Hello from the Buckeye State

January 8, 2013

By: Dairy Today Guest Editor

Lambert VanderMade

Sherwood, Ohio

VanderMade Dairy LLC is a family-owned and -operated dairy milking 1,400 cows in northern Ohio.

**Extended comments highlighted in blue.

My parents and I started our dairy in northern Ohio in 1999 when we moved from the Netherlands. After looking at many countries in Europe as well as Canada, we decided to move to the U.S. We purchased 300 acres of land and constructed a 600-cow dairy—a big change from the 60-cow and 200-sow farm that we were used to. Since then, we’ve been able to expand three different times to our current size. Each one of these expansions required a renewed permit through the Ohio Department of Agriculture. Thanks to great neighbors and help from others, we were able to complete these permit applications ourselves without any opposition.