oklahoma Archives - Grounded by the Farm

A Tale of Two Dairies: Visiting Two Dairy Farms & Talking Similarities & Differences

Janice Person — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 11:00:53 +0000

Maybe it started with PBS as a kid, but I love to compare and contrast things. So when the team at Midwest Dairy recently asked if I would like to see two different dairy farms and interview them, I jumped at the opportunity. Next thing I knew the podcast had it’s first sponsor and I was in northeastern Oklahoma meeting some farmers!

The differences between the two and some of the similarities among them were really striking. After the tours, I sat down with Anthony & Charlie Coblentz and Logan Courtney, a neighbor whose dairy is just 15 minutes or so away. Touring first helped me see some of the differences and similarities and you can watch the video… you will hear and see both farms.

An AI generated transcript is available.

This post is sponsored by Midwest Dairy. I was compensated for my time, but all wording and opinions are mine or the farmers.

Meet the Dairy Farmers

We went to visit the Coblentz and the Courtney families.

The Coblentz family has had a dairy farm since 1972 when Charles & Ellen Coblentz decided to start the dairy. The family had farmed for quite some time and Mr. Coblentz says that his uncle had a dairy farm down the road. And while most people in the area back then may have had a cow, he wanted a barn full! He has three sons who are part of the farming operation. Charles & sons Charlie & Anthony spent the day with us.

Logan Courtney is a Gen Z farmer. There was always something about cows for him. While the family raised beef cattle, Logan had a chance to learn about dairy as a teen and decided that was for him. After college he started a dairy with his family’s support, especially his sister Autumn, who works on the farm as well as in town as a librarian. (I have lots of love for librarians!)

How To Compare or Contrast Two Dairy Farms

I’m glad I didn’t have to figure this out until I got there! But I think like everything, when you are presented with two things, you undoubtedly will see similarities and differences. The physical pieces are easy to catch and various topics were highlighted at each farm as questions were asked.

One of the most obvious differences is scale — the Coblentz dairy has 400 or so cows they are milking whereas Logan has 70. But some of the differences you may attribute to scale also go to the differences in the breed of cows they have. The black and white Holstein that most Americans equate to dairy is found on the Coblentz farm. They are larger, produce more gallons of milk and prefer to get in the shade and relax on a hot day so the Coblentz’s have a big barn with lots of fans as well as a large area for the cows to be covered as they come in for milking. Logan’s herd are pedigree jersey cows who put lots of protein and fat into milk (so good for cheese!) and they like being outdoors most of the year. Of course the Holsteins have access to pasture and Logan has some windbreaks and covered areas, but the cows seem to stick with what they like at both places!

Another piece that captures the eye? The differences in the way the two farms milk their cows. For the Coblentz family, it is scheduled to start at 5 am and 5 pm daily. A couple members of the family or maybe a hired hand work in the milking parlor together, getting 30 cows set on one side of the parlor before working on the other side with another 30 cows. Since I was there mid-day, we didn’t get to see the parlor operating, but I have video from another farm that’s got a similar set up. You may even remember an earlier blog post about some of the sustainability practices on that dairy.

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That’s the more typical type of milking system but there are several other styles that work similarly. The robotic milker that the Courtneys purchased is a bit different and Logan says, with a bit of pride, that his farm was the first to have a robot milking cows in Oklahoma. Since then, there have been a couple more added to the state. I first saw robotic milkers at a friend’s dairy farm in Michigan a decade ago. It’s more common place in Europe with smaller farms. And Logan says it really helps on workload as the robot milks around the clock, whenever cows want to be milked. They come and go as they like. Logan said the average is 2.5 milkings per day and that the robot collects all kinds of data on each cow. Sorry, it doesn’t look like anything from the Jetsons or Star Wars…. In fact, it reminded me as much of a 3D printer as anything! I’ll drop a photo here, but rest assured we saw it working AND you get Logan’s narration on the video from his farm later in this post.

Which dairy farm is better?

At the end of the day, I felt really comfortable with the way both farms were managing things. They both have specific reasons for making the decisions they do, all of them are focused on delivering animal care and comfort, a favorable environmental impact AND healthy, nutritious food they are proud to serve at home. The only real controversy came when we started talking about favorite dairy products! Charlie and Anthony were solidly team ice cream while Logan is a cheese guy (if you are then you really should hear this interview with a cheesemonger!). I have to say I like both of those options a lot! I think you need to see both to see for yourself how I could arrive at such an answer, so here are videos from the two farms.

Touring the Coblentz Farm

Touring the Courtney Dairy

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Every two weeks we put out a new episode. Learning more about how foods are produced and the people doing that. If you are new here, you can probably find a favorite food in our previous episodes or maybe you’d just like to wander around the map to see something close by. You can subscribe to get emails on future episodes from the website, listen to the podcast in your favorite app and connect with us on social media. In fact, if you find a platform we aren’t on, please let us know so we can add it!

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Learning More About Dairy

In our next episode, we talk to a cheesemonger! But you don’t have to wait to then as there is a lot of info from dairy farmers on the web too. Here are a few resources if you are Undeniably Dairy:

The post A Tale of Two Dairies: Visiting Two Dairy Farms & Talking Similarities & Differences appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

Fresh Mushrooms for the Middle of the Country

libsyn — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 08:03:47 +0000

As a child, I remember mushrooms usually being in cans or bottles — never fresh mushrooms. But today most US farmers grow for the fresh market. It was a shift that really started in the 1970s and was a way for the US farmer to be a preferred source in the global fresh mushroom market. There is some cannery mushrooms. Those are usually mushrooms that don’t meet fresh standards usually. They are a byproduct, a way to use some now that may be wasted.

The company sells into both food service and retail (grocery stores, etc) throughout the region. About 25 percent of their business is retail. Located in northeastern Oklahoma, close to the Missouri & Arkansas lines, they go as far north as Cheyenne, Wyoming, as far west as Albuquerque, New Mexico and cover Texas, Arkansas, parts of Missouri. It’s a pretty good-sized market.

For the bulk customers, they ship in trays or boxes. And for retail, most prefer the small carton or till that is packed & shrink-wrapped by J-M before going out on a truck. They sell whole and sliced to both bulk and retail. I ended up catching some in a store while in Oklahoma visiting a college friend and had to take photos. I had brought a few bags of mushrooms from the farm so I didn’t need to buy anymore!

Types of Fresh Mushrooms J-M Grows

The typical white mushroom is generally called a button mushroom but it can be confusing call button is also the smaller size of mushroom. To be specific, the mushroom we see most frequently is the button white mushroom. J-M grows a lot of those but they also grow other mushrooms including brown ones that are called crimini or portabella depending on the size. The portabella is planted to enable it to grow to the five to six inches. Those are all agarigus mushrooms which means they grow in compost.

These mushrooms have gotten a lot of investment and that has helped make them easier to grow consistently that people will really enjoy. But there are other mushrooms that are getting more investment now too.

There are other kinds of mushrooms that like to grow on wood, especially hardwood so growing them is a little different. Shiitake are on the list of plans for J-M’s future. Scott says the company is investigating various exotic mushrooms and they watch adoption patterns on the coasts. And shiitake have definitely been gaining ground.

Morels are totally different. It is hard to grow commercially and Scott says lots have tried without finding the answer. Scott says he thinks the elusive nature of morels combined with the complexity of its growth will make it hard to do commercially. How much would people be willing to pay?

The Right Place for a Growing Family Business

A farm this size, got its start as Virgil Jurgensmeyer decided to leave his corporate job in St. Louis and branch out on his own in the 1970s. His three sons are running various parts of the business today as it continues to grow.

Miami, Oklahoma ended up being the right place. He looked for an area that had good transportation access, energy access, knowing that the middle of the country was underserved. The company started out growing 2 million pounds of mushrooms and has increased to 26-27 million pounds of mushrooms! With medium sized mushrooms, that would be 18-20 mushrooms per pound and everyone of those millions are hand-picked!

The business has been in Miami for 40 years and there are a lot of long-term employees. Growing the business has also meant a lot of hiring and looking longer term J-M knows that providing employees the type of environment that makes people choose J-M as the type of place they want to work, is an area of focus for Scott and the rest of the leadership team.

Food Safety Developments

The idea of fungus being a safe food… it is something to wrap your mind around. But Scott explains growing fungus in a clean environment is critical to good mushroom production.

Growing the mushrooms in a controlled, indoor environment is a major piece of that, but mushroom farmers have also been pasteurizing compost. That helps make sure the bed produces the desired mushrooms and only that. It also kills E. coli, listeria and more which can happen.

There are also other practices, like having just one person touch the mushroom one time. The vast majority of the mushrooms are picked and placed directly into the container which it will be shipped in.

Creating Compost

Since mushrooms are grown on compost, J-M has a recipe for compost that they make up in mass quantities. The put in ratios of carbon, nitrogen, and manage pH, water, etc. When you are composting, you are really just feeding microbes. They use wheat straw (mostly from within the 60-90 miles), chicken litter, cottonseed meal and gypsum which helps prevent sticking. Everything feeds the microbes, and the oxygen and water come in, the mushroom thrives on it.

Making compost is the part of the process which can be most impacted by weather with rain, heat, cold, drought all impacting the recipe J-M uses.

Spawns Not Spores

The planting of mushrooms isn’t spores, but a mycelium attached to a grain like rye or millet. That grain provides the energy source to get the mushroom started.

Mushrooms don’t need light — so they are kept in rooms that don’t have a lot of light. Mushrooms do need moisture, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen. And a combination of microbes and nutrients, the combination of which remains more art than science. Lots of research has been done, but there is still a good bit to learn.

As the mushrooms grow, and oxygen needs to be brought in. And that can end up bringing in drier air, especially in winter. And making sure you get the humidity right means high energy use like other indoor agriculture.

Key Links

There are lots of places to learn more about J-M Farms and the fresh mushrooms they produce!

Video from a tour inside J-M Farms
JP’s first visit to J-M and answering a lot of questions about mushrooms
Find J-M Farms online jrfarms.com, on Instagram at and on Facebook.

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Going into the Dark at a Mushroom Farm

Janice Person — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 03:44:28 +0000

I’m accustomed to seeing mushrooms on pizzas, in pasta sauces, even in my yard when the rain won’t stop. But for some reason, I hadn’t ever really thought about what a mushroom farm would be like. Then last summer I met a mushroom farmer and I asked him all the questions. I had to go back for Grounded by the Farm to get video and an interview!

On this visit, I talked with Scott Engelbrecht who is the vice president of operations for J-M Farms in Miami, Oklahoma. Who showed me a room where crimini mushrooms were growing and explained the way they do flats with compost, peat and the spawn that gets the mushrooms started.

J-M Farms grows a few different types of mushrooms, and they supply grocery stores and restaurants throughout the plains states.

Crimini (also called brown mushrooms) are the smaller versions of portabella mushrooms. The rate of growth for mushrooms in these rooms that are climate controlled to provide the optimal environment is pretty amazing — in fact, once mushrooms are established, they double in size every day!

This mushroom farm produces it’s own compost as well as the shelving the mushrooms will be grown on.

You can listen to the podcast episode in your favorite app or our post here with audio on fresh mushrooms.

If you love mushrooms, you may want to connect with J-M further. They have some great information and recipes on their website jmfarms.com, share some great photos & information on Instagram at JMFarmsMushrooms and Facebook at JM Farms Mushrooms.

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