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COVER STORIES: BACK TO THE LAND...STILL
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| Photo
by Richard Howard |
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Jack Lazor,
A73
Organic farming and self-sufficiency define a thriving
yogurt enterprise
Back to Back
to the Land...Still
Jack Lazor, A73, says his “back-to-the-land desires” began as early
as his freshman year at Tufts. A self-created major in agricultural history helped
legitimize his farming fantasies, along with summer work on a living historical
farm at Old Sturbridge Village. “Three days after graduation, I began working
on a dairy farm in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom,” he says. “After
a summer of haying and milking cows, I knew that this was the life for me.”
Lazor has since carved out a niche for himself as one of New England’s
most successful organic dairy farmers. At his 300-acre Butterworks Farm in Westfield,
Vermont, he and his wife, Anne, produce “North America’s purest and
best-tasting organic yogurt.” Some 7,000 quarts a week are distributed
up and down the East Coast to natural food stores and co-ops, and his luscious
high-butterfat cream is prized by the likes of exclusive Boston restaurants.
And while Lazor says “we’re the little guys,” compared to other
brand-name yogurts, “wholeness” is the farm’s signature. He
grows all the food for his family and his Jersey cows—including alfalfa,
wheat, corn, barley, oats, soy, dry beans, and sunflowers—on “living
soils enriched by compost,” soils teeming with microbial life.
“We went from a homesteading situation where we focused on being self-sufficient
to a commercial farming enterprise where we are still self-sufficient,” says
Lazor. “You can actually taste the essence and well-being of our farm in
the milk that goes into our dairy products.”
The resurgence of interest in organic products certainly has been good for sales.
But Lazor stressed that over the past two decades, he has defied the conventional
business model of seeking greater and greater profits, and focused instead on
growing slowly. For him, farming is all about paying attention to process, to
the very cycle of life itself. “We have always believed in giving back
more to the earth than we take. Each year as we harvest our crops, we enrich
the soil with organic compost. Success for us is stewarding land that we have
made rich in humus. We nourish the soil so that it can nourish us.” For
more information, visit www.butterworksfarm.com. |
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