Country Life Section C • lyndentribune.com • Wednesday, June 13, 2018
Dairy • C2 Gardening • C6 FFA/4-H • C7
Plagerman farm builds in eight robotic milkers Paradise Jerseys of Ferndale more than doubles number of totally automated milking units in county By Calvin Bratt editor@lyndentribune.com
WHATCOM — Leroy Plagerman is well positioned to represent the future of dairying. He and wife Rhonda are the parents of 12 children, most of them embracing the farm lifestyle. Currently, Leroy is president of the Darigold cooperative’s board of directors. And now his Paradise Road farm, with eight robotic milkers, is a showcase of using technology to utmost advantage for both animal comfort and human management. Last August, Plagerman wrapped up some serious cash investment converting an aging Ferndale-area farm — belonging to the McKay family for many
Leroy Plagerman points out features of his farm’s new Lely robotic milking system. (Calvin Bratt/Lynden Tribune)
years — to the latest in robotic controls from the Lely company of the Netherlands.
In May, nine months in, he could lead a media tour of how operations work now on this farm
of the future — his family’s and the industry’s. On June 2, a day that honored 100-year-old Dari-
Goats and yoga converge in Wickersham Goat Boat Farm offers ‘goat yoga’ classes annually from May to August By Brent Lindquist brent@lyndentribune.com
WICKERSHAM — When Nicole and Jon Schierberl first purchased their farm in Wickersham, they didn’t have goats, yoga or a boat in mind. However, it’s now called Goat Boat Farm and it features all
three. “Goat yoga” is exactly what it sounds like: doing yoga with goats. Goat yoga began in Albany, Oregon, where a woman and her yoga instructor friend first hatched the idea of hosting yoga sessions amidst goats. “It’s kind of a quirky little niche that exploded,” Nicole said. The popular trend has spread to farms all over the world, and Nicole’s mother pointed out a New York Times article on the subject to her one day. “We always joked on our farm that we didn’t have goat yoga, but we had goat therapy,”
Nicole said. “We would go out to the goat barn and hang out with the goat kids. They just jump on you and play. We joked before about having goat massage. The goats just run around and jump on your back. It’s very enjoyable.” Nicole was working on a different farm with a yoga instructor, and Nicole asked if she had her yoga certification. “She knew exactly what I was thinking when I told her,” Nicole said. “We just kind of developed it from there.” Nicole didn’t know what to expect in terms of popularity at the outset, but she and Jon were
blown away by the response. Just a little bit of advertising and a few flyers here and there led to all of their 2017 classes being almost sold out. Goat Boat Farm hosts goat yoga classes a couple of times each week from May to August. The beginning of their timeframe coincides with when the goat kids are born, and the classes run each year up until the kids become a little too big to participate in goat yoga. “A lot of people do the big goats, but once the kids get to be 20 to 30 pounds, it’s not as much fun as the tiny baby goats that you
gold in the Lynden Farmers Day Parade, various company personnel toured the farm as well. The Plagerman commitment to robotics more than doubles the number of fully automated cow-milking units in Whatcom County. Three other farms had installed seven robot stations. The county is well behind the rate of conversion to robotic milking on farms just across the international border in lower British Columbia, however. Plagerman first heard about Lely from a Dutch exchange student his family hosted years ago. Over time, when he looked into the technology and considered the future, the value penciled out to him, he says. This farm is called Paradise Jerseys, capable of handling about 450 of the smaller-framed breed of cow. The orginal Plagerman place on Beard Road south of Lynden continues to have a herd of Holsteins, and the family owns other acreage in the area for their diverse dairy farming. Buying the property in May 2011, Leroy says there was “lots to See Robotics on C2
can cuddle during class,” Nicole said. “We decided to keep the season short and make it the best possible experience.” The response from goat yoga patrons has been overwhelming, she said. Many people come from Seattle or farther to experience goat yoga, and many of them don’t spend much time outside in their regular lives. “You lay in the pasture, you stare at the trees and you listen to the birds and the wind,” Nicole said. “There are people who would just cry from being outside and taking a minute to absorb that.” Providing these kinds of experiences wasn’t always their goal with the Wickersham farm. See Goat yoga on C3
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