McCluskey Brothers Farm

Mary Ellen McCluskey: “Being organic is important. The problem we run into is the consumer wants the true organic…the small family farmer who's doing what we're doing, but they can't differentiate it from people that are just hiding behind the organic label.”

Patrick McCluskey: “Everything we do is certified organic. We've been certified organic since 1996. We have approximately eight hundred acres here in the drift less area of Wisconsin. We just got into intensive rotational grazing this year. We've always grazed but this year we took it up a notch or several notches. We've put it about 180 acres of our crop land into into permanent pastures. We milk holstein, holstein-Normande cross and Brian has two jersey. We cut that herd back too this year from. We were milking 60. And when we went to intensive rotational grazing, we went the opposite way of what everybody else is doing. Everybody else is expanding their herds. We're contracting.”

We found we can do more with less as in when we're making our cheese. We don't need a huge volume of milk to make a great product. We have cheeses that the only place you can buy them is that McCluskey Brothers, Shillelagh Glenn Farms or at our farmer's market stand.