Glenda Pereira: 00:22

Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. This is your host, Dr. Glenda Pereira, an assistant extension professor within the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, the dairy specialist, as well as an assistant professor of animal science in the school of food and egg. And June is dairy month for the folks that don’t know, we celebrate all things dairy in the month of June. And I have a featured guest that will, highlight some more of the things happening here, June dairy month within the state of Maine.

Glenda Pereira: 00:50

And I’m really excited because we’re actually on her farm. So Sarah Littlefield, would you introduce us, to the listeners and then tell us a little bit more about where we are today?

Sarah Littlefield: 01:01

Hi, Glenda. Thanks for coming out to the farm today to record this. This is great. My name is Sarah Littlefield. I am the executive director of the Maine Dairy Promotion Board and Maine Dairy and Nutrition Council.

Sarah Littlefield: 01:12

I also am part of a dairy farm family. So you’re on my family’s dairy farm in Livermore today.

Glenda Pereira: 01:18

Awesome. And so we are on an Ayrshire farm.

Sarah Littlefield: 01:23

That is yeah. Castonguay Ayrshire is the name of the farm and the I would say preferred breed by the family. I would say I am the outlier in that. I prefer jerseys. So there’s a few of them speckled through the herd.

Sarah Littlefield: 01:36

And then about a third of our herd is actually Holsteins as well.

Glenda Pereira: 01:40

Right. And I remember when I interviewed for this position, you had a jersey in your background. So, yeah, jersey fan through and through. So we’re celebrating June Dairy Month, and that’s a big part of the role that you folks have at the dairy promotion. But, obviously, you celebrate dairy every day being a dairy farmer with your family as you mentioned.

Glenda Pereira: 01:59

So what makes June and in the month of June special for dairy?

Sarah Littlefield: 02:05

So in 1939, June was nationally became national dairy month, and it’s just a time to kind of highlight and get more excited. Just gives us kind of an excuse, I think, to be a little louder about our excitement for dairy. So there’s lots of celebrations that go on and it really makes it an opportunity for everyone who is involved in the dairy industry to all kind of have the same message at the same time.

Glenda Pereira: 02:30

Yeah, no, absolutely. I know there’s been some events that you mentioned previously when we were previously talking that’ll be happening in this month specific to dairy in the state of Maine.

Sarah Littlefield: 02:41

Yeah, so in the past, we’ve had exciting things happen. We’ve had parades. We’ve had milk toasts with the governor, different things. So every year, we kind of try to find a couple different events that we can make special. The things maybe with the governor haven’t been decided upon at the time of recording this, but I’m sure there’ll be something.

Sarah Littlefield: 03:00

There’s typically a proclamation, and the department of agriculture conservation and forestry here in Maine gets really excited about celebrating that month with us as well. We do know that we’ll have a really special Maine dairy night with Portland Sea Dogs this year, and there’ll be a very special and exciting thing to try while you’re there. So if you like to try new dairy products, there’ll be some of those at the game and just trying to find lots of fun things whether maybe we can get slugger to try milk toast or something like that.

Glenda Pereira: 03:31

Yeah. No. Certainly looking forward to that. And for those that don’t know about the main toast with the governor, can you elaborate on that? So I got to participate two years ago, and it was a really cool event.

Sarah Littlefield: 03:42

Yeah. The last couple of years, we’ve had the chance to go to the governor’s house, which is the Blaine House, and celebrate on the front lawn. We’ve had a little kind of farmer’s markets, showing off specialty main dairy products. We’ve had it just be where we can all come together and get the media there to hear more about what’s going on in Maine dairy, hear what’s important from a farmer’s voice so farmers can get up there and speak. We have special glasses that have been made that actually say that it’s June is dairy month and that the governor has proclaimed that.

Sarah Littlefield: 04:14

And we all participate in milk and cookies, so that’s a nice touch too to have cookies from the Blaine house with your milk.

Glenda Pereira: 04:21

Yeah. No. Absolutely. It was a great time when I got to participate. So, I kind of wanted to highlight this in the episode as well.

Glenda Pereira: 04:29

So as part of dairy promotion, can you give us some of the background, what that entails, what the milk checkoff is? And I think specific to the state of Maine you mentioned, we’ve had checkoff here even before it was a national program.

Sarah Littlefield: 04:43

So the national dairy checkoff is a program that dairy farmers pay into to do research, education, and promotion of their products. Maine has two organizations, Maine Dairy Promotion Board that the farmers actually fund, and then Maine Dairy and Nutrition Council, which is partially funded by the processors in the state. We all work together. There’s a board of farmer directors that oversees the programming and the spending that goes on through that. The same thing nationally, there’s a board of directors with farmers from all of the states represented and making sure that the programming, the messaging that’s going out, the initiatives that are happening, and the money that’s spent is all being done responsibly and following what the farmers actually wanna see their messaging being out to consumers.

Sarah Littlefield: 05:32

So our job is really to increase demand for dairy products by promoting the nutrition of dairy products and telling the story of dairy so that people understand, what on farm practices, how that helps with the nutrition of the milk that they’re then consuming, and that just to help oh, there’s so many people that are so far removed now from the farm. So unless they have the opportunity to visit a farm, they don’t really know what happened. So we’re trying to kinda bridge that gap.

Glenda Pereira: 05:59

Right. And you have sort of an advisory committee or a board of farmers that participate in kind of helping you, you know, or guide you, I guess, more is the word that we’d wanna use into what, Maine farmers want their checkoff dollars to be spent in. So like you said, the farmers are kind of dictating the programs that you and your team conduct here in the state of Maine. And obviously nationally, participate with those folks as well. So I think adopt a cow program is something that you’ve participated in and farmers have participated in.

Glenda Pereira: 06:34

Can you tell us more about that?

Sarah Littlefield: 06:35

Yeah, so one of our initiatives is to kind of protect the reputation of dairy. So here in Maine, of the ways that we’ve done that is through the Adopt Account program, which is a partnership with Discover Dairy, which is based in Pennsylvania. So essentially one main dairy farm a year becomes the host farm, and it’s a virtual program. Classrooms sign up for it, and then they’re given an update monthly on their calf. And they follow it through the entire school year from the time that it’s born in September up until they leave school, which ends with a live chat.

Sarah Littlefield: 07:11

So we’ve had about pretty consistently like 600 classrooms signed up for that program. We’re in our third year. Our responsibility as the dairy promotion board, we actually sponsor the classrooms. So there’s a fee associated with each classroom participating, but that program becomes free to every classroom because we sponsor them. So this year, our calves are actually at the University of Maine Witter Farm.

Sarah Littlefield: 07:35

And we have Wynonna and Tina, they’re celebrities this year in the state of Maine. Every time we see we’re out somewhere in the public and kids see who we are, they immediately ask us if we know Wynonna and Tina, and that’s been the case for the last three years. Or we’ll get kids that come to us and say, Oh, I adopted a cow once, and you can list off the name of the other six calves that we’ve adopted. And immediately they’re like, Yeah, that’s my calf. It’s created a lot of excitement and it’s been exciting to get to go to classrooms too and see how educators are actually just making it go through their entire curriculum.

Sarah Littlefield: 08:08

So if they’re doing a math problem, maybe they’re measuring how many feet of fence they would need to make a pasture for that calf, or they might be reading, the main a book that’s based in Maine called Moo. So we’ve seen a lot of classrooms that do that. So a lot of classrooms decorating their rooms, decorating their bulletin boards. There’s schools that it goes from music and art all the way through to having the competitions. So it’s been a really fun program for us the last three years.

Glenda Pereira: 08:37

Yes. And like you mentioned, the calves at Wetter Farm this year are participating, and I’ve seen them share a lot on social media. And I’ve seen you guys reshare those posts too. And certainly, like you said, it helps kids bridge that gap. So any other programs that you’ve participated in specific in Maine?

Glenda Pereira: 08:52

I know you folks have a big participation throughout the state.Sarah Littlefield: 08:56

Yeah. So you can follow along with all the things that we’re doing on any social media platform at drink Maine milk dot org. And so if it’s Instagram or whatever, it’s just drinkmainemilk. You can see photos and things of our visits that we do in schools. We have two programs that offer opportunities for school nutrition equipment to go into schools to help serve dairy products.

Sarah Littlefield: 09:22

So we have a grant program that is to get like coolers for your milk or to get a different style of service for your milk or an opportunity to get a cart that will help you serve more yogurt or sour cream or cheese or whatever it is that you’re gonna use. Really, it’s it can be used for serving any food in the in the cafeteria, but kinda two different ways of doing that. We also have a smoothie program that comes out nationally, and we have a lot of Maine schools that have been awarded the smoothie kits to be able to make smoothies more available in their cafeterias, which kids get really excited about smoothies. It’s actually fun to go to school and they’re like, it’s smoothie day. It’s going to get loud here because the milk truck’s going to go by.

Sarah Littlefield: 10:06

So the programs, the schools can apply for grants and you can just find the most school nutrition directors are finding those through the main department of education child nutrition, but you can always just go to our website and you can find out when those grants are open. And the same thing with adopt a cow, you have the ability to just go to our website and look it up and find out when to sign up. But sign ups are open, May 15 through September 15 for Adopt A Cal. So while this airs, that would be a good time for you to get your classroom signed up or someone you know, encourage a teacher that you know to sign up their classroom. But, yeah, when you go to any of our social media, you’ll be able to see what that equipment looks like, how exciting it is for those the the school nutrition professionals that are there.

Sarah Littlefield: 10:52

They’re they love to have the new equipment, and it makes their job a lot easier. They everyone loves to see the kids get excited about being able to have colder milk or whatever, equipment that it is, and we just get excited to take a farmer into a school. The kids have a hundred questions when they find out that we have a farmer with us. Everything from what kind of cow do you have, which you might think, like, do they really know what a breed of a cow is? But a lot of kids do.

Sarah Littlefield: 11:17

Or it might just be like, what time do you get up in the morning? So they have all of these kind of preconceived notions. We also often will say in a classroom or in a school cafeteria, who do you think the farmer is here? And lots of times they don’t know because their vision of what a farmer is is like overalls in a straw hat. So when you’re actually there and they see that you’re just kind of a normal person, they usually kind of open up even more and wanna know even more about what goes do you have baby cows?

Sarah Littlefield: 11:43

Do you have you know, how old does a cow live too? All these fun questions that they ask. Yeah.

Glenda Pereira: 11:48

And certainly, I’m sure the farmers appreciate that exposure and the chance to connect to the community because you always get a farm, you always get a farmer to participate that’s within that community. So, you know, it’s you can say, hey. This person lives, you know, down the street from you, or that’s where their farm is. So I think that’s a really exciting thing for them to be able to connect. Something that you brought up that I wanted to ask was what’s your favorite dairy product?

Sarah Littlefield: 12:11

Oh, I’m a cheese person. I don’t really all cheese. I just really like cheese. I don’t care if it’s shredded, soft, cheddar. It doesn’t matter.

Sarah Littlefield: 12:20

I just want cheese on pretty much everything.

Glenda Pereira: 12:24

But so I don’t know if you wanna have any final thoughts for our June episode, but I’m really excited. You know, we celebrate dairy every single day of the year, but it’s just nice that we have this month dedicated. And I just wanted to mention that if you know a farmer, I mean, specifically a dairy farmer, be sure to just say thank you or, you know, tell them about all the exciting things you learned on our podcast episode related to dairy.

Sarah Littlefield: 12:46

I definitely appreciate all the consumers that are purchasing our products and choosing to feed their family and nourish their families with the products that we make. And certainly to all of my fellow dairy farmers, the cows in the background think they need more hay.

Glenda Pereira: 13:02

Yeah. So it’s feeding time. We’re gonna wrap up the episode. And I’ll put in a plug here too. We’re actually gonna have Sarah and other folks from Dairy Promotion in New England and from the Dairy Management Inc program.

Glenda Pereira: 13:13

They’re gonna do a webinar at the end of the month. So if you’re a follower of our Tri State Dairy webinar program this year, you can check that out if you just look it up on Google, UVM, UMaine, UNH, Tri State Dairy Webinar. We’re gonna actually have a presentation from the folks talking about consumer trends and what exciting things are happening in the innovation space within the dairy industry. So with that, thank you so much, Sarah, for hosting me on your farm, in your family’s farm. And here’s to an exciting June Dairy Month.

Glenda Pereira: 13:44

Thank you. For folks who, want to have topic suggestions for our Maine Farmcast or have questions and concerns, be sure to email, extension.farmcast@maine.edu.