FO FARMS

It's all about FO Farms (not Faux Farms)! There's nothing fake about this farm.

Fair Oaks farms is a dairy farm that I discovered driving between Chicago and Louisville in February. The whole point of that drive was to see how many farms I could pass that carried organic. Sadly they were the only one.

At first I was wary because for miles they were advertising the farm with 3-d cow signs. It seemed a bit six flags over dairy to me. I drove up to the store located next to the farm and walked in to find an array of different cheeses. None of the signs said organic or even hormone free. When I asked the staff if the cows were hormone free they said yes. "And what about their feed?" I said. They said yes. Then I replied back to the cheese lady that there's no signs saying their cheese was free of antibiotics and hormones. She responded back saying that it was on their website.
After a quick stare down I decided to trust the cheese lady. She let me try some samples and I have to say they were divine.

I left the store with my cheddar curd, sweet swiss cheese, and colby in tow to bring back to my family in Kentucky. It was absolutely divine! The family loved it too. When I got back to NY I still couldn't find anything on the site that stated that the cows were hormone or Antibiotic free!

I decided that further investigation was required. Eventually I was put through to the CEO, Gary Corbett. He was quite lovely and forthright to speak to and full of great information. My first question to him was if you don't use antibiotics, feed your cows organic feed, and don't use hormones then why isn't your dairy organic? Gary said that the cows have to graze a certain amount of time in the pasture. For 30,000 cows to efficiently produce a sizeable amount of milk that's a difficult task.

He also said that when the cows are pregnant they are put through a dry period (that means the cows are not milked). Not all farmers do this by the way. When pregnant cows are milked they secrete hormones that we ingest and cause us problems. Milk and dairy with these hormones are suspected to be one factor in adult acne.

Gary went on to give me many other facts like all of the manure that the cows produce is recycled into gas which powers the entire plant and will soon fuel all of the dairy's delivery trucks. In addition they are working on getting wind towers to put on the land so they are also generating electricity to put back into the grid. They are basically creating a negative carbon footprint AND producing award winning cheese and other dairy to boot!

The price of the cheese was less than what I would pay at the grocery store for any 'ol cheese and tasted better than most of the cheeses I have ever tasted.

Fair Oaks Farms is open to the public to tour. You can even watch the cows give birth in a special birthing room. Gary brought up a good point. At one time we all somehow directly knew a farmer. Now we are detached from what happens to our food. We're about 8 generations away from knowing a farmer.

So in this case I am not particular about organic. Organic is just a label. Fair Oaks has a fine, quality product with full integrity and I'm proud to be one of the 400,000 people a year to come and visit.

Gotta get me some more of that cheese!!!