Jeanne Sager | Democrat JIM WEISSMAN GETS ready to milk a Holstein while wife Evelyn holds milking apparatus.

Local farm is the 'cream' of all

By Jeanne Sager
CALLICOON CENTER — January 25, 2008 — There’s something to be said about the well-kept lawns, the carefully cleaned stalls in the barn.
There’s something in Evelyn Weissmann’s meticulous research into the lines of their family, in Jim Weissmann’s retelling of the stories of his town.
This is a couple bursting with pride.
Pride in what they do.
Pride in what they’ve accomplished.
Pride in being in one of the nation’s toughest businesses and still holding their own.
The Weissmann Farm, now in its fifth generation of family ownership, has been producing milk for the masses from the same spot in Callicoon Center since 1860.
Jim and Evelyn bought the farm in 1986 from his parents, Gene and Bernie, who now live just across the road.
They’ve brought the farm to new heights, even as the number of farms in Sullivan County have plummeted.
Four years ago, they earned an outstanding conservation farm distinction.
Now they’re being honored for producing some of the state’s highest quality milk in 2007, with an award from Dairy One, the Ithaca-based cooperative that provides herd records services and milk laboratory services to dairy farmers in 18 states.
They’re doing what Evelyn believes in – driving home the positive image she’d like people to have of the dairy farming industry.
“There’s a sense of accomplishment at the end of the night,” she explained. “We’ve done this for ourselves and the cattle, and at the end of the night – you know you did the best you can.”
“We’re producing a food for the American public,” Jim added.
Both were raised in farming – Jim right there on the farm on Gulf Road, Evelyn a short drive away across the border in Pennsylvania.
Although they joke that they grew up wanting out, farming was the obvious choice for them both.
When Jim’s parents were ready to retire, the young married couple was ready to step into their shoes.
His sisters weren’t interested, but Jim can’t remember a day of his childhood not spent in the barn or with the animals.
“I must have toddled around behind Dad and Grandpa,” he recalled with a grin.
In 1995, the Weissmanns expanded the farm, doubling the barn to 36'x 140'.
They’ve brought the herd up to around 130 cows, milking about 60 at any one time.
It’s a mixed herd – they’ve experimented with just about every kind of dairy cow out there – but they’ve come to love the milking shorthorns who earned them special praise from Dairy One.
So what makes the milk from their herd so good?
The Weissmanns don’t have one, pat answer.
Instead, they pick apart their farm in their heads. They list the best of the best.
“Clean, comfortable cows,” Evelyn noted. “Their environment’s dry… Nutrition is a big key – we have healthy cows.”
“Genetics… and our equipment is kept running properly,” Jim added.
The Weissmanns aren’t an organic farm, but they’re a good, clean farm.
Their milk is a good, clean product.
“So many people have so many assumptions about what a dairy farmer is,” Evelyn noted.
“Just like we take our children to the doctor, I won’t let a cow die from a cold because I won’t give her an antibiotic.”
People assume that means the antibiotics used on a sick cow get passed along to the consumer.
No sirree.
“It’s against the law for us to ship milk with antibiotics,” Jim explained.
Proving his point, he fingers a sheet of lined yellow paper with the time 6:12 p.m. in scrawling script.
That’s when he’s scheduled to make a check on one cow’s milk – to check to see if medicine has cleared the cow before her milk can be sold.
A check at 6:12 produces a smile from Jim and a nod to Evelyn.
All clear.
“We do the best we can to secure a safe and nutritious product,” Jim explained.
“The plant also tests every load before it is processed,” Evelyn added.
“It’s the one thing we can control – the quality of our milk.”
What they can’t control is the price their product will bring at market.
The Weissmanns are in a rare business. They pay for a hauler to pick up their milk and drive it out of state to the factory.
They won’t see a check for at least a month – and then it comes down to what the government has decided the milk is worth.
It can get discouraging.
Some days it does.
When Jim was a kid, much of the Town of Callicoon was covered in farmland.
“It was all farms,” he recalled with a sigh. “Now, in the Callicoon Center Fire District, I’m the only one shipping milk.”
“We try not to look at it so negatively,” Evelyn said, quickly switching the topic.
“We like being outside,” Jim said, his face brightening. “That’s a big part of it.
“And our cows, we spend so much time with them, they almost become family.”
“They are our family,” Evelyn added, letting loose one of her boisterous laughs. “Where do we spend Thanksgiving and Christmas? With them, in the barn!”
Farming isn’t a 9 to 5, Monday to Friday job.
The Weissmanns spend a lot of time together, milking their herd or mucking out stalls to keep their cows comfortable.
There’s time spent outside too, planting, harvesting, keeping up appearances around the farm.
“I’m a big supporter of the positive image of farming,” Evelyn noted. “Whoever goes by here is drinking milk or eating cheese at some point.”
Son Mike Haff lends a hand on his time off from the town highway department – he even operates a one-man maple syrup operation.
Jugs of the stuff go out in the farm stand the Weissmanns keep during the summer – a bit of a throwback that works on the honor system.
Prices are listed for the corn, the squash, the syrup, and people leave their cash right there, taking what they need for supper.
People are neighborly. They take what they pay for.
Jim and Evelyn appreciate what their neighbors do for them; the people who will rent them the land they need to produce enough hay to feed their herd, the folks who follow patiently behind the tractor puttering down Gulf Road.
They’re proud of what they provide in exchange.
Good, clean milk. A nice, clean farm that brightens up the landscape on the one side of town.
And they’re doing it all their way.
“We, as farmers, are all looked at as one, and we’re all very individual,” Evelyn noted. “Our farming practices are very different.”
“We are proud of what WE do,” Jim added. “We enjoy what we do.”