Got Grit? Kirstin and Kylie Quesnel Do
The New Generation of Vermont Dairy Farmers

By Cindy Ellen Hill

Being the farmer's daughter doesn't mean what it used to mean, jokes 26-year-old Kylie Quesnel, the striking blonde daughter of Whiting dairy farmers Lorenzo and Amy Quesnel. But still, strange things happen, she says, sitting in manure-splattered jeans on the deck of her parents' farmhouse overlooking the main barns and office of the 1000-plus herd business.

"When I first came back to work here after college, an older man walked in to the farm office and said, 'Hey little girl, where's your daddy.' I said you're going to have to talk to me, what can I help you with. He said, 'Well I'm here to talk business.' I told him if he was talking business, then I was the one he needed to talk to. Eventually it came out he was the semen salesman. So then we got through that and conducted our business, but I'm not sure he got over talking about semen sales with a woman."

"It's still primarily a man's business, but businesses are seeking women employees to satisfy their diversity requirements, so it's changing. There are lots of opportunities opening up for women," says Kylie's sister Kirstin, 25. "And farmers are beginning to realize that if they have all daughters, the farm isn't coming to an end."

Both sisters attended Cornell University's animal sciences program with a focus on dairy. Cornell is the only Ivy League school in the country with an animal science program. While in college, Kylie interned on a farm in California, and Kirstin at a 1500 cow dairy in northern New York. Both did semesters abroad in New Zealand. "When you see how things are done on other farms in other places in the world, and how things work in other related businesses, then you develop ideas for improving the business here," Kylie says.

Many of Cornell's agricultural students get admirable job offers from the farm credit companies, nutrition and feed development firms, and veterinary pharmaceutical companies. After Kirstin's graduation in 2004 she went to work for Eli Lilly's pharmaceutical dairy division, making significantly more money than many of her classmates with business degrees. The job proved a training ground to develop strategies for working with men.

"I mostly worked with men in their 50's and 60's, and some of them would try to father me a little, but having an education and being able to straight talk them helps to gain respect," Kirstin says. "In a big meeting, you were more likely to be quieted, but sometimes by sitting quietly and then when you say something, making sure it's really important, something profound, by being respectful that way and contributing it really helps."

"It's the old farmer's mentality, 'Why aren't you home having children?'" laughs Kylie. "But the way you gain respect on a farm is by working as hard or harder. Sometimes we work longer harder hours than the men do, though of course for Kirstin and me, we're family so that's appropriate anyway. But working harder gains respect from the workers here. Despite what this package we come in looks like, we can do the work."

While hard work awaited her, Kirstin returned to her home farm after two years with the pharmaceutical company. "I always knew I wanted to come back here. Growing up, I always worked here, I did my stuff with the cows, not the tractors and equipment. I showed cows. I just like being around the cows."

The love of cows continues to attract young women like Ashley Severy, 18, into dairy. Like the Quesnel sisters, Severy graduated from Middlebury Union High School's agricultural tech program. Her farm-raised parents encouraged her enthusiasm about the dairy industry. "I always liked cows," she says, with a languid teenage shrug. "It's just kinda my thing I guess."

Severy found herself in the company of like-minded young women in the high school's agricultural program. "There were probably 16 women and only four guys in the program," she says. Severy is excited to have secured an early admission slot to the prized Cornell program. "Having the ag program in high school really helped, as well as having high grades. I'm going to take the animal science program, though right now I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. Probably go into the dairy health aspect."

Severy has been skillfully looking after the Quesnel cows well-being for several years. "She helps us take care of our sick cows, or not just sick, when they have calves they get transferred into different groups, they go through body changes, just like humans or anything else does when they are pregnant and give birth," Kirstin explains.

"I remember the first day Ashley Severy was here, and I sent her out to work with one of the men," Kylie recalls. "He pulled me aside and said 'you know, I don't really need to be spending my time looking after Ashley.' But I told him, she's ready to work, you'll be surprised, she really knows her stuff. And afterwards he admitted she had been very helpful."

Severy takes part in the Mount Independence 4H club out of Orwell, where Kylie serves as Dairy Leader and Kirstin volunteers as her assistant. "Our group is unique in the state in being almost all girls," Kylie says. "We have thirteen dairy kids, 12 are girls and one very special young man."

Those 4H girls also include Ashley Bishop, 14, a freshman at Middlebury Union High School who has been leasing cows to show from the Quesnel farm for several years, and now interns there for the summer. "My Dad grew up on a farm, and my Mom worked on one. When I was six they started a beef business. I really like dealing with cows, but I don't know yet if it will be my career," Bishop says thoughtfully, hair pulled tightly back from her freckled face. The other young women at the table jibe her with a chorus of, 'what? Of course you will...'. She smiles with a strong independence, maintaining her options. "I'm in the FFA," she says - Future Farmers of America - and we've been learning what they do in the high school ag program, we've had a convention, training. I'm thinking about it."

Bishop's options will be many, as Vermont's dairy industry is in a phase of unprecedented diversification as well as pressures. "We can't compete with the western farms,' Kylie says. "But we sell a perishable food product and we are close to the major liquid market, so that's our niche."

"Big farms will get bigger," Kirstin adds, "And some are diversifying. There's yogurt makers, and the artisan cheeses are becoming big in Vermont, that's very exciting."

Dairy farmers are also diversifying their approach to business management, more frequently banding together to address major political issues like farm subsidies, the pending Farm Bill in Congress, and the realities of a new global market. "There used to be a stigma about competition," Kylie said. "We used to act like we were in competition with the guy across the road. But we are all in competition together against a global market."

Dairy farmers across the country have imposed a voluntary assessment on themselves to populate a fund used for negotiating export prices and buying out whole herds when the market takes a downturn. They also pay fifteen cents a hundred weight for nationwide marketing, sponsoring those mustached 'drink milk' ads on billboards and in magazines.

"Dairy farmers could do better at marketing," Kylie says. "By nature we're introverts," Kirstin explains. The two note that all these changes in dairy farm business management mean new opportunities for dairy-related careers, from marketing to lobbying to personnel management.

A shortage of labor is pinching the Vermont dairy business. Changes in technology have reduced the labor demands, but at the same time, since fewer people are working in agriculture - less than two percent of the population nationwide - fewer people are exposed to it and develop any interest in the farming lifestyle. "It used to be that people would be willing to work for minimum wage and housing, but you don't see that anymore," Kirstin says.

"And we run a clock on Mother Nature," Kylie says. "When rain is coming, like it is right now, then we need to get the feed out, the cows have to be milked, the calves have to be fed. It's not a nine to five job."

"The profit margin is slimming down constantly," Kirstin adds. "We have to figure out how to offer health care and 401(k)s to compete with other industries."

"Our industry is learning more about managing people. How to sell your farm to employees," Kylie says. During the peak of summer, the Quesnel farm has 17 employees in addition to the family. "As many as seven people have college degrees here, half our staff. So I'm not sure that now we are competing with unskilled labor, we are competing with IBM and places like that. This industry is hungry for people who are enthusiastic about it and want to be in it."

Since an increasing number of those enthusiastic people are women, a host of new personnel issues are also arising. 'One of the women we were in school with just had a baby, and she called and said, 'Do you guys have a maternity leave policy on your farm, because we didn't have one and I just did all this research and wrote one if you want it,'" Kylie says. "We didn't have one, because so far none of us have had children, but now we have a maternity leave policy."

For women to meet the new dairy business challenges, Kirstin advises, "Be well rounded. Take everything, public speaking, business."

"Get involved in everything you can," Ashley Severy echoes. "Go overseas, go to college, get an education."

"Don't be discouraged by the fact that it's primarily a male industry," Kylie says. She holds out her strong, tan hands. "I may not have long fingernails, but you can always put on the fake ones when you dress up anyway. You can still be a girl and work on the farm."

Cindy Ellen Hill lives in Middlebury.