the chance.

---

Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Quill’s Endians are members of Halcyon Grange and publish a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in the area, and generously permit us to share some of their columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column includes all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! Phil writes this month’s column.

A Living Diet

In the first couple of weeks on pasture, the cows’ milk flow increases.  The composition of the milk changes along with the volume, and the cream takes on a golden yellow from the pasture. 

The flavor also changes.  A living diet replaces the stored forage of winter, and every grass and legume is cropped by the cows for immediate use.  The whole process changes the microbes in the rumen, the first chamber of four that make up the incredible digestive system of ruminants.  The cellulose content of rooted, growing pasture encourages bacteria that can handle higher protein and energy foods.  This more digestible food increases the volume of milk, as the cow’s energy needs are more than met.

The cream’s change of color to yellow is breed specific.  Jerseys and Guernseys tend to put the most color into their milk from excess beta carotene in their diets and an inability to fully process it.  

We have the now unusual opportunity to watch the change in real time.  When rotating stock in the farm store, there is always amusement as this week’s cheeses and yogurts are set behind last weeks.  One could almost date them by color.

The butter made in late May and into June is a hoot.  The color intensifies with every step and yields a deep yellow color and smooth texture that always return us to this time of year when consumed in the winter. 

 With plenty of milk comes plenty of cream, so butter making, not on the schedule for months, now enters our minds for rainy days.  If you’ve made butter, you know the satisfaction of watching the impossible change from liquid to solid.  If you’ve not made butter, well, you should.  It is a magic show in the kitchen.

---

Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Quill’s Endians are members of Halcyon Grange and publish a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in the area, and generously permit us to share some of their columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column includes all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! Phil writes this month’s column.

The Soft Start

Since early April, when the frost departed from the soil in the pastures, we have been privy to the scene that unfolds every spring. From 1/4″ clover leaves, cute as a kitten to a grass farmer, to the stout orchardgrass, bullying its way to the heavens, the season never yet disappoints.  But the greens.  They change every day just ever so.  Under gray skies, the glow seems otherworldly.  Sunny skies seem to make smiling green, bright and toothy as it blows gently in a breeze and receives its soundtrack from the newly arrived frenzy of birds.  

The trees are starting to play along as well.  The multitude of reds and yellows adding to the drama of yet another unfolding.  They just frame the scene as the mist and clouds roll by, adding the promise of summer to the dreariness.  Underneath the coming canopy they are all business, soaking up all the moisture they can bear to miraculously turn it into foliage. 

The soft start.  It is frustrating to us as we wait.  Know that we might be the only ones waiting in nature.  The rest are off to the races while we enjoy the view.

---

Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Quill’s Endians are members of Halcyon Grange and publish a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in the area, and generously permit us to share some of their columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.