George “Jeep” Madison first came to Vermont as a boy in 1968, when his father took a job selling fertilizer for a few years.When his family returned to their dairy farm in Rhode Island, Jeep stayed in Vermont, and he hasn’t moved too far since.
Jeep’s brother continues to run the family farm in Rhode Island, along with their 80-year-old father. “He still gets up to work at three o’clock every morning, the crazy old man,” Jeep jokes.
As for Jeep’s own sons, one is just starting high school and the other is working in a different field. “He was never really a cow man, but maybe he’ll change his mind,” says Jeep. “When I was his age, I wasn’t a cow man either. After selling the development rights, we’ve got options now that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.”
“I worked for 12 years on a syndicate farm in Bridport that’s now conserved,” he says. “I can see it from my barn door.Then, I worked on a big beef farm in Shoreham.That’s right across the road from me, and part of it is conserved, too.”
In 1996, Jeep purchased his own farm in Shoreham. “It was just 15 acres and we were milking only 50 cows,” he recalls. “We did really well for about six years, until the price of milk dropped and the price of cows went sky high.We had great production, but we just weren’t big enough. All the money was going into the mortgage and inputs.”
Expansion seemed imperative, so Jeep seized an opportunity to buy an additional 84 acres that surrounded his farm. He had blueprints made for a 300-cow barn, but realized he would need to borrow nearly $800,000 in order to build it.The outlook was not promising. “We thought we might need to move to western New York, where farmland was cheaper,” says Jeep, “but this is home to us and we didn’t want to leave.”
That’s when Jeep decided to take a different approach. Last year he sold the development rights to the Vermont Land Trust and transitioned his 100-head dairy farm to a certified organic operation. “It was a tough year, but we just put our shoulder down and kept going,” he says. “We knew we had the Land Trust’s help. If we hadn’t conserved and gone organic, we would have had to sell our herd for sure.”
Jeep also received technical assistance from the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont (NOFA-VT). “They clarify the rules,” he says. “Whenever you’re not sure, they’ll give you an answer right away over the phone.”
For farmers considering a conversion to organic, NOFA-VT provides on-site technical advice and cash flow analysis. After the transition is complete, it offers everything from grazing management plans to alternative animal healthcare solutions. “We like it when farmers are calling a lot and asking questions,” says Nicole Dehle, NOFA-VT’s certification administrator.
