State opens dairy incubator to nurture future farmers

Wednesday, December 27, 2006
BY MARY KLAUS
Of The Patriot-News
http://www.pennlive.com/news/patriotnews/index.ssf?/base/news/1167228019139310.xml&coll=1

With a smile on his face and a bounce to his step, Andrew Laudenklos led a reluctant cow into a long-abandoned barn on the old Harrisburg State Hospital grounds in Susquehanna Twp.

“This is a dream come true for me,” he said Monday while moving 76 Holsteins into the barn.

“If I didn’t have this opportunity, I might have given up on farming and gone to work in something else.”

Instead, Laudenklos, 23, became the first farmer to lease “Capital Dairy,” a state Agriculture Department project that “provides an opportunity for an eager young family to get started in the dairy business,” state Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff said.

Department officials selected Laudenklos from 16 applicants to lease the barn, a pasture and a nearby two-story, three-bedroom house for three to five years for $1,000 a month.

The barn was built in the 1930s and used until the early 1990s. Wolff, a Columbia County dairy farmer, called it a win-win arrangement.

“This barn has sat empty for years,” said Wolff, who wore overalls and boots as he helped Laudenklos move cows into the barn. “Now it’s come back to life. We wanted to help a young farmer get started, and we did.”

Peter Witmer, state Center for Dairy Excellence executive assistant, said the Agriculture Department spent about $300,000 renovating the 226-foot-by-40-foot barn by removing stalls, cleaning the building and installing 76 stalls with gutter grates, three maternity pens and new milking equipment.

Laudenklos, who grew up in Maryland, the son of a house builder and grandson of a hog and vegetable farmer, had never owned a cow despite working on dairy farms in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and California.

“So I got a United States Department of Agriculture loan,” he said. “Then I bought cows from White Horse in Lancaster County, Bloomsburg and from farms in Maryland. I call the herd East-West Holsteins.”

About half the cows, ranging from calves several weeks of age to cows 9 years old, are pregnant, Laudenklos said. He said his goal is good milk production.

“I’ll put them in the pasture each day,” he said, adding that he will buy most of their feed. “I’ll milk at 5 a.m. and 4 p.m. for about three hours each time. I’ll sell the milk to the Maryland-Virginia Co-Op (in Reston, Va.) I hope each cow produces 70 pounds of milk a day. My goal is to be able to buy a farm in three to five years.”

Laudenklos, his wife, Mary Rose, and their sons, Randy, 18 months, and Ricky, 3 months, will live in an adjacent house.

Wolff said he was thrilled to see another dairy farm in Pennsylvania, which now has about 8,600 dairy farms and last year had 9,000.

“Pennsylvania ranks fifth nationally in milk production,” he said. “Even though the number of dairy farms is down in this state, we haven’t lost a significant number of cows or milk production.”

MARY KLAUS: 255-8113 or mklaus@patriot-news.com