On a glistening green pasture at the far northern end of McKinleyville, goats leap and jostle as they run toward the man who is managing their sex lives.
They are a soft creamy white, or a dozen combinations of brown or black edged with white. Many bear the telltale smear of chalk that is the dairy goat equivalent of a scarlet letter.
The bright red or blue or aqua chalk comes from the harness of a buck. It is color-coded proof that a doe has had a close encounter with one of the four males busily trying to impregnate 194 females in the start-up herd of Cypress Grove Chevre Inc.’s new dairy.
The dairy is here, on rolling pastureland bordering Dow’s Prairie Road, partly because some neighbors were aghast over plans to establish it instead in the Arcata Bottom, where Cypress Grove now makes gourmet cheeses.
So the cheese maker walked away from a pending land purchase near the Arcata city limits last year, and instead bought 37 acres in McKinleyville. The new dairy is now home to Saanen, Toggenburg and Alpine goats, mostly purchased from Washington state. They are the founding mothers of a herd that could grow within a few years to 800 to 1,200 goats, or perhaps even more.
Dairy manager Ryan Andrus has settled the animals into six corrals where they are browsing on vetch and rye grass, as well as steadily nibbling away all the bark they can reach on trees earmarked for removal.
Andrus is the one who feeds them more nutritious fodder, scratches their heads and makes sure each buck spends time productively in a pen with a small harem of does.
The animals, who have learned that people likely mean food, trot up to him whenever he comes by. They nibble at his sleeve and bump up against the fence for petting.
Goats, he says, are as friendly as dogs but sporadically as aloof as cats. Andrus nudges one away in mid-nuzzle as she gently samples a visitor’s hair.
Next month, when these does start bearing kids — two or sometimes three per mother — Andrus’ wife will bottle feed them to make sure they’re getting enough nutrition. And the milking will begin.
The male kids will be quickly sold off to be raised as meat animals, and the females will be old enough to breed in less than a year.
Bob McCall, sales and marketing director for Cypress Grove Chevre Inc., figures it will take around three years for the dairy to hit its preliminary target of 800 female dairy goats. At that point, he said, Cypress Grove will assess how many more animals it wants at the dairy, where two gigantic, plastic-topped barns have already been raised and more could be built.
Cypress Grove’s vision of its future in McKinleyville is an open-ended one, full of promises that the dairy will be humane-certified and that best practices will be evaluated as the herd grows.
Sean Armstrong, one of the loudest voices in keeping the dairy out of Arcata, remains convinced that unless regulators step in, the place could grow into a monster, a disease- and pollution-spewing factory farm.
Armstrong tried unsuccessfully to persuade the county to demand an environmental impact report for the dairy. He insists on calling it a feedlot instead of a dairy, even though state law clearly defines feedlots as places where 500-plus cattle are raised for slaughter, and dairies as places where animals are in lactation. He wants to know where the wastewater used to wash down the facility will go, and where the goat poop will go.
“They’ve been playing hide the ball,” Armstrong says.
Let’s just say right here, plenty of people think Sean Armstrong is annoying as hell. He makes up his own definitions, hypes any goat-borne disease he can find on the Internet and peppers regulators with emails that may or may not be germane to any current law or regulation.
Even so, it’s hard not be a tiny bit sympathetic, because McCall can be awfully vague on some details. That might be the best strategy for a new dairy that plans to stay nimble as it goes along, but “we just don’t know yet” is an answer that leaves room for paranoia.
McCall says no one knows yet how big the dairy will get eventually, although Cypress Grove suspects this land may top out at around 1,200 goats.
And the dairy’s water quality permitting status remains unclear.
Cypress Grove plans to meet with the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board later this month to talk about what sort of permit it might need.
Lisa Bernard, a sanitary engineering associate with the water board, said if the dairy plans to discharge any kind of waste, it will need a permit. If it gives goat poop to a third party for composting — which is what McCall says the dairy is doing now — the third party should have a permit. If the dairy composts onsite — which McCall says it might do later — it will need a permit for that.
For now, there’s not much vibe of a Frankenfarm, out there in green, rain-sparkled McKinleyville, where Andrus is scritching his goats on the tops of their heads, and neighbors have dropped by with tangerines and cookies.
And if that’s a just façade, well, one thing seems certain.
Sean Armstrong will be watching. And he’ll email everyone with updates.
This article appears in The Yurok Grift.
Sounds like they just need to get a restraining order against Sean Armstrong before he harms someone or abuses a goat.
The company is owned by a huge multinational conglomerate corporation, Emmi. Emmi, this Cypress Grove, has no allegiance to this area, to its people, etc- only to the “bottom line.” It is not a local business, no matter how “down home” it is portrayed.
Emmi-owned Cypress Grove is one of the largest, outspoken supporters/promoters of the highway expansion through Richardson Grove.
BOYCOTT Cypress Grove Chevre and spread the word of boycott!
typo correction: The company is owned by a huge multinational conglomerate corporation, Emmi. Thus Cypress Grove has no allegiance to this area…
and it was ordered a while back by the big boss (Emmi) to expand its production 9 times what it was. Orders from afar rarely fare well with the local people, economy, environment, or future.
Response to Boycott Cypress Grove. I’m tired of this attempt to portray Cypress as non-local. I’ve worked there for 8 years, since we were on Dow’s Prairie, and I live just a few blocks away here in Arcata. Every single person who works there is local, we live here, we spend our paychecks here. This is a secure, steady job for me and my co-workers, and we love Humboldt County. I look at my coworkers and think about what this small group of opponents thinks of us, and it just doesn’t add up. I wish people would get to know us and what we’re about before jumping to angry misinformed conclusions.
Does “BOYCOTT CYPRESS GROVE CHEVRE” wipe his tender bottom with Toilet Paper? All toilet paper is made by EVIL MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES! Wiping your ass is support of these evil companies! Don’t wipe your ass to show your support of local smells!
If emmi is so huge, why does it only employ about 3,300 people worldwide? We are talking about Emmi AG right?
3,300 people out of over 7 billion. Dramatic much? I know people who work in companies much much larger than that! I’m pretty sure Safeway, employs more than 3,300 people. Target?
Sounds like I was right about needing a restraining order against Sean Armstrong.
This will be a dairy just like every other dairy in the county.
And like every other dairy, it will have to follow the rules and regulations for waste and wastewater management.
I am quite surprised that this issue has not come up before this, as this is a major concern with our local dairys.
A dairy is a dairy.
I think it is great what they are doing up there. If you like buying goat cheese at a store you have to accept that the milk comes from a goat dairy. Sure it may be a big one, but they seem to be doing their due diligence to make it cutting edge and humane. I think there will always be critics, but they are often just hell bent haters. Congrats to Cypress Grove for their success and excellence in the cheese world. We love your products.
Really? You don’t have anything better to do with your precious time than organizing a boycott against a local company?
Yes, they were bought by another, larger company, but as CW pointed out, everyone that works there is LOCAL. Cypress Gove was started here, and has grown here. The fact that it’s now owned by Emmi changes very little. They are a huge asset to the community.
As Cancer also noted, do you boycott all products that are ultimatley owned by a larger corporate entity? Do you buy GASOLINE? If you do, you are a hypocrite, and thus, your arguments are largely specious and invalid.
The only “uninformed conclusions” I’ve gleaned from this article are the dramatic accusations by a “journalist” against Sean Armstrong, a concerned citizen, (without also publishing the evidence), in lieu of equally dramatic accusations, (and legitimate journalistic outrage), over how in the Hell ANYBODY can get a commercial dairy permitted prior to deciding on a waste discharge plan AND acquiring the proper permits for it.
Since when is it media’s job to parrot a multinational corporation’s ludicrous propaganda of “Petting” the heads of 1200 goats?
They better pray that none of the local children sneak-in to try that!
Those that inherited granddaddy’s land in McKinleyville, Cutten, Humboldt Hill, Myrtletown ,et al, have NEVER given a damn about the public costs of developing it.Their organizations flood every public development hearing to maintain their ability to profit beyond infrastructure capacity.They said and did nothing for decades as McK’s raw sewage ran down Central Avenue, as local city streets became unsafe to walk, bike or drive, as all of the Eureka-Area raw sewage historically flowed down Del Norte Avenue into Humboldt bay, continuing today via the wetlands during normal rain events.
These are the same deep-pocket folks dominating political contributions to the majority of wining candidates at every level of local government.
They’ve flooded our city’s with the same failed model of big box/sprawl “growth”, (ie, greed), until average incomes plummeted, poverty, drug abuse, crime, and homelessness skyrocketed, accelerated by an explosion of parasitic businesses that thrive on economic collapse and poverty.
The Development Community Shot-Callers of Humboldt County, (DCSCHC) ignored by local press, have successfully fought against affordable housing for a generation while harvesting the public’s infrastructure for personal gain, passing the costs, stench, pestilence, poverty, and overcrowded streets, onto those who cannot afford to buy the homes they build.
Like every other Banana Republic on Earth, once they finish draining the public wealth from their property, they’ll disappear.
Wow, you are soooooooo far off base I don’t know where to start. First, drop the foolishness about children being killed by goats. Seriously? Wow. Wow. My mind is blown. I want you to go read my previous post again.
Alas is so far off base it’s laughable. Decades of raw sewage down Central Ave.
Jesus, where do these people come from? Total Drama Island?
I admit it, my feelings are hurt. I’ve been called “annoying” since I was a kid, and I’ve appreciated my employers for putting up with my antics (I protested at a Danco job site three months into my employment. HSU had directed them to cut down protected redwoods, and had to be escorted by police off the job site. And Danco didn’t fire me, and HSU promised to perform a mitigation for the illegal cuts). I can be annoying, and I am so thankful for my wife putting up with me and giving me good counsel.
But this isn’t about me—I am part of a group in our community. We have been showing up, as a group, for almost an entire year, and there are a lot of actual experts in this group—Fish and Game staff, Environmental Health staff, CEQA lawyers—that are speaking what I am speaking. They should be listened to.
On my own behalf as a credible commenter on farming and development, I’m the co-owner with Shail Pec-Crouse of Tule Fog Farm, and we raise goats, pigs, sheep, cattle and a variety of poultry. We’re part of the Community Supported Organic Agriculture movement, and the Grass-Fed movement. That’s how we think of it. 🙂
I was also a Project Manager for Danco Communities, and then the City of Arcata’s Redevelopment Agency, working with the environmental regulators on projects as big as the Town of Samoa. But you don’t have to listen to me if I bug you on some visceral level. Listen to everyone else at these public hearings. They’re smart and articulate.
I just wish that the plans for feces stockpiling could be presented as lovingly as images of pastoral goat farming in the North Coast Journal. Just so you know, the plans you can view at Humboldt County Building Dept on H St show two three sided buildings drawn in dashed lines that indicate “future.” That’s as much detail as anyone seems to have as to where the feces and bedding will be stored. The issue is that goats eat a high fiber diet, so produce three times as much feces as humans but with the same pathogens as human feces. Just as dangerous, ask the Water Board like I did.
Our neighborhood was now NIMBY reactionary, or Chicken Little, about factory farming. There are a lot of documentaries you can watch about factory farming, expose books, articles in the New York Times. Raising animals indoors is messy. People who live nearby can get sick. The animal density and use of antibiotics creates antibiotic resistant bacteria. The dry feed lot feces storage fails during floods and the streambanks are covered with dead fish.
I’ll try to be a little further back in the audience in future meetings, maybe go up later in the stack. Less sarcastic. Sorry about that.
Sincerely,
Sean Armstrong
Sean, you are not a “credible farmer” you are a “hobby farmer”.
A “credible farmer” makes a profit. YOu are a “hobby farmer”.
In fact by calling yourself a “credible farmer” you are showing disrespect for the real farmers that are running a business, not a hobby.
If you don’t understand the difference, it’s clear that you don’t understand what profit is.
Since your experience is in not having to make a profit, you have no right nor place telling “credible farmers’ how to do business.
Keep posting, though, your ignorance and disillusion is fodder.
Sean,
What kind of cookies were you offering the Planning Commission and staff after the meeting the other night, and why, exactly?
“Decades of raw sewage down Central Ave.”
And that’s exactly what it did in the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s.
“Since your experience is in not having to make a profit, you have no right nor place telling “credible farmers’ how to do business. Keep posting, though, your ignorance and disillusion is fodder.”
The Amish have been credible farmers for 100 years with negligible profit or CAFO’s.
The most profitable farming industries have perfected the transfer of massive environmental costs to the public, its aquifers, rivers and streams causing dead-zones in U.S. lakes, rivers and the Gulf of Mexico.
But don’t let the facts interfere with your ideology.
Hi Lisa,
Tule Fog Farm is certainly a profitable business, and at 26 acres we’re the largest CSA in Arcata. Not a hobby farm. 🙂
Regards,
Sean
(Disclaimer, I am a Cypress Grove employee and my opinions are not endorsed by Cypress Grove. I’m going out on a limb here, honestly.)
“Cancer”, there is some good in what the anti-Cypress Grove people are promoting. Their cause apart from the rhetoric is not total fantasy. The kunekunes and other heritage livestock breeds are genetic assets. Rotation grazing with a “flerd” is a great production method. Preserving agricultural soils along the urban-ag edge is a worthy topic of discussion.
The problem is the anti-CGC people seem to need an enemy in order to feel like they are really fighting the good fight. Unfortunately, attacking Cypress Grove and for that matter Emmi AG is like picking on Mr. Rogers. Maxxam was a more fitting target and in some ways I miss that scapegoat.
Emmi is a good company. Emmi had me take a trip to another facility with very nice people in a small New York village surrounded by cow and goat farms. While there, I met many intelligent and Earth-conscious people actively involved in reducing waste. Emmi uses natural resources sparingly, refuses to use GMO foods, continuously reduces electrical draw, and uses shade grown coffee in their drinks which unfortunately have had trouble competing with the slash and burn coffee drinks in the US. Enmi even manufactures vegan yogurt which is quite tasty. You might even say Emmi itself is a bit like the anti-Emmi people.
There would be plenty of chances for the “haters” to work with CGC had they not taken the low road. It has been expressed more than once the unfortunate circumstances of not being able to work with CSA farming neighbors in a collaborative fashion.
Fighting Cypress Grove may backfire. It would be unfortunate if the urban-ag edge issue disappeared locally because people associated it with this drama. Appropriate technology and environmentally-sound, humane farming practices should not be overlooked in favor of cheaper alternatives. By securing agricultural land, I strongly believe Cypress Grove is fighting directly against subdivisions of ag land which is a good thing. Everyone should be for keeping ag land ag, the argument over a few percentage points of gross vs. net parcel area is minor in the face of developers who would chop up 100% for houses. Trying to squeeze trees out of Cypress Grove is not going to fix the millions of acres of urban-ag edge property in California.
As far as permits, ask the local government (but please don’t waste their time). CGC has been in contact with regulators for months. Apart from government, I attended the latest California Dairy Quality Assurance Program seminar and they assured me everything was on the up-and-up regarding wastewater permitting and the voluntary self-certification process.
(continued…)
Carrie of NCJ, where did you get your compost permit information? When we contacted Environmental Health, they told us that keeping in touch with them and following their requirements was all that was needed for the compost quantities leaving the property (to Wes Green Landscaping… good people) of under 1,000 cubic yards/year (of which CGc has far less than 1,000yd^3). I would appreciate if you would cite your source for the statement that agriculture operations need a permit to process small volumes of compost. Many farmers, including small farmers, would be interested in this cutting-edge, completely unknown information. I say that sarcastically. Inreally do appreciate any facts. In any case, it is not as extreme a situation as is painted by the compost paragraph, it is just protected piles of bedding and goat berries.
Sean, the “future” dotted areas are the same as the no-build lines. This is insurance. The ag soil depicted in those diagrams is currently planted and I am taking periodic soil tests to see how much zinc is mined up. One thing I would like to tell you is the abuse the non-future (and some of “future”) land in McKinleyville endured, but I might be saying bad things about the previous land owners. Let’s just say what was good was salvaged and what was bad was sorted with the trash removed at the cost of CGC. The land was again rejuvenated at the cost of CGC. Any land you see in jeopardy, I would like to assure you of its future production. The soils are and will be better than they were. Once all of the non-soil burials are sorted out, this land will be good farmland. I know I will never convince you, but we are really trying to do good here. It is unfortunate that we are not working toward a common goal. Please don’t confuse CGC with others who want to smear all of your ideas out of hand for some of your statements being “annoying”.
I hope there is a time in the future where all factions can work together on the same page. There are no “gotchas”, CGC has worked diligently to do things which benefit the community. Thanks and sorry to my co-workers if I said too much.
Hi Kevin,
I was offering them “CSA cookies”–grass-fed butter and goose eggs from our farm, barley and wheat flour from Shakefork Community Farm, which subleased our Arcata Bottom land for its first two years.
I wanted them to be able to taste and appreciate what the Arcata Bottom can produce. So much of the Applicant’s presentation was based on undermining the Prime Agricultural status of the soils. The soils are a valuable public resource–black, deep, extremely fertile, the product of millenia of soil development. We are also blessed with abundant rain, so we have a globally rare farming resource. The soil science itself was being attacked and discredited to support the project, and my futile gesture was to offer cookies. I was trying to be nice in a not-very-nice situation.
Regards,
Sean
An Open Letter to Sean Armstrong.
Dear Mr. Armstrong,
You don’t know of me, but I know of you. Let me introduce myself. I live here in Arcata, I get all my food from an Arcata CSA, the Farmers Market, and the local food stores. I’m a leftist politically. I ride my bike to work weather permitting. I’ve worked on the CR Organic farm in Shively, a farmstead cheese outfit here in Humboldt, and 8 years ago, I became an employee of Cypress Grove. I love making cheese.
I’ve kept quiet throughout this whole thing. Since you mention hurt feelings, and since we are having an emotional moment here, I’d like to say that I too have some hurt feelings. I feel hurt and somewhat offended that you would think that I would EVER work for a company that wanted to house thousands of goats in a windowless torture box, or plot to murder neighborhood children. I would never work for a company that ran a cruel confined feed lot, or mistreated animals in any way.
I feel like you have jumped to awful conclusions and refused to accept any assurances to the contrary. I feel like you have contributed to the sentiment of a small group of people that think Cypress is evil. I am not evil, Mr. Armstrong, and I swear on my honor that I would never be employed by a company that was.
I wish you had started off with more civility, not gone straight to angry doomsday mongering. I wish you had taken the time to get to know us better. You would have found that we too are your neighbors (I live a few blocks away from Cypress). We too care about the environment, animals, and our community.
I don’t know why you took it to such an angry place so fast. I do know that a spoonful of honey gathers more flies than a gallon of vinegar. You might try that next time, and find that people are open to your concerns, suggestions, and worries. I appreciate that you mention you will try to be less sarcastic, because there is no need for that kind of discourse. If Cypress was a fraction of the way you view it, I would quit. Please, let us procede with kindness and good intentions. Please.
This job is my financial security in a county with very few career choices. We are good people here, please try and see that.
Cody
Sean Armstrong, aside from this issue because you mention geese, do you have thoughts on the giant grey dewlap toulouse?
Hi Cody, and other Cypress Grove employees. I’m sorry if you feel personally criticized by our objections to your projects. It’s not personal. It really is about:
1. Saving farm land from development. You shouldn’t develop Arcata’s farm land for a factory. Nothing personal, it’s just really a “wrong” thing to do when there is hundreds of acres of vacant factory land, but only dozens of acres of farm land in Arcata.
2. The environmental hazards of factory farming. We’re not scare mongers, we’re professionals–one of your neighbors is also Dennis Kalson, formerly of County Environmental Health. He personally investigated the 2002 Lane County E.coli outbreak that dangerously sickened 85 people who walked through the goat and sheep barn. His assessment, and that of health professionals around the country, is that factory farming can be a hazard for down-winders because fecal dust, and fecal contaminated run-off, can and does sicken people. Or read the Scientific American article on the goat Q fever outbreak in 2009 in the Netherlands: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=tough-lessons-from-dutch-q-fev
So far, there’s no waste treatment plan that’s publicly available. Your company has never run a factory farm before. So reasonable, professional people are concerned.
Normally, these concerns get aired in public, with expert staff at hand, and there’s a democratic process for judging the weight of evidence. That’s what you saw at the Planning Commission–I disagree with the results, but at least there was a process to air the issues.
But with the dry feed lots, nothing. No CEQA, no discretionary review body. So if Cypress Grove would submit themselves to the regulatory process of a CUP for their dry feed lots, we could get much more professional and fair about this, nad the public could be assured that the weakest of all the regulatory system, that on factory farming, is doing something about the risks of fecal pollution…..Instead we just argue through the blog posts. 🙂
Regards,
Sean Armstrong
Tule Fog Farm
Sean, if that is the case, what do you think about the American buff goose?
I guess my questions are, first, why do you refer to the Q St. property as farm land, when nobody has ever farmed it. It has been a dairy for 150 years. I feel that is misleading people.
My second question is, since there is so much open former dairy Ag land, or as you call it, farm land out on the bottoms, why not focus your energy on turning that into actual farm land? Do you really want to put a farm up against the North wall of the Q St building?
Third question, if I drive by the Gilardoni property this weekend will I see you out there putting hoe to soil for the agricultural incubator? I feel like you guys lost interest in that after Cypress dropped it. That’s a much better place to farm than the shaded North side of our building. Why not put your energy into the Gilardoni project and show us the grand potential of the bottoms farm land?
Also, I guess it did feel personal when you were screaming Murderer and people dumped goat poop all over the place. I don’t know, how would you feel?
Fair questions Cody:
Sincerely,
Sean Armstrong
Sean, I feel like my “other employee” questions are still being ignored per our previous discussion on the Arcata Eye.
Can you provide citations for any of the things you say are directly wrong regarding what Cypress Grove is doing? (I don’t mean say one thing and cite another.)
Now that you are making an appeal to authority using Dennis Kalson’s name, do you plan to have Dennis Kalson back up your statements?
Basically Sean, these were questions that I’ve been gathering over the past months, and I appreciate the opportunity to ask you directly. I’m not sure we will ever agree on everything. I hope that in the future you will see that things are in fact being done in a conscientious and right way, and that the intentions have always been to do it as such. And that once you see with your own eyes that things are good, peace can be had. We all live together in this tiny town, and things should remain friendly.
Goat cheese and community farming should be allies breaking down the industrial American diet. I know you like to categorize Cypress as industrial, but goat cheese is still small time in America, and as cheese companies go, by pounds produced, Cypress is still small. Also, all the cheese is as hand made as it ever was. Anyway, without going on and on…
I wish you the best, I’ve always appreciated Tule Fog Farms offerings, and I shall say good evening.
1,000 cubic yards of annual goat shit is nothing to “Poo-Poo”.
This is the same level of bucolic propaganda BS as “petting” 1200 goats on their head.
Nearby residents have no idea what they’re getting into.
McKinleyville rejects low-income housing, but welcomes faith-based land development.
No surprise.
You know, I understand how it’s frustrating to work for a business and to feel maligned unfairly, held to task for failings that weren’t true, or weren’t as severe as they were represented. I tried to do really good work at Danco, and I have a lot I’m proud of from that era, but I was shunned by some of my friends who really thought I’d gone to work “for the Devil” as one put it.
So, you guys are nice. Bob McCall used to be one of our fans, and he and his wife Connie were early customers of ours back when we were called Wild Chick Farm in 2005-2007. Mary’s nice. Ian is nice.
I don’t want to give any of you a hard time, and believe me, I’ve paid my lumps in this process–I got fired from the City over protesting your dry feed lots. So personalities aside, there’s still room for improvement, but no willingness to compromise on the site plan. That really disappointed me, that I kept suggesting at the Open Space and Ag meetings, and then the Planning Commission meetings, that the site plan be redesigned, and absolutely no compromise. Keep in mind that I’ve also taken big projects through the City, and I’ve ALWAYS compromised to accommodate neighbor complaints. Even when Commissioner Judith Mayer suggested some compromise, Mary’s response was that it wasn’t possible for “technical reasons that she couldn’t explain.” And that’s just silly. Your existing building becomes office space, so your addition can really go anywhere provided you’ll accept a campus rather than a complex. But the money is negligable, and saving the farmland is real, and it would be so helpful in healing the community, and supporting Arcata’s long-standing efforts to save our remaining farmland for community-oriented farming.
What do you think–could we negotiate some sort of compromise before we take this to the Council? Joyce Plath has volunteered to do a free redesign of the site plan, and she’s really excellent at site plans–we’ve done many community plans together. Right now the expansion site plan sprawls in the middle of the site, rather than hugging the south to save the northern farmland. I think you should take the bottom 6 acres, starting at the northern boundary of your existing building. 6 acres is a lot of land, no more than you’re using now if you don’t count the fringe of impacted land.
Yeah? Could we work something out before the next fight?
And to return the compliment, the first time I ate Humboldt Fog, I was truly transported by the experience. 😉 It was Goat Essence, in the best sense of the idea.
Good evening,
Sean
1,000 cubic yards of goat pellets. That’s so out there…..I hope someone takes your kids and wife way Alas before you try and beam yourself back onto the mothership like Heaven’s Gate.
“Cancer”, “Alas” was using the 1,000 cubic yard maximum I cited and trying to make a negative point with it.
For cubic yards of compost, I am referring to this table:
http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/LEA/Regs/Tiered/TierChart.htm
“Compostable materials:
Agricultural material derived from an agricultural site and returned to the same site or agricultural site owned or leased by the owner, parent, or subsidiary
(< 1,000 yd3 given away or sold annually)”
I was hoping to get a citation for why Carrie wrote “If the dairy composts onsite — which McCall says it might do later — it will need a permit for that”
There is probably no point, I am just weary of all the unsourced information that continues to be tossed around.
So Tule Fog Farm owns that 26 acres? YOu pay property taxes and insurance? Or do you pay a regular lease on the land comparable to what the rest of the farmers here on the north coast pay?
How about your water situation over there, please tell me how a profitable farm hauls all of it’s water to it’s many animals in jugs in the back of a pick up.
Ridiculous.
I’d love to see your tax return…please present it to support your position on how the rest of us need to farm like you, because I don’t believe that you are supporting yourself and your family on the operation you have going over there..it is just not possible.
And BTW, aren’t you developing some of that fertile farm land of your own? There’s buildings going up on your little “farm” covering forever the resource you insist that others never develop.
Srsly, you are such a joke, but again, keep it coming! You are hilarious! For us REAL farmers ( who own or lease the land and actually support ourselves), it doesn’t get much better for us than this show of yours!
Hey Sean, every time you call the new dairy a “factory farm” you just reinforce our opinion of you, that you
are an ignorant idiot.
Weasel words are obviously your friend.
“A “dairy” used to mean the land where cattle grazed, which then had a milking barn. So that land used to have pasture with animals on it, as well as the milking barn, hay barn, etc. ”
HA HA!! You are hilarious! Really? Where do you come up with this stuff? Like you know what words “used to mean” Really, you ar e a real douche
Do you have any idea about how dairys even worK?
So you are the definer of all words agricultural?
Have you ever even been to a real successful profitable dairy? Have you ever been to ANY dairy?
PS, dairies milk more that cows. Moron. Cows are not goats.
Has anyone ever done themselves any good by saying, “I’m sorry if you feel…?”
And then there’s:
“…personally criticized…”
They felt that way after being personally criticized as baby killers, Sean. You may have forgotten about your raving tirades, but no one else has.
Hi Ian,
I’m sorry if you didn’t get your questions answered in the Eye. I don’t like reading comments that are intended to personally wound me, by name, rather than argue the issues. You understand, but since I’m personally the target it wears me down to stay engaged. 🙂
To your point on the tiered composting charts: will your dry feed lots store less than 1000 cubic yards of goat feces mixed with bedding? Here’s my math–you have two buildings covering 1 acre. That’s approximately 43,561 square feet, or 1613 cubic yards. At the neighborhood meeting last June, George or Mary explained the “deep bedding” fecal storage system would be 3-4′ deep. So if you fill that pit up in 1 year, that’s close to 2000 cubic yards of feces and bedding that requires a composting permit.
Now, I could be wrong–maybe you’ve changed your fecal storage system. If you’d like to be the first person to disclose your design, great, I’d love to see it. More importantly though, the public should see it, review it, and approve it if they choose to as a discretionary permit. You have a dry feed lot and a milking parlour. You’re calling it a dairy, but it has dry feed lots on it. In Humboldt County, a less-biased reviewer (and I’ve spoken with plenty) would agree that dry feed lots meet the definition of “feed lots” that require a CUP in Humboldt County.
Even if the public never gets the CUP laid out in our County’s General Plan and Land Use Code, you should have at least gone through a CEQA review instead of a CEQA exemption. That’s what is required of all dry feed lots in all of California–a CEQA review process. It just galls me that your company continues to avoid that requirement, and putting us all through the hassle of fighting in the trenches instead of having documents that we can pass back and forth to come to resolution.
My point–I think you’re all decent people Really. But that doesn’t mean you’re doing a decent act in this circumstance. And if you are, then just put it a CEQA review like any normal developer. Seriously, I would be your PM for free just to get this done right–I’ve done years of work on planning sewage treatment plants and leach field systems.
Call me crazy, but we should be working together to do a model farm up there, even a conventional (as opposed to Organic) factory farm. But you have to listen outside of your group of supporters, because this issue isn’t going away–we’re neighbors for the long hall. At some point we have to find a path through the arguing that we can both live with. I’m asking, hoping, that there are people at Cypress Grove we can meet with (the group, not just annoying me) to review the dry feed lot plans, the fecal storage, the waste discharges, and come to peace.
Sincerely,
Sean Armstrong
Ian,
On your composting question from yesterday afternoon, all the information in that paragraph came from Lisa Bernard of the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.
Sorry for not getting back to you more quickly.
Well done Sean.
I leaned more from you on this string than my local paper…the TS.
After a world of problems that gave birth to today’s hard-fought regulations, it’s discouraging to hear the same battles fought again and again with another neighborhood poised to suffer the consequences.
Quick fact-check–the Grass-Fed Birthing Barn is a brownfield redevelopment of an existing cement pad, no new ag soils. We cleaned up the hazardous waste, performed a historic study Susie Van Kirk to remove the non-historic resource existing shed, and recieved a CEQA-exemption for an agricultural accessory structure. It’s a 16×21 foot building, which is what that ag exemption is designed for.
I think it’s problematic that EMMI got that same exemption for 1400 goats inside of one acre of dry feed lots.
So, the offer is out there–let’s sit down at a table and talk with the plans in front of us, address the real concerns, and see if we can be better neighbors.
No need to chat. This one’s about wrapped up. Rock on!
http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/theres_a_goat_in_the_mosh_pit
While I am not a fan of Sean Armstrong, and I agree with the editors ethical assessments of Mr. Armstrong, I am appalled by the way Ms. Dahlberg chose to highlight these unethical flaws of Mr. Armstrong. It is unprofessional and bad journalism – a “hit piece” – and while she tries to balance this out by instantly (next paragraph) calling Bob McCall, “evasive,” (a questionable assessment) it all reeks of journalistic sensationalism, looking for the “angle,” the “indignation,” trying to call into question the motives of the involved parties, trying to create a controversy where none might exist.
Such yellow journalism.
Embarrassing – and a total waste of the community’s time.
Right, because there has been no controversy on this subject up until Carrie’s story came along.
Dahlberg’s personal critique of Armstrong was bizarre, inappropriate, and it reads completely out of context.
If more Americans took the time to demand the development details of large operations, we might have fewer regulations that were more effective BEFORE problems, contamination, nuisances, lawsuits and settlements spin out of control.
as a person who gets mouthfulls of little river water at moonstone beach I do not appreciate all the goat shit that is going to flow from run off into my mouth. boooo
in response to CW / April 12, 12:20 p.m.
[I actually typed a similar comment on April 12th, but somehow it did not post…]
All of this about YOU being local and that making Cypress Grove local is absurd! Your comments and other attempts to portray multi-national company Emmi-owned Cypress Grove as local is reminiscent of Maxxam era Pacific Lumber workers defending their “local” company! Understand that regardless of your experience working there, regardless of its “local” history, now that it is owned by Emmi, there is NO LOYALTY to this area, to local workers, or even to keeping the business in Humboldt. The BOTTOM LINE (profits, cheap production, cheap labor) is what Emmi cares about. It matters not to Emmi keeps the business here, whether the business moves to Mexico or somewhere else. Be happy with your current employment, but don’t make the mistake of identifying with the company as if it has your best interests in mind. Remember Maxxam’s Pacific Lumber? Tripling the cuts, subcontracting all the logging, closing down the mills, raw log export, all the money going to Texas, bankrupting the company, FIRING the workers, and screwing the town of Scotia. Where’s that local company Pacific Lumber now?
Corporate reality is not something that I imagined up. It’s reality.
Boycott Cypress Grove Chevre!
I’m going to boycott boycotting.
Just to put it out there, Bob McCall and his wife Connie Lorenzo were some of our farm’s earliest supporters, back when we were Wild Chick Farm in 2005. My wife’s aunt is a friend of Mary Kheen, which has made this whole process even more awkward. 🙂 Our group’s concerns are not personal to Cypress Grove’s management, and framing it as such just makes it that much harder to be neighbors.
Cypress Grove’s dry feed lots will produce as much feces every day as the towns of Orick, Willow Creek and Blue Lake combined–1400 goats produce as much feces as 4200 people. The waste disposal system for 1400 goats, or eventually 2800 goats, is a serious question for public review, as promised in our General Plan and Zoning Regulations. Factory farming produces pollution on the scale of other factories, and fecal pollution poses unique environmental threats.
EMMI/Cypress Grove should have the same public oversight as what we at Danco went through for the sewage treatment plant for the Town of Samoa (equivalent to 200 goats worth of feces/day), or even Willow Creek Apartments (equivalent to 16 goats worth of feces/day).
I have every hope that Ian is going to work hard to make Cypress Grove’s dry feed lots a showcase of factory farming. In fact, that’s what they’re promised–they’ll start here and export the perfected factory farming model to Wisconsin where EMMI Roth USA owns more goat cheese factories.
But most factory farms don’t involve beloved community leaders, yet the County has set policy, redefining feed lots to exclude those found next to milking parlours/milking barns. But the reason why “feed lots” require a Conditional Use Permit, which includes a CEQA analysis, is that they’re a potentially large risk. Conventional agriculture is one of the least regulated industries, producing horrors like pink slime in 85% of our nation’s beef and feeding arsenic to 90% of our nation’s chicken to turn the flesh pink. Cypress Grove might run a fine farm, but they might not–our regulatory system is supposed to keep us safe, and be evenly applied.
As much affection as I have for Connie Lorenzo, or Bob McCall, or the fine people who work there that I haven’t met, this is not personal. This is a serious discussion about our permitting process, our public health and the environment. I know Cypress Grove staff pride themselves on being community leaders, and I hope they will make more responsible decisions, perhaps try a little compromising, because this issue isn’t going away, and we’d all enjoy our summer a lot more if we could put this behind us. 🙂
Regards,
Sean Armstrong
There’s a goat dairy in Ferndale that has over 1000 goats. Has anyone been over there? Why isn’t that place being protested? Is anyone checking on their manure management? Their animal husbandry? Maybe someone should? Isn’t that a model?
Jesus fucking christ Sean, stop bitching. I mean fucking hell, you brought in “Pink Slime” in talks about a goat dairy. You might murder people in your eco-groovy barn, or you might not. You might rape chickens in your eco-groovy henhouse, or you might not, hell, you might make a tasty blend of long pork with your short pork, or you MIGHT NOT.
You might just be completely full of shit, or you might just be a fucking asshole.
Man you guys really HATE Sean. I mean, that deuche must be a REAL DEUCHE BAG! Seriously fuck yeah. I can tell you HATE that fucking douche by the explosive language. Sean must be a real fucker. I mean “Jesus Fucking Christ, I bet HE ACTUALLY FUCKED CHRIST!
Oh and by the way……F U C K!!!!
“Two neighbors have appealed the Arcata Planning Commission’s decision to allow Cypress Grove Chevre’s proposed expansion of its Q Street creamery in Arcata.”
http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_20494632/neighbors-appeal-cypress-grove-permit-project-will-go