As Calving Day nears, Red Gate Farm is becoming a nursery. Calves born on the farm go through a lot of exciting things in their first 24 hours of birth!
Once they are born they are put into something we call “hot boxes”. These are exactly how they sound: boxes kept warm with radiant floor heating. A mature dairy cow’s internal body temperature is 101.5 degrees Fahrenheit. So, as you can imagine, it is quite a temperature difference being born in March or April, even on our warmest days. These hot boxes are used for a couple different purposes. One being so that calves do not have to experience the huge temperature difference for too long, and it helps them dry off. They are kept in these for 12 to 24 hours. In order to leave the hot boxes calves must be dry, ear-tagged, given 4 quarts of colostrum, vitamins and selenium supplement. In the hot boxes, they are given their first 2 quarts of milk within the first hour of life. After another 2 hours they are given another 2 quarts of milk. This first milk they are given is called colostrum. Colostrum is full of antibodies that give the newborn their first immunity towards pathogens. Colostrum has to be fed as soon as possible because as a calf gets older they absorb less antibodies. So a calf fed colostrum within 1 hour of birth will absorb several times more antibodies than a calf that had to wait 6 hours to be fed colostrum.
There are two ways for a calf to gain immunity: passive immunity and acquired immunity. Passive immunity, is passed from mother to baby. This is why colostrum is so important since that is how the mother is able to pass on her antibodies. The second way is for the calf to experience the pathogen and its body fighting against it; This is called acquired immunity. The antibodies given through passive immunity cannot be replaced with the antibodies their bodies develop through their acquired immunity. Therefore, calves who don’t receive all their passive immunity will never gain those antibodies, impacting them for the rest of their lives.
After the calves are given their first bottle, the calves are tagged with a numbered ear-tag. The process is similar to getting your ears pierced. The ear-tag is how the farmers identify the calves. The heifer calves, or the girls, are given a white tag. This helps the Rivingtons know how old the calf is, who she belongs to and where in the season she was born.
When a bull calf, or a male calf, is born, the farmers select which of them they want to raise for breeding. Those calves are given yellow tags and a name as well as a number. For example, Ranger, who is one of the bulls on the farm, has a yellow tag with both his name and the number 901.
After the calves are dried off, given their bottles of colostrum and tagged, they are then brought over the calf barn where they are put in group pens with several other calves. This socializes them and helps them build up their acquired immunity at a young age. In the calf barn they are fed with “mob feeders”, which is essentially a large bucket with ten rubber nipples on it to feed several calves at once. They are fed a large amount of warm whole milk from the herd twice a day through these feeders.
As you can see a newborn calf goes through a lot in their first 24 hours of life! But, all the steps the farmer takes will impact that calf for the rest of her life. That is why our farmers at Red Gate take great pride in making sure all the necessary steps are taken to ensure that the calves grow up to be a successful milk cows in our herd.

Calving Day is April 27th from 11am-3pm at Red Gate Farm which is located at 730 State Route 12b Hamilton, NY. There will be butter making demos, milking demos, games, farm tours and much more! 

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Calving Day is a free, family friendly event sure to entertain and educate visitors of all ages. Calving Day will be filled with farm tours, up-close calf interactions, door prizes, a barrel cow train and so much more! At 3pm, visitors can watch the daily milking of the herd in Red Gate Farm's unique open air milking parlor. Whether or not you have visited the farm before, Calving Day will be a great time to make a trip. It will be a special event highlighting the natural cycle and processes that surround seasonal grass-fed dairy farming. We encourage anyone who wants to know more about where their food comes from to join us at the farm to celebrate the start of the season. 
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What makes butter cultured? Traditionally, before the industrialization of the dairy industry that made pasteurization a routine part of our gastronomical canon, most butter in the United States was made from cultured cream. The cream was allowed to sit for hours, often overnight, so that the naturally occurring micro-bacteria could slightly sour the cream before it was churned into butter. ​

Culturing cream before churning it into butter enhances the natural sweetness of the cream while also bringing out a subtle, nutty, tang. Like yogurt and Crème Fraîche, the probiotics in Cultured Butter aid in digestion. Culturing also increases the acidity of the butter, which helps to tenderize dough, resulting in tender crumbs and crusts. ​​

Just as we were adding the word distribution to our vocabulary in 2011, the ownership at Regional Access was being passed along to the next generation and a couple of long time, dedicated individuals. Like any small business, we see the owners often in our business to business interactions. It’s not unusual to see Dana Stafford, President and GM, behind the wheel of their neatly painted Regional Access tractor trailer picking up those pallets we mentioned before. ​

If you’re buying our butter at Union Market, your local health food store or co-op, there’s a good chance that that package was delivered by Regional Access. They distribute to stores and restaurants all over New York State and New Jersey. They go above and beyond for their customers, truly. I’ve seen multiple videos of their drivers braving stormy weather in the steep hills of Ithaca.  

Hugs and Butter,
Lindsey, Kriemhild Co-Owner

P.S. Stay tuned for next week’s short reel silent film--it’s a tribute to our main mode of distribution before we started leasing a truck...

Pre-heat oven to 360 degrees F. Mix milk and pumpkin flesh to make puree. Prepare dough by beating the soft butter together with the cane sugar, vanilla and salt for 5 minutes, then beat in the eggs one by one – each for 20-30 seconds. Beat in the pumpkin puree. Blend the rice flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg and stir into the batter by hand using a whisk or the dough hook of your hand mixer. Fill the batter into the springform pan, place the pears (wash and pat dry them before) into the batter and bake for 60-65 minutes (cover the cake for the last 20 minutes with foil – and make the toothpick test in the end to check, if the cake is done). Let the  cake cool down on a cooling rack for 1 hour before serving. Dust with powdered sugar.

adapted from ourfoodstories.com

Tzatziki: 

• ​1 cup of crème fraîche
• Pinch of salt
• 1 tsp finely chopped garlic
• 1 tsp olive oil
• ½ of one large cucumber

​Falafel:

•  2 tins chickpeas
• ½ red onion, chopped
• 2 tsp garlic
• 1 tsp cumin
• 2-3 small dried chillies
• 2 tbs chopped fresh coriander
• 2 tbs olive oil
• 3 tbs flour​​

For the FALAFEL:
 Preheat oven to 180 degrees and grease two mini-muffin trays.  Mix all ingredients except the flour, and either blitz in a food processor or mash by hand.Mix in the flour, adding extra if it’s too sticky. Roll the mixture into ping pong sized balls between your palms. There’s definitely a knack to this, so don’t worry if you start with a few weirdly-shaped ones. Put them into your muffin tins: if you have too many leftover, it’s fine to cook some on a baking tray Bake for about 40 mins, turning half-way through. 

For the TZATZIKI: 

Finely chop the cucumber: if you have time, it’s best to gather it in a clean tea-towel and squeeze out some liquid for a few minutes. Mix all the ingredients and keep it cool.