The 57-year-old farmer and his business partner and son, 24-year-old Joshua, milk 35 to 40 cows and own 320 acres of land. Their milking herd is a mixed breed of animals that include Holsteins, Jerseys, Brown Swiss and Swedish Reds. Biemond, who was one of three original organic dairymen in eastern Ontario (Norm Porter, in Smiths Falls, and Gary Ferguson, in Eastons Corners), sat down with Farmers Forum recently for this interview:

Going organic, but I cannot take credit for that myself. It’s my wife who pushed me into it. I was doing custom spraying for neighbours and after the season my health was poor and I was getting concerned about going back two times, sometimes three times, in adverse weather — I thought there must be a better way.

Going organic cold turkey. It was a tough decision because I had no knowledge. I couldn’t read the soil to find out which fields are good for growing which crops. So, I went organic with a conventional mindset.

First, take training and then, if you go forward, make sure you have a good mentor.

Twenty years ago the only person who was a couple of years ahead of us was Tom Manley’s father (owner of Homestead Organics at Berwick). We dropped in on him, not enough at all. We should have bugged him to pieces (laughter). He was a cash cropper and we were dairy.

On my knees.

The toughest time was low yields and we had a barn fire in ’95. They were tough times. Looking back it made us stronger.

Shipping milk to a co-op that was also developing while we were developing. It’s been a blast. We are riding the wave in organic. We get a lot of free promotion: the papers, TV. Twenty years ago, you were being laughed at. Now, even if people don’t want to go that way, they know a market exists. Back then we had no clue if anyone wanted organic milk.

A little bit more.

I couldn’t tell you. I just said to my kids: ‘I’ve milked cows for almost 40 years every morning. I’ve missed for holidays and sickness but I don’t know anything else.

No, but one of my famous sayings to people who are considering the change to organic is: ‘the biggest change is between your ears.’ A lot of people know I say that. It’s not in the fields. It’s not in the barns. It’s between your ears because you have to think differently.

Canada was our first choice because of the supply management system and we still support it today.

The best thing is that we have a lot of room and open spaces and we respect farmers. And our worst thing is that we’re not very aware of what the rest of the world is doing. That makes us a bit behind in certain things in terms of what the rest of the world is producing and what the consumer wants. In eastern Ontario we don’t want to change. But if you push us we might change. We still have the attitude in farming that ‘I grow it and you eat it.’

There is still a small group of conventional farmers who see us as a threat to their livelihood. We try to explain that we are not. We are filling a share in the market that would otherwise be filled by others not from Ontario. If we didn’t ship organic, our milk would go conventional and would take quota away from conventional farmers, but not everyone thinks that way.

Here’s one example. When they began doing IP soybeans they copied organic farmers on traceablitity.

What innovation are you most proud of?

Composting. It’s a magical process. We compost all our manure and everything we can get our hands on before it goes on the land.