E24: Starting a Raw Milk Herdshare | Michelle & Adam Barringer

For dairy cow owners who find themselves overwhelmed with an abundance of milk or an abundance of friends and neighbors asking for milk, a herdshare could be a great option for you! Additionally, if you live in a state where it is illegal to sell raw milk, starting a herdshare is a wonderful way to provide milk to your community without legal issues. Whether you are looking to join a herdshare in your area or start one from your own homestead, this episode is a great starting place to get your questions answered. Michelle and Adam have been running their herdshare for a couple of years now, and they are generously sharing their insight into this process from start to finish!

In this episode, we cover:

How the Barringers got started with dairy cows and eventually started their herdshare
Various ways the children get involved in the family herdshare endeavor
Walking through the setup and routine of a small home dairy
The many factors to consider when deciding how to feed your dairy cow
What are the health benefits of drinking raw milk?
Navigating the legalities of raw milk sales and herdshares in your state
An overview of the supplies and equipment you need to start a herdshare
How to start marketing your herdshare to find members

Thank you to our sponsor!

McMurray Hatchery offers a wide selection of poultry breeds and supplies to assist you with raising your flock. Find what you need at McMurrayHatchery.com!

About Michelle & Adam

Adam & Michelle Barringer have been farming in some capacity for their entire marriage of 16 years. Through trying out just about every farm-related enterprise there is, they have landed on what they believe to be the most sought-after and what provides the most positive impact to the community, raw milk, through a herdshare program. With their current herd of 8 milk cows, they provide milk for nearly eighty families in their area. To hear the stories of healing in their members just by switching to raw “real” milk, it gives their whole family the motivation to keep stewarding the land and the animals well. Adam & Michelle have 4 children who literally help run the farm. They couldn’t do what they do without them and hope to pass along this enterprise to them fully one day.

Adam is also employed full-time as the livestock program manager at Juneberry Ridge in Norwood, NC. He enjoys spending any “free time” he gets with his children outdoors – camping, fishing, and rambling through the woods. Michelle homeschools her children and in her free time enjoys cooking, decorating, health & nutrition research, reading, traveling, and working on her own podcast.

Resources Mentioned

RealMilk.com

Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund

Visit Michelle & Adam’s website for more information about their farm and herdshare

Check out Michelle’s podcast, Biscuits and Gravy, and follow along on Instagram

Connect

Michelle & Adam Barringer | Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube

Starting a Raw Milk Herdshare Transcript

Amy Fewell Welcome to the Homesteaders of America Podcast, where we encourage simple living, hard work, natural healthcare, real food, and building an agrarian society. If you’re pioneering your way through modern noise and conveniences, and you’re an advocate for living a more sustainable and quiet life, this podcast is for you. Welcome to this week’s podcast. I’m your host, Amy Fewell, and I’m the founder of the Homesteaders of America organization and annual events. If you’re not familiar with us, we are a resource for homesteading education and online support. And we even host a couple of in-person events each year with our biggest annual event happening right outside the nation’s capital here in Virginia every October. Check us out online at HomesteadersofAmerica.com. Follow us on all of our social media platforms and subscribe to our newsletter so that you can be the first to know about all things HOA (that’s short for Homesteaders of America). Don’t forget that we have an online membership that gives you access to thousands—yes, literally thousands—of hours worth of information and videos. It also gets you discount codes, an HOA decal sticker when you sign up, and access to event tickets before anyone else. All right. Let’s dive into this week’s episode.

Amy Fewell Welcome back to this week’s episode of the Homesteaders of America podcast. This week I have Adam and Michelle Barringer. Welcome to the podcast, guys.

Michelle Barringer Thanks for having us, Amy.

Amy Fewell You’re welcome. I’m not sure if we’ve ever had another couple on other than Shawn and Beth. I think you guys are like the first couple that we’ve had on together, so that’s fun. So today we’re going to talk about… We’ve been going through a series on sheep. We’ve had a few podcast episodes about cows. But last year at our HOA women’s event, Adam and Michelle were talking about their herdshares. And I thought, you know what? They need to tell this story to the HOA community and how successful it’s been for them. So we’re going to get started in that today. You guys might get some questions answered if you’re looking into herdshares. You can learn how the Barringers do it and all about them. If you don’t want to do a herdshare, and you would rather buy, and you’re in their area, that’s an option as well. All right. So let’s get started. Tell everybody who you are, what you do, and how your family kind of got started, what year, how long you’ve been doing it.

Adam Barringer Sounds good. You want to tell our story?

Michelle Barringer No. You go ahead.

Adam Barringer Yeah. So we got our first milk cow, I guess about six years ago, five or six years ago, just for our family. She was a Dexter Jersey mix. It’s called a Belfair, if you’re familiar with any of those mixes. But she was a really good cow. It was a good experience for us and our family. And kind of went head first into dairy and didn’t know what we were getting into, but she forced us to learn. And then once we had her… we milked her for, what, a couple of months to start with. And then it was too much because I was traveling and it was just a burden on you guys to take care of that. So we dried her up and waited till she calved. But once we started milking her again, all of our neighbors found out about us having milk. And that’s really how the milk sales and the herdshare started was just kind of word of mouth and our neighbors learning that we had a dairy cow. So that’s where it all started.

Amy Fewell That’s awesome. So you guys started in 2021-ish, is that right? When you started getting your herdshare really in order?

Adam Barringer Yeah, that’s when we purchased more cows was 2021.

Amy Fewell Okay, so what are you guys milking now? Are you milking Jerseys or are you still doing the crosses or a mix?

Adam Barringer Yeah, it’s a little bit of both. We have two cows that are Jersey/Guernsey mixes, and the rest are Jerseys.

Amy Fewell Okay.

Adam Barringer We have six cows total, six milking cows total. And two of those are mixes, and the other four are Jerseys.

Amy Fewell Awesome. So tell us a little bit about how your herdshare grew. Is it a really good sustainable income for you? And how did you get to where you are now?

Adam Barringer Yeah, I mean, it’s been a real blessing for our family. It was ’21 when we bought CeCe and Maggie, our next two cows. And really started seeing the need then. And then once you registered us on RealMilk.com, that’s when things started to explode through the Weston A. Price Foundation. And now we have a larger demand than what we can meet. We’re sort of maxed out with the amount of pasture that we have and the amount of land that our animals can carry and that kind of thing. But yeah, it’s been a blessing for our family and our kids to get everyone involved and meet new people and provide our customers with a good product and something that really changes lives, I think.

Amy Fewell Yeah. So what does your routine look like? So tell us a little bit about your family and how they’re involved and what your typical routine for a herdshare looks like.

Michelle Barringer Well, you’ll have to tell about the milking part because that’s not my area of expertise.

Adam Barringer I keep telling you, you got to start milking CeCe. She’s your cow.

Michelle Barringer We have one cow who is pretty feisty. If there’s going to be something that goes wrong, she’s probably the cause of it. But I think she’s really cute. And Adam and our oldest, who milk them, are like “Well you have at it because she ain’t so cute to milk.” So yeah, our kids are all involved in the dairy process in some way or another. Adam milks before he goes to work because he works full-time at another farm as the livestock manager. So he milks before he goes to work, and I bottle and I do all of the customers stuff, all of the member relations things. And so any kind of communication, I handle all of that. And Stella, our next to oldest, she is in charge of cleaning up all of the milking equipment, sanitizing everything, making sure everything’s ready to go for the next milking in the evening since we milk twice a day. And then Travis, our oldest son, he is just available for whenever we need him. He helps me sometimes with washing the bottles that come in because we trade out. So our herdshare members… We bottle in glass jars, and so they will return their jars from the week before and then we sanitize it again obviously before we bottle again. So he’ll help me with washing those or milk rags that need to be washed that they use on the cows to clean them up. We’ll put them in the washing machine and get those out and hang them up to dry and all that kind of stuff. So all of our kids have a job to do. Sawyer, the little one, he’s three, and he helps me with washing and and whatever needs to be done. He’ll hand me things and stuff.

Adam Barringer And Sydney. Sydney does half the milking.

Michelle Barringer I guess I forgot because I was going to talk about the evening milking but Sydney, our oldest, she’s 13, and she has been in charge of milking in the evenings for quite some time. So she and Adam pretty much share the load of the actual physical moving of the cows and milking the cows.

Amy Fewell Wow, that’s an awesome little gig for a 13-year-old, huh?

Adam Barringer Yeah. It’s been really good for her. For all of them. It’s been really good for all of them. It’s one of those things you can’t stop doing. Like they’ve got to be milked every day. And so it teaches a lot of responsibility and perseverance through the hard times and when you don’t feel like doing it and those kinds of things.

Amy Fewell Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about what your milking setup looks like because you are technically a homestead herdshare, right? And so you may not necessarily look like a commercial dairy barn or anything like that. So what does your typical barn setup for milking look like?

Adam Barringer Yeah, it’s very simple. It’s not anything you would think it would look like, really, with us being a dairy and we’re milking and several cows. So our barn is just… It was a woodshed. That’s what it was built for originally, to store firewood in. And when we moved here, it had wood in it. We actively used that up to heat the house with. So it left an open stall basically. And I built a stanchion for our first cow. Very simple, basically just a piece of wood that held her in place. It wasn’t very fancy at all. And then once we bought the two other cows… No, it was after that.

Michelle Barringer Yeah. It was fairly recently that you built the two cow stanchion.

Adam Barringer Yeah, that’s right. I forgot about that. Yeah. So once we started seeing a higher demand after getting on the Real Milk website, we had to make things a little more efficient and streamlined. So I ended up… We bought a two cow milker from Melasty. It’s a fixed pump, so the pump stays at the barn, and I have a two cow stanchion, and all that means is just a wooden platform with rails on both sides and a space in the middle to basically sit on a bucket or squatter or whatever. And you have the two cows on both sides of you. Yeah, it’s very simple. And for the feed, I have a barrel at the front with a hole in it that they can stick their heads in and eat while they’re being milked. And then every day we have a wagon, it’s our milk wagon. It’s a little, I don’t know, just the wagon. We put the two tanks in and the claws and the hoses, and we go to the barn and hook it to the pump and then hook it to the cows. And once we’re done, we disconnect it all and bring it back to the house and bottle the milk and clean it all up and get it ready to go again. So it is very simple.

Amy Fewell Yeah. So are you milking all six cows a day or only a few cows a day?

Adam Barringer Yeah. We milk all six twice a day. And that varies. Sometimes, like right now, we’re only milking four because two will be calving in a month or so. So we milk for about 43 weeks or so and then we allow the cows to dry up for two months prior to calving. So it’s anywhere from 4 to 6 cows a day, twice a day.

Amy Fewell Yeah. And how many gallons of milk are you getting a day from even just four cows?

Adam Barringer Yeah. We typically average 3 to 4 gallons a day per cow.

Amy Fewell Good. And do you guys have any… So you’ll see some smaller homesteads, they’ll have like a chill tank. Do you guys have anything like that or you’re just taking it straight to your house and sticking it in jars and in the fridge?

Michelle Barringer Yeah, it comes straight up from the barn from milking, and I’m out there ready to put it into jars. And I have a big cooler with ice water in it ready to go. And so as soon as they’re bottled, they go and chill down in the cooler. And then after they’ve chilled, then I put them in the fridge.

Amy Fewell Awesome. Yeah. All right, So we’re going to switch gears just a little bit. So let’s talk about your dairy cow diet a little bit. What does that look like for you guys? I know it looks different for every farm. And why do you choose the kind of diet that they have? Specifically for your cows.

Adam Barringer Yeah. So something I’ve been learning a lot about this year actually is it’s called holistic management and holistic planned grazing. Have you ever heard of that, Amy? Holistic management?

Amy Fewell I have, but go ahead and explain it just a little bit for those who don’t know.

Adam Barringer Yeah. So that ties directly to our cows’ diet. But we really want to use the cows and all of our animals as a tool to manage the land to allow the pastures to recover and let the grass reach its full potential before grazing again. So our cows have a pasture based diet, and with the dairy, we have to plan pretty much two spots per day. They go to a place after the morning milking and they stay all day, and then we bring them back and milk them again. And then they go to a different place in the evening after the evening milking. So sometimes that means we hold them in an area and we feed hay, but for the most part, they are pasture fed. And then we also… At milking, they get roughly 10 pounds of grain per milking. Maybe not quite that much, but that is a non-GMO grain that’s grown and milled here locally that we have delivered. Just the Fertrell Mineral Company. They have livestock rations on their website and we have a local mill make that up for us.

Amy Fewell Yeah, that’s awesome that you’re able to get that local. That makes a difference. We’re able to get a lot of our livestock feed local too, which is nice. Now are you only feeding grain when they’re in lactation? Or are you feeling that all the time?

Adam Barringer Yeah, only when they’re in lactation. The two months before calving, we stop all grain, and they really go to our poorest pasture and kind of hang out. We don’t keep them with the moving cows and give them the best pasture. And a lot of that is to prevent milk fever. So when you’re drying a cow up, you’re supposed to put them on pretty poor diet up until a week or two before calving, and then put them back into the milking rotation.

Amy Fewell Okay. Awesome. So that’s really good information for those of you that… I know a lot of people, there’s so many varying opinions, right? I’m like, should you do all grass fed? Should you do some grass fed? And I think it really depends on the cow and the family and how it works for you. So I love that you guys are explaining that really well, like how you’re managing those cows. And the ultimate thing is that they’re healthy, right? And you definitely have healthy cows. I have seen them.

Adam Barringer Yeah. We’ve had some pretty bad experiences because we started out with that mindset of only grass fed and only alfalfa pellets, no grain. And we had some cows that wouldn’t breed back. We had one cow that would fall all the time, and she was just giving lots of problems and I couldn’t figure out why. And then I finally understood the difference in genetics and things like that. And cows of her type just require grain just to sustain her body. So once we saw that and saw the need for grain, it kind of changed our mind a little bit to take care of our animals a little bit better and get out of that hard, you know, we’re not going to do any grain ever. I think it’s okay to give a small amount. And especially it’s a locally grown and milled grain that I trust the source.

Amy Fewell So yeah. And you nailed it. It’s all about genetics, too. And so the thing that we try to stress to people here especially is if you’re buying a cow, especially a dairy cow, and they are not from completely grass fed genetics for generations, then you should take care of the cow that you have, not try to feed the cow that you want. Right? So it’s just all about being a good steward, and you guys are doing that really well. All right. So let’s switch it up a little bit. What about raw milk? Tell us some health benefits of raw milk in case… I think most of our audience knows, but there will always be someone who doesn’t and they’ll be wondering, why on earth are you doing a raw milk herdshare?

Michelle Barringer Right. So raw milk is considered a whole food because it is completely natural and is not stripped of any of its vitamins and minerals and enzymes. And I think the enzyme piece is key to it, because so many people are labeled lactose intolerant. And I know I was one of those people that had never been able to really digest dairy, and that was conventional, pasteurized, homogenized dairy. And after we started drinking the raw milk and noticing that I had no digestive issues, it was pretty telling of that. And so we have… I mean, there are so many stories. That’s really what keeps us going, I think, in this is just hearing the stories from our members about how they were lactose intolerant. Or we have one member whose child was labeled failure to thrive and they switched over to our milk and the kid started gaining weight. And every time they would go to the doctor previously, the kid was losing weight every time, and they were getting pretty concerned. Switched over to raw milk because the mom just knew we’ve got to do something to try to help him. And he started gaining weight. He got an appetite. He started eating well and just completely turned his life around. There’s so many crazy things. I mean, I really feel like raw milk is healing. And even with me, I had some blood sugar issues. I was wearing a glucose monitor for a while and I was having some really low glucose spikes or or dips during the night, like dangerously low it was considered. And I was consulting with my doctor and nutritionist, and they were encouraging me to do protein before bed or complex carbs before bed. So I was trying different things, all healthy foods, all whole foods. And it was still dipping at night. And I was doing some reading, and I read about people with some glucose issues drinking raw milk before they go to bed. And I was like, well, let’s give it a try. We’ve got it here. Let’s give it a try. And I drank a cup of raw milk that night and it was like this all night. And it has been ever since then. And I remember telling my doctor that afterwards and she was like, “That is some valuable information. Thank you for letting me know that.” So we just believe in it. We think that it’s just so good for people and for children who might lack some nutrients in their food or picky eaters or whatever. But if you can get them to drink the raw milk, I feel like they’ve got a pretty good diet.

Adam Barringer Right. Yeah. There’s so much that goes to that, too, like the nutrition from the land. There’s so much that the cow gets from the grass and the soil that the grass is growing on that comes in to the milk. So it really goes back to the way that the land has been managed and is managed from what I’ve learned. With a milk cow, that’s an immediate thing. Today’s grass is tomorrow’s milk. So that’s something that I’ve tried to get better at in the past year at least, trying to manage our cows a little bit better and making the grass of better quality.

Amy Fewell Yeah, that’s true. And that’s really important for people. You know, those of you listening, if you’re looking for a herdshare, it’s really important to ask that herdshare facilitator what are their cows eating? And are they on pasture at all? And how do they manage their farm? And just their transparency is so important. And we have no doubt that you guys are transparent because here you are on the podcast telling us all about it.

Amy Fewell Hey, guys. Thanks for joining us for this week’s episode. We’re going to take a quick break and bring you a word from one of our amazing sponsors. McMurray Hatchery officially started in 1917. Murray McMurray had always been interested in poultry as a young man and particularly enjoyed showing birds at the local and state fairs. Nowadays, the hatchery is still completely through mail order, but they offer way more than ever before. From meat chicks and layer hens to waterfowl, ducklings, goslings, turkeys, game birds, juvenile birds, they even have hatching eggs and a whole lot of chicken equipment. Make sure you check out our Homesteader of America sponsor McMurray Hatchery at McMurrayHatchery.com and get your orders in today. And don’t forget to stop by their booth at the 2023 HOA event.

Amy Fewell All right. So we know raw milk is amazing. We know your cows are amazing, but we also know that there are some legalities in regard to herdshares in some states. And your state is one of those states. So would you mind talking about that a little bit for those who may not know?

Adam Barringer Yeah, so I don’t know what the percentage or number of states, but most states it’s illegal to sell raw milk. Do you know, Amy? How many how many states is it legal in? It’s very few, isn’t it?

Amy Fewell It’s quite a few where it’s illegal. And then there’s states like yours and mine that either allow herdshares or they don’t have any kind of stance on herdshares. So like in Virginia, it’s illegal to buy raw milk unless it’s for pet consumption, which I’m not sure how they even monitor that. But my state in Virginia, we don’t actually have a law on whether you can or whether you can’t do herdshares. And so we’re just up here in Virginia kind of getting away with it. So I’m not quite sure how what North Carolina is like, but generally, if it’s illegal in a state to sell raw milk, which most states it is. I think there’s only like five, if that, states where it’s not illegal to buy raw milk. But in most of those states you can do a herdshare. Now, I do know that there was some talk going into the farm bill for next year where they’re thinking about making a federal blanket for herdshares with some federal regulations, which we’ll talk more about that as we get more information. But for now, the best place to check for each individual listener’s state would probably be the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund website. You can kind of check on there and see what your state rules are, if there are any rules. And then Adam and Michelle are going to tell us how to get around those rules and how they’re doing that.

Adam Barringer Right. Yeah. So the two ways here in North Carolina we can sell milk is by labeling every jar as pet food and selling it as not for human consumption. Or we sell through a herdshare, which is simply our group of customers each own a portion of the herd, and so they may get an eighth of the herd or something. And that entitles them to so much milk per week. And so they’re not paying for the milk, they’re paying for us to take care of their cows is how it works. And we had the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund—we’re members of that—and they helped us write some paperwork at the beginning, and our customers signed that paperwork. And so that just shows that they’re owners of the herd, basically, and are paying us to take care of it. So it’s pretty simple and we like it the way it is. It helps us to plan for sales. It’s sort of like a CSA because we know each week what the demand is going to be and how much milk we’re going to sell, and it sort of helps manage the sales end of it.

Michelle Barringer Yeah, our customers… Some of the people that want to become members, they’re like, “Wow, that’s a hassle to have to do all that.” And we actually really like it because if we didn’t do that, we might have milk just sitting out there in the fridge that nobody’s coming to buy. So it’s sort of presold the way that it’s run through the herdshare. So we don’t mind it even though it is more work on our end, but we do get close with our members. It’s nice to… Last year we had like an ice cream social during the summer and we had a Thanksgiving meal with them and that kind of thing. So it’s just nice to be able to form some closer relationships with people that we see every week like that. And they’re not just customers that come by whenever they want to, that kind of thing.

Adam Barringer Yeah. And it’s allowed for some bartering, too. I know we trade milk for some things and that’s been pretty cool.

Amy Fewell Yeah, that’s nice. All right, a couple more questions for you before we get off here. One of the questions I know a lot of people are going to ask is, “Okay, I have a cow. I’ve been milking a cow and I have all this milk.” But what are some things for those people who are interested in getting into a herdshare? What are some supplies they might need for the people who maybe already have a cow? But then what are supplies that the people who don’t have a cow yet might need?

Adam Barringer Yeah. I mean, it’s pretty simple, really. It depends on your demand. I mean, for us, we have a ton of jars. I’d say start with that because each customer, if they get one gallon, that’s four jars, because you have to have the two sets of jars for the current gallon and then the two sets of jars for next week’s milk. So each gallon sold is four jars. So that’s one thing that we didn’t start with enough of. We’ve ordered jars several times and there’s been a shortage of jars. And so that’s where I would start.

Michelle Barringer Yeah, this growing over the past three years has been crazy to try to get jars. There was times where we were like, “Y’all have got to bring your jars back.” That’s a requirement for our members, anyways, is that they bring their jars from the week before back before they’re allowed to pick their milk up. But occasionally, we’ve gotten a little lax with it or whatever. But there’s been times where we’re like, “No, this cannot… We’ve got to have jars. We have nowhere to put this milk today.”

Adam Barringer So there’s that, the jars. And then we have several fridges. We have three fridges out there that we have for milk. One is for customers mainly, and then we have an overflow for customers, and then we have our personal fridge. So refrigeration is key. I would say an icemaker is key for quick chilling or some method of quick chilling the milk. I think that’s very important. Ours is chilled within at least 15 minutes after milking typically. And that makes it last longer and stay fresh. I think having a place to clean up everything is important. We were doing it in the house for a while.

Michelle Barringer It was a mess.

Adam Barringer And it works, but it’s a hassle for sure.

Michelle Barringer So we have an outdoor kitchen basically now with a nice stainless sink and drying rack and everything now. And that’s where we clean up.

Adam Barringer That feels very important. A good milker. And I don’t have a lot of experience with milkers, but we did order one from Melasty. We’ve had it about a year, I guess, haven’t we? And haven’t had any problems with it. It’s very user-friendly and simple to use and pretty… I mean, it’s expensive, no doubt. But for a herdshare, it’s fairly inexpensive.

Michelle Barringer Yeah, the herdshare will pay for the equipment.

Adam Barringer For what you get out of it. And if you have more than one cow, it’s probably worth a machine, honestly. We milked one cow for two or three years and it would take me 45 minutes to an hour every day to milk one cow. And then we went to the machine, and I can milk six cows in the same amount of time. So it was a no brainer.

Michelle Barringer It’s just a lot more to… Well, I wouldn’t say a lot more to clean up, but it does take a little bit longer because you are cleaning more equipment and everything.

Adam Barringer Right.

Michelle Barringer And then filters. We filter the milk, so filters and and funnels and things like that. Is that about it?

Adam Barringer Pretty much. I mean, we have like the iodine teat dip for the cows and cleaning supplies and things like that. But yeah, the main thing is the labor. The equipment and the… once you have the equipment, you’re pretty set. It’s just the labor and the monotonous work. You know, I’ve got to do this on Sunday mornings before church and all that stuff. That’s the hardest part.

Michelle Barringer Yeah. Being all in, right?

Adam Barringer That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. There are definitely days, especially in the summer when it’s 100 degrees, it’s very hard to go out and have to milk those cows.

Michelle Barringer Yeah, it’s always the summer that gets us. Well, the winter is too, but the summer is really hard because everyone gets really tired. We’re not in our routine for school, so it’s a little more like, can’t we just sleep in today? And that kind of thing. So it definitely takes a commitment to do it.

Amy Fewell Yeah. Okay, so last question. What do you recommend for people when they want to fill a herdshare? So there are a lot of people getting started and they’re wondering how can they fill those herdshares. What are your recommendations in that, whether it’s marketing or where they can put their listing? What would you recommend they get started with?

Michelle Barringer Well, I’ve seen there’s some homesteading Facebook groups that I see people kind of advertise in. But I think most of the time, if people in your area find out you have a cow, then you’re not going to really be lacking for business. But I know for us, there’s been times where we’ve gotten more cows and so we had more of a supply, but we were a little bit lacking in our members. So I mean, really, that’s when we listed on RealMilk.com and it really exploded after that. And right now we have a very lengthy waiting list. So we are advocating for people around us to get cows so that yeah, we can share this. And I believe it is a good business if this is… Adam and I say we will never go without a milk cow. I mean, we just won’t. Whether we’re milking it or one of our kids is milking it and we’re sharing in that with them or whatever. So we feel like it’s a good business. We love what it’s teaching our children and everything. Hopefully one day we’ll get to pass it on to them and not be so hands-on with it maybe. But the RealMilk.com was what really turned it up for us, you know?

Adam Barringer Seems like it.

Michelle Barringer Yeah. It was driving traffic to our farm website, and we were getting multiple messages a day and really still are getting a lot of messages a day. Not that everyone follows through with it, but we do get a lot of inquiries about it, so it’s been a blessing.

Amy Fewell Awesome. All right. Well, is there anything else you want to share with our HOA podcast audience before we get off this podcast recording?

Adam Barringer I think we’ve covered everything. Everybody needs a cow.

Michelle Barringer Everybody needs a cow.

Amy Fewell Yeah, I was going to say everybody needs a cow, huh?

Adam Barringer It’s worth it. It’s worth the commitment.

Michelle Barringer Yeah, it is.

Amy Fewell Yeah. That’s awesome. All right, guys. Well, thank you for joining me for this week’s episode. We’ve gotten a lot of information out to our audience, at least to get them started with a herdshare or where to get them looking, which is amazing. You guys can check out the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund. They also offer services if you sign up. It’s very inexpensive. They are not sponsoring this episode. We’re just plugging them because they do offer legal services, like Adam and Michelle said. If you become a member, they will put together your herdshare paperwork for you, and it’s a pretty awesome process just to have that kind of legal backup for you as you get started. So as always, all the information we talked about today and links to all of Adam and Michelle’s information and farm and herdshare will be linked in the show notes of this episode. You can read it on YouTube or the podcast, or you can go to our website HomesteadersofAmerica.com, where you can actually read a transcript of this podcast if you want to go back and kind of look things over. Thanks for joining us this week, guys. Have a good one.

Amy Fewell Hey, thanks for taking the time to listen to this week’s Homesteaders of America episode. We really enjoyed having you here. We welcome questions and you can find the transcript and all the show notes below or on our Homesteaders of America blog post that we have up for this podcast episode. Don’t forget to join us online with a membership or just to read blog posts and find out more information about our events at HomesteadersofAmerica.com. We also have a YouTube channel and follow us on all of our social media accounts to find out more about homesteading during this time in American history. All right, have a great day and happy homesteading.

Homesteaders of America

E24: Starting a Raw Milk Herdshare | Michelle & Adam Barringer