Vital Green Farms

Vendor Biography

Welcome to Vital Green Farms

“Our Milk is not just milk”

Thanks to all who take a few minutes to look us up and learn all about our farm.

A big “thank you” to everyone that supports our farm by purchasing the dairy products and telling our story. We cannot do without you.
Vital Green Farms is a family operated, local, organic dairy farm, milking about 65 cows with on-farm processing, located in the Picture Butte area.
Our goal is to keep everything as close to nature as possible. This starts by feeding the soil with the natural nutrients that the plants take up and which in turn the animals eat and put into a miraculous food: MILK

All our products are non-homogenized, which gives it the ‘good olden days taste’. We pasteurize our products at a low temperature, which is the minimum required by law.

Farm

Currently there are about 65 cows being milked on the farm. Add to that the young stock and calves and it makes for a busy daily schedule. Over time the farm has maintained its family farm character, which is something we value highly.

Soil and crop care are of high priority on the farm because that is where the whole ‘milk journey’ starts. The farm owns 1 quarter section (64 ha.) of irrigated land, big part of which is pasture where the cows are free to graze during the summer months. The rest of the home quarter as well as another leased quarter section of dry land are in use for growing crops that are harvested for the animals’ winter supply of feed.

What Makes our Milk Different?

We, as you might think, run a dairy farm. In a sense this is true, but first and foremost we are grass farmers. A better term would be forage farmers, because cows do not eat only grass. Cows really like a mix of all different plants, which includes grasses, legumes, and herbs. Why do we than have dairy cows? The cows convert the minerals, vitamins and nutrients from the plants into milk, which in turn nourishes our body.

Nowadays, everything has to be bigger and faster. Oftentimes, ‘better’ goes on the back burner. We have gone a step back into history and looked where everything really takes place. It is not the cow or the feed that we feed them, it is the soil where it all starts. This might sound strange but ‘soil really is the life of the nation’. We cannot live without soil.

Modern farming uses all sorts of chemical inputs which destroys the soil. At Vital Green Farms, we use only natural, organically approved, soil amendments to balance the soil. For example, manures, organic molasses, sugars, calcium, liquid fish, and other minerals. With this in place the plants can take up the nutrients to feed the cows, which in turn make our delicious milk.

Because our processing plant is on the same location as the farm, we can pump the milk through a pipeline, which eliminates the need for a truck to haul the milk. This, and the fact that we only distribute locally (in Alberta) makes for very low food miles on our products.

Our milk is pasteurized at a low temperature, which is the minimum required by Canadian law. None of our products are homogenized, giving it the rich taste it has.

What does it mean to be organic? In short, organic is a claim referring to methods of agricultural production and food processing that minimizes disruption of the natural environment and encourages the health and vitality of the soil, promotes humane animal management and preserves ecological integrity.

In other words, organic means:
•    No synthetic pesticides
•    No synthetic preservatives
•    No chemical fertilizers
•    No hormones or antibiotics
•    No genetically modified organisms (GMO’s)
•    Humane treatment of animals
•    Preservation of ecological integrity