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February 22, 2005: When Frank Orner returned from
college in the late 1970s to work on his family’s dairy
farm in Rockton, Pennsylvania, milk prices were about the
same as they are today. Yet Orner Farms (www.ornerfarms.com)
still milks 100 cows twice daily, and the farm is profitable
enough to pass on to the next generation.
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“We
picked the right time to diversify. . . Milk prices
have dropped since then, but diversification helps
us weather the fluctuations. That’s really
the goal of diversity. Hopefully one thing is
up when the other is down.” |
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“We picked the right time to diversify,” says
Frank, thinking back to 1998, when he and cousins Ross and
David Orner began making compost to sell from their 425-acre
operation. “Milk prices have dropped since then, but
diversification helps us weather the fluctuations. That’s
really the goal of diversity. Hopefully one thing is up when
the other is down.”
Today compost sales are way up for Orner Farms, but in 1998,
Frank was wondering whether the farm that grandfather A. L.
Orner started in 1928 had a future. Raised by a farm family
that encouraged creative thinking, Frank attended an extension
horticultural program that year looking for ideas, and he
met a flower grower from southern New York.
“This grower laid four inches of compost, tilled it
in, laid another four, germinated the flowers, and then laid
another four inches of compost,” recalls Frank. “His
biggest problem was finding compost.”
Frank returned home with thoughts of using the farm’s
bedded pack to make compost for the flower grower. Then Frank
learned that his brother, Rusty, wanted compost for his landscaping
business and Quiet Creek Herb Farm, an organic CSA and herb
farm. It is located about 25 miles west of Orner Farms in
Brookville, Jefferson County. Rusty was using mushroom compost
in his landscaping business, but some of his customers did
not like the treated lumber and arsenic in it, and Rusty was
looking for darker compost for a nicer appearance.
“Rusty said ‘You make it, and I’ll buy
it,’” says Frank. “That’s an important
part of diversification. Find your market before your start.”
With a starter market in hand, Frank and his cousins learned
as much about composting as they could by reading manuals
and doing research on the Internet. Then it came time to learn
by doing, with much trial-and-error. Meanwhile, they stuck
a sign out front and sold compost to local gardeners, who
liked it better than raw manure because it was ready to use,
with less smell. Marketing that first year consisted of the
sign, word-of-mouth referrals by satisfied customers, and
retail placement in Rusty’s on-farm store at Quiet Creek.
“We had to decide,”
says Frank, “are we going to run this farm into the
ground, or still have something at the end?”
That was enough to sell all the compost Orner Farms made
that year—about 60 cubic yards. Yet it was not enough
to sustain A. L. Orner’s legacy for future generations,
so the Orners were at a crossroads.
“We had to decide,” says Frank, “are we
going to run this farm into the ground, or still have something
at the end?”
Choosing many strands instead of mega-dairy
In need of business advice, Frank and his cousins turned
to Pennsylvania Dairy Stakeholders. PDS offered business planning
assistance that, through cost-sharing, allowed the Orners
to afford a consultant for developing a business plan. After
hiring the consultant and then assembling a team that included
their farm accountant, the Orners sat down to hear their options.
“One thing the consultant said was we could expand
the size of our operation to 300 milking cows,” recalls
Frank. “I said, ‘But if prices continue to stagnate,
we eventually have to expand to 500, right?’ That’s
a vicious cycle.”
Their second option was to keep their herd the same size,
inject it with rBST, and milk three times a day. Although
he personally thinks rBST is safe, Frank did not want to go
that route.
In the end, diversification was the option most attractive
to the Orners, for environmental and social reasons.
“We had enough land in our Nutrient Management Plan
to take all our manure,” says Frank. “Still, we
are the major operator in the watershed that serves the reservoir
for the city of DuBois, which has one of the highest quality
water supplies in the state. If there’s a problem with
that water, they’re coming to look here first.”
"The consultant said
we could expand the size of our operation to 300 milking
cows,” recalls Frank. “I said, ‘But if
prices continue to stagnate, we eventually have to expand
to 500, right?’ That’s a vicious cycle.”
The Orners were determined to farm in an environmentally
friendly fashion and equally determined to keep the farm a
family-scale operation. They decided to continue diversification
with composting, and to explore the possibility of raising
red worms for sale to vermicomposters. In vermicomposting,
composting ingredients and environmental conditions are managed
to allow worms to enhance the decomposition process. The results
are more worms and a high-quality, nutrient rich composted
product called vermicompost.
At the same time, the Orners also increased milk production
by shifting their cropping strategy to include more corn silage
and less grain corn and hay silage. The result was a healthier
diet for the cows and a better net return per acre of cropland.
Send in the worms
As the Orners thought about raising red worms in 1999, the
Clearfield County Solid Waste Authority hosted a presentation
on vermicomposting, which was part of the county’s waste
management program. Ross who was chairman of the county’s
conservation board invited the conservation district office
to talk about flow-through bins for vermicomposting. These
structures allow worms to do their decomposing work as they
naturally move upwards through the material, allowing the
processed vermicompost to be harvested with minimal loss of
worms.
“We asked, can the worms use cow manure?” says
Frank. “The conservation district representative thought
so, and agreed to do a feasibility study. The study was a
success, and it gave us a projection of how much vermicompost
we could make with the amount of composted manure we had.
Those projections said vermicompost would be more profitable
than regular compost, and would make the farm a sustainable
operation.”
Vermicomposting was a natural extension for the Orners, because
it requires a lot of the equipment they already had for making
compost. For the flow-through bin itself, they started with
a 5- x 16-foot- unit from EPM, Inc. (See box
for bin details.) The bin worked so well, making a couple
hundred pounds of vermicompost a week, that the Orners became
retailers for EPM equipment, adding another profit center
to their farming operation.
Then it came time to market the vermicompost, a product that
Frank says was already common out West but was new to customers
in the East. Their initial strategy was to load the stuff
into trucks and take it to greenhouses, which they thought
would be their biggest customers. While the greenhouses bought
some to sell with their plants, they really wanted a ready
potting mix for use in greenhouse operations.
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Then
it came time to market the vermicompost, a product
that Frank says was already common out West but
was new to customers in the East . . . Gardeners
ended up being the biggest customers for the vermicompost,
at least in the beginning. |
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Gardeners ended up being the biggest customers for the vermicompost,
at least in the beginning. Frank says the key to those sales
is making a quality product and not skimping on marketing
appearance. Orner Farms calls its product “Worm Wonder”
and sells it under an attractive label that features a happy
worm poking out of a pasture.
As for quality, Worm Wonder consistently gets excellent results
in microbiology tests conducted by Soil Foodweb Inc. labs
in New York and Oregon. (SFI analysis focuses on soil organisms
as the primary source of plant nutrition.) Combining a demonstrably
superior product with good working relationships in the field
can be a strong marketing tool itself, says Frank.
Homebrew for plants
Today Orner Farms’ biggest vermicompost customers are
those buying it to make compost tea, a highly concentrated
microbial solution produced by extracting, then culturing,
beneficial microbes from the vermicompost. When sprayed on
crops, the “tea” reduces the use of harmful and
expensive pesticides and fungicides. The tea covers the plants
with colonies of beneficial bacteria and fungi, which reduces
harmful micro-organisms from getting a foothold.
“An organic farmer went to Paul Wagner at the Soil
Foodweb and asked, ‘Why are my tomatoes dying?’
Paul said, ‘You have a root-feeding nematode, and you
need to get some of Orner’s vermicompost to make compost
tea.’”
In 2002, Frank and his cousins bought a compost tea brewer
from EPM to make tea for their own crops. Now compost tea
sales are another component in the income streams feeding
Orner Farms.
“Local people have bought the tea and are very pleased
with the results on their roses and vegetable gardens,”
says Frank. “But the tea is produced in an aerobic environment,
so it needs to be used within twelve hours.”
Customers buying Worm Wonder to make tea or to use as compost
are located across the continental United States. The Mirage
hotel and casino in Las Vegas even purchased a ton of vermicompost
for landscaping. People are brewing compost tea for use on
row crops, organic golf courses, vineyards, and lawns. At
Quiet Creek Herb Farm, Rusty uses his brother’s products
in high tunnels and received a USDA SARE grant to study the
profitability of compost versus vermicompost on the farm.
One of the challenges the Orners face is assembling a distribution
network for selling outside their home area. With retailers
doubling their sales of Worm Wonder year after year, the market
for vermicompost is growing greatly in the East.
“Building and maintaining
good relationships is an important part of this,”
says Frank. “That goes all the way back to my grandfather
before he was farming. That’s how he ran his business.”
The Orners have reached many of their customers by attending
conferences and workshops, such as those held by the Ecological
Landscapers Association and the Pennsylvania Association for
Sustainable Agriculture. Active involvement in local organizations
leads to local sales and customers.
“Building and maintaining good relationships is an
important part of this,” says Frank. “That goes
all the way back to my grandfather before he was farming.
That’s how he ran his business.” 
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