Thomas Farm and Dairy gets Farm Bureau grant

Dec. 21, 2021 | Doc Pruyne
dpruyne@thereminder.com


Reminder Publishing photo by Doc Pruyne

SUNDERLAND – Laurie Cuevas and Jim Thomas, owners of Thomas Farm and Dairy, won a Schipper grant this month to keep their TikTok stars in better health.

“They’re Nubians goats, the kind with the big floppy ears,” Cuevas said. “They’re fun, they’re like big dogs. People are crazy about them on TikTok.”

The $3,000 grant from the Agricultural Preservation Foundation of the Massachusetts Farm Bureau came to Cuevas and Thomas to finance the parsing of their fields for rotational grazing. Rotational grazing keeps the goats healthier because they have less exposure to parasites. After the goats use a paddock for two weeks they will be moved to the next patch of grass, and so forth, leaving the parasites behind.

“The life cycle of the worms,” Cuevas said, “if you can give them fresh grazing land every two week, it improves the goats’ health tremendously.”

The social media stars produce milk that’s ideal for cheesemaking. Cuevas explained that while Nubians produce less milk than cows, “the components of their milk is ideal for cheese. There’s a high level of protein and fat in the milk. As cheese makers, that’s the holy grail of what we’re looking for.”

The Nubians get all the attention, but cows are also honored residents of Thomas Farm and Dairy, and serve an important role in raising goats: feeding the kids. The cows can produce a hundred pounds of milk a day, so Cuevas feeds the kids warm cow milk, which doesn’t have the solids of Nubian goat milk and yields much less cheese.

The cows, Cuevas finds, are much harder to deal with. The farm has 23 out of 25 acres in pasture, is small for a dairy herd, but ideal for goats.

“Rotation grazing isn’t new, but it depends on how much room you have to pasture your animals,” Cuevas said. “We can’t open up 40 acres and let the goats wander around.”

Small farm, small farm stand – but when the pandemic started, Cuevas said, business increased ten-fold. UMass students from the apartment buildings across the street became regular customers. Regular customers, avoiding big grocery stores, grew devoted.

Thomas built a bigger farmstand last spring. Cuevas had already stocked the three-sided lean-to, the previous stand – voted the best farmstand by the Valley Advocate one year – with vegetables grown on the farm, and their own cheeses. Now enclosed, the stand is still small, but has a variety of prepared pastas and cereals, flowers, apples, eggs, desserts and baked goods.

“We love the people that come here, we meet a lot of them. We try to make sure there’s a face with the farm,” said Cuevas. “The community has really embraced us. People really are the best advocates.”

Thomas bought the land over 20 years ago. In 2011 he built the barn. He learned carpentry, earthworks and how to pour concrete by watching tradesmen at work. Cuevas enjoyed a career in global marketing for GE Plastics before landing on the farm and winning a Schipper grant.

Schipper grants are administered by the Massachusetts Farm Bureau’s Agricultural Preservation Foundation. The program received funding through a major gift from the late John and Liolia Schipper.

Share this: