O Holy Cow

Radiance Dairy: Fairfield’s Milk Cult

(Editor's note - this story was written in 2002. Francis Thicke is now running for Iowa Secreatary of Agriculture & Land Stewardship. We will update our Thicke file soon.)

The food of 21st century Iowa tells a tale of irony. During the last 50 years we homogenized the foods we grow, as corn and beans replaced diversity from border to border. At the same time, the foods Iowans eat diversified, with regions holding on to unique specialties. Northwest Iowa is steakhouse country and the southwest is scalloped potato and ham land. One goes to the Loess Hills for apples, Fort Madison for fried strawberries, Scranton for loganberry pancakes and Fairfield for paneer.

Why do paneers, those ambrosias of fresh made cheese and vegetables, taste richer in Fairfield than anywhere else this side of India? Some credit the peaceful town’s good vibes, but the real secret is more physical than mental. It’s Francis Thicke’s divine cows. Radiance Dairy’s organic milk is the only milk in Iowa still bottled on the farm and it is only available in Fairfield.

The man behind the happy cows and their adored milk has an office appropriate for a “Goethe farmer,” as writer Parker Forsell labeled him. When we visited, a music stand held the score to Herbert L. Clarke‘s “Carnival of Venice.” Thicke played its wistful melody on his trumpet and told us how music changed him.

“I wanted to be a musician, thought I was pretty good within the context of my small Minnesota school. So I went to North Texas State, the second largest music school in America, and found out quickly that I was not professional class. That gave me perspective. The trumpet had been my whole life, but I soon noticed that outside the narrow world of trumpet players, no one much cared about the things that had consumed me,” he recalled. So after a Bachelor’s degree in Music and Philosophy, he went for a Masters in Soil Science and a Ph.D in Agronomy, then worked at the US Department of Agriculture.

A sign in the office read: Born Again Pagan.

“In Catholic school growing up we would put our money in a jar to buy ‘pagan babies,’ so that priests might convert Third World children in whom they saw no divinity. Now, I think there is divinity in all things. I call myself a ‘Born Again Farmer’ too, because I went off to be a bureaucrat. There’s a joke about a USDA worker who is crying, so his colleagues ask him ‘What’s wrong?’ and he says, ‘My farmer died.’

Thicke told us he has been practicing Transcendental Meditation for 30 years, but dissociates from the TM movement.

“I am a TM heretic. I run on instinct, not intellect. Bertrand Russell said that solutions come to problems, if you just forget about them for awhile. Einstein said his discoveries were not made through processes of rational thinking. I don’t make quick decisions,” he said, deliberately.

Thicke liked his work in D.C., but the lifestyle was not what he and Susan, his wife and business partner, sought. His ten mile commute to work took an hour. The city’s crime and violence interfered with his peace of mind. They knew Fairfield was a unique place.

“People who meditate think about what they eat, they care as much about the purity of their food as the purity of their thoughts,” he explained.
So the Thickes bought a Fairfield dairy business and its twenty-two cows in 1992 then relocated them to a 326 acre farm outside town. As he showed us around, the philosopher rose within the farmer.

“The farm is an organism. Diversity empowers an organic farm’s ecosystem.”

“I come from a part of southern Minnesota which is hilly, almost mountainous. Such land encourages independent thinking and diversity in farming - it was never appropriate for single crop agriculture,” he explained.

The rolling hills are better suited to the pastures Francis has created, than to the cornfields that were here when he bought it. At that time, there was only one field and a corn crib. The Thickes first built a processing facility and lived above it for four years. Francis has now divided his pastures into 60 paddocks, with moveable electric fences, water tanks and high grass, which is nutritionally better for the milk. Francis plants brome, timothy and various clovers and lets the cows graze in each paddock half a day. That pasture then is allowed to rest 20-40 days, depending on how fast the grass is growing.

“You should be careful of what kind of energies, or products, are brought onto the farm, or are taken off, because you really have an organism here and you want it to grow with its own integrity,” he explained.

Earthworms have returned in multitudes, a sure sign of healthier soil. Like manure, worms excrete rich organic matter and aid in recycling and building up the soil. Other things came back since converting to pastures: song birds; cow birds; meadowlarks; and bobolinks. Cowbirds help control flies, so do wild turkeys.

We saw waist high grass, but no weeds, nor bare spots of dirt. The cows were all clean, the day after heavy rains had made some roads to the farm too muddy to drive. How different from typical dairy farms where filthy cows have to hosed down before every milking and grass is rarely more than 2-4 inches high.

Thicke likes honey locust trees because they have a porous canopy, allowing enough light to promote grass growth. These trees also have pods that are high in protein and good nutritionally for the cows. He is planning a solar pump to a large water tank that would service several paddocks.

“Grass loves by nature to stay in one place. Cows love by nature to graze. The madness of modern agriculture reverses the process.”

Thicke’s cows were friendly, happy, if humans can judge that. One kept nuzzling my arm, like a dog. “Our cows harvest their own food and spread their own fertilizer and they love their work. This makes more sense than the modern mode of hauling fertilizer and feed in trucks going opposite directions. Production isn’t as great, but profitability is greater and energy use is significantly less, self sufficiency more,” he explained.

His cows are all Jerseys, a breed Francis finds best for grass diets. Cows are ruminants and more modern breeds have been cross bred for grain diets and short lives.

“Industrial agriculture is non-competitive. It’s a common myth that each farmer feeds 130 people, but that number doesn’t include all the people in each farmer’s support group: the people to build and service the combines and John Deeres; the fertilizer production plants and staffs; and the environmental clean-up crews,” he noted.

Francis’ milking parlor is “New Zealand style,” meaning a low cost, low maintenance operation that does not push cows to overproduce. The Thickes milk 60 of 130 cows and sell all their milk in Fairfield, where it is a civic heirloom. They deliver milk twice a week and each delivery sells out by the next. Three supermarkets and twelve restaurants consume all of Radiance’s production- milk, cheese and yogurt.

“Expansion misses the point,” Francis answered a question we wished we hadn’t asked.

At Every Body’s supermarket, probably Iowa’s best stocked store for organic and conscientiously raised foods, Radiance actually outsells all other milks, even at a premium price. It’s deep yellow color contrasts with other milks. Co-owner John Dey told us that he never has any returns, or any spoilage on Radiance products.

“We learn as we go along.”

Gurus admit imperfections. Francis is still short of one goal - total grass diets. He feeds the cows 6 pounds of barley a day, because barley is still an old crop that has only recently been biogenetically modified.

“It hasn’t been over bred. With corn, there are always some low levels of GMO contamination,” he said.

Other lessons required patience.

He used to keep cows in the loafing barn all winter until he realized they wanted to be out in pasture, even in cold weather. “This way, the manure is spread all winter and Spring springs quickly.”

Originally, Thicke thought cows’ horns were natural and fit his biodynamic agriculture model, so he let them all grow. But young cows used them as weapons on older cows, not a good situation during twice a day milking. So he stopped letting them grow out.

He used to truck chickens to help keep the flies off the cows, but in the pastures chickens became coyote dinners. Now he keeps them in the loafing barn with the calves.

“It’s as important for me to learn from the farm as it is for the farm to be improved by my activities. The land itself has the answers and its own organizing power. That’s part of this co-creative process, we have to be involved and give our best creative input, but it’s all there anyway,” he said, with an acquiescence unbefitting a heretic.

Consuming Radiance

Some of the health benefits of organic milk are obvious. Several studies have shown pasture-grazed cows produce up to 500 percent more of the anti-carcinogen Conjugated Linoleic Acid, than confined cows. Other benefits are subtler.

At The 2nd Street Coffee House in downtown Fairfield, owner Bonnie White told us that her customers wouldn’t tolerate a less expensive milk in their lattes. White is Asian, an ethnic group that is often lactose intolerant.

“I grew up only able to drink soy milk, but this milk is just fine, no problems at all,” she told us.

Thicke said he had heard the same thing from several others. “But I wouldn’t make such a claim because I haven’t seen the science,” he admitted, still learning.

Paramjeet Singh’s India Café on Fairfield’s town square serves a full menu of South Asian cuisine, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian. They are one of Radiance’s best customers, mainly for their exquisite home-made paneers, made from organic milk and paired with different vegetables..

Paneer Recipe
for 6

4 cups whole milk
3 tablespoons vinegar

Boil the milk, after it starts boiling, add vinegar. When the vinegar makes curds out of the milk, put the curds into a cheese cloth and tie it with a small rope. Place the curds in the cheese cloth onto a plain surface and weigh it down with something heavy. This pressure makes the curds into cheese in about 3 hours. Cut it into bite size pieces.