Shawville’s Maplehodge Farms is no stranger to the delicate balance of technology and tradition found at many of the Ottawa Valley and Pontiac region’s many family-owned farmsteads.
Kyle Hodgins says the 400 acres and 150 Holstein cows they tend to today are thanks to generations of hard work and innovation, such as their commitment to rotational pasturing to ensure the health of their live stock, as well as their claim of being the first local farm on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River to use vacuum lines as part of their milking process under his grandfather in the 1960’s.
Some 1,500 litres of Maplehodge Farms milk are sent into the Diary Board’s quota system every day, being used exclusively for cheese production at a Gatineau-base plant. Hodgins says that it’s a unique situation, as most dairy is collected and distributed to larger facilities that use multiple suppliers to make a variety of products.
The quota system has the topic of debate for a number of local dairy farmers, but Hodgins says it’s all upside for him as a smaller supplier who wishes to stay small as it locks in prices and keeps larger factory farms from muscling them out of the picture.
Seeds of Success Fueled by Kubota.
