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TOMPKINS COUNTY
FARM CITY DAY
2002 Host: Hardie Farms, Inc
As a partner on the host farm,
Skip Hardie, 51, warmly invites you to visit.
"Farm City Day is an opportunity for city
people to get out in the country, on a farm,
and feel welcome."
In 1951, Skip's parents, David Hardie Sr. and
wife Joan, started the Lansing dairy farm on
Holden Road with 13 cows and 170 acres.
Today Hardie Farms milks 800 cows. The Holstein
herd averages 27,500 pounds of milk per cow
per year and has just crashed the "sound
barrier" of 1,000 pounds of butterfat per
cow per year. (Congratulations!)
Corn and hay are raised for cattle feed on the
1,400-acre farm operated by a partnership consisting
of Skip (David Hardie Jr.), Steve Palladino,
and John Fleming. They work with 10 other workers,
including four Guatemalans. The reason for Hardie
Farms' "Super Milk" Awards for high
milk quality? Skip says, "It's the quality
of the people we have working for us."
David Hardie Sr. served in the U.S. military
during WWII in Italy. He then graduated from
Cornell in Animal Science and married Joan,
both of them natives of Rockville Centre on
Long Island. They have cited the milking parlor
and bunker silos as the biggest innovations
in their long dairy careers. In 1996, they left
the operating partnership but retain an ownership
share of the farm. For years, David Sr. was
a director of Dairylea Milk Cooperative where
the farm has always shipped its milk.
Skip Hardie was recently appointed to the National
Dairy Board which helps decide where the dairy
farmers' advertising dollar goes. (Ever heard
of "Got Milk?" Thought so.)
The senior Hardies have two daughters younger
than Skip, Ann Yale of Texas and Meg Overstrom,
a Lansing Town Council member. Skip and Holly
Hardie (an Elmira native) have four children:
Ben, Caitlin, Joe and Adam.
Milk quality rules at Hardie Farms. Come see
how they do it. Observe cows and calves. Talk
to the local agricultural community involved
in many kinds of farming. Explore a myriad of
learning opportunities, for young and old alike.
Everyone at Hardie Farms, all the families and
workers, welcome you!
For more information, call CCE Tompkins
County
at (607) 272-2292
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