We, along with our children,

Tammy and her husband Brian and a little daughter Riley who live in Iowa,

our second daughter Emily and her husband Jason

living in Woodbury, and our a daughter Alise living in

St. Paul, and Maggie who is

part of the dairy operation currently

and a student at high school would like to say welcome to our

dairy, we're happy to have you

and hope that you will feel that your day was well spent and enjoy learning

about

are anaerobic digester and some of the other aspects of our dairy.

Welcome to Jer-Lindy farms, we're happy to have you. We're happy to

tell you about our operation and hope that

you'll enjoy seeing what we have

and that maybe be able to learn part of the things that we have learned

over the past several months.

I started farming July of 1979 with a

FmHA beginning farmers lawn on a rented farm site,

married Linda in November of 79.

The farm site had been vacant for three or four years

and needed a lot of work.

Fifteen years later we bought an additional forty acres

that had been apart of this farm at one time and then in

August of 2002 we bought another 150 acres

that have been a part of the farm as well. We

expanded our dairy from 50 cows that we had been at

in 2002 by building freestyle barn

and at that point then we also both came back to be full-time farmers

and then now through the

last five years, six years I guess, we've

grown into 160 cows.

We have capacity to grow up further to about 180 to 200.

Plan beyond that may include

a cheese plant. As a family whose

really interested in agriculture and has always felt so that it was a real

privilege to be able to produce food for people,

we have tried to look at other opportunities that

as our four daughters were growing up might be able to

teach them some valuable lessons about responsibility and about producing the

food.

In order to do that we've incorporated a few other

entity in our dairy and one of them has been our apple orchard.

We began our apple orchard in the early 1990's

and have expanded that some again

and we currently have about 50 trees.

Another entity that we began back in

I'm 1997 is are low-lying heard

and we've been working on it for quite some time now and it originated

from

a herd of Angus that were part of a research project

in Australia. We currently have sold some

beaf and we're excited to continue to

move forward with that. I was first

introduced to it in either '99 or 2000 and I don't remember

which when I was serving on the Stearns County Dairy Advisory Committee and the

Committee was invited to

go to Dennis Haubenschild's and

I went along and began to have an education

and digestion, so

over the years I would read articles about it

and so it became something of a somewhat familiar with,

but then of course the interest

grew 2004 when Bob Lafay called

said that the Minnesota project had contacted him

that they were working to secure a grant and we're going to need a farm to put

a digester on and they're looking for a mid-size farm

and wanted to know if I would have some interest in that.

Without giving it a lot of thought I said sure, not really thinking that it

would

ever really happen.

The potential benefits that I'd seen coming in, number one was

to create an additional revenue stream for our farm;

on small farms,and ours included,

it's never easy to make it,

so anytime you can add a source of revenue

certainly something we're always looking for.

So, that to me was the number one potential benefit.

Certainly environmental benefits and the

opportunity to be able to

say to consumers and neighbors

that you're protecting your environment

I see as another huge benefit.

It's very exciting to be able to take a product,

such as the waste product that our cows produce, manure,

and be able to use it in so many different ways

that are very good and safe for the environment, as well as,

provide us with bedding and

apply it to our field in a lot

safer manner. Obviously we did have some concerns;

one of them was giving up our source of bedding for our dairy, which was

sand and our concern was that it may not be quite as comfortable

and that we may have some issues regarding somatic cell count and

herd health.

One of my biggest concerns was would this thing work,

it's a part of a manure handling system

and so my concern was are we going to be able to get the manure through it, or am

I going to have a

albatross around my neck and

will this be a disaster.

Our dairy situation,

in order to build a digester needed to have

several other pieces put in place in order for the digester

to operate properly. We'd always planned on

expanding the dairy a small amount, so that

it could support a second family. So, that was the

reason that our barn has a 36-foot addition and allows for another 40 cows

than what we had. Then we also needed

a lagoon storage system to handle the

the waste from the digester, the liquid portion after its been separated.

Those were all part of the project, which actually began on September 5th

of 2007. To get the manure into the digester first, which starts on the

free stall barn floor and we scrape

with a skid loader and a tire scraper twice a day

into a gutter at the end of each isle.

In the barn there's 4 isles and at the end of each one is a

connected gutter with covers on, which we'd just remove the cover when its

cleaning time, scrape the manure into there and then it

ends up in a mixing reception pit. In order to make this digester work,

we need to lower the solids content of the manure from the 12 to 14 percent

that it comes out of the cow at

down to 6 to 8 percent.

After the manure comes out of the digester and we separate the solids out

then we have the remaining liquid, which we

run back into the gutter, which flushes the gutter and then

also works to dilute the manure, also pre-warms the manure

and inoculates it with bacteria that is coming out of the digester, so we're

performing several different tasks there.

The manures pumped out of the reception mixing

pit 24 hours a day

very slowly, so that were feeding the digester

around the clock that is similar to the way you'd feed a cow because the

bacteria in there

are sensitive and they will perform the best

if they are fed consistently throughout the day. So, we try to

time that pump so that it pumps

only the amount of manure that it needs to in order for us to get

the manure in at the next milking time.

Manure then is pumped in the bottom

and each time some is pumped in then some must come out and that comes out

the top

and falls to another pit, which is on the north side of the barn as

partially an exterior pit the manure coming into that

pit is still actively making some gas,

so we need to make sure for safety reasons that that pit

is ventilated well and it's from that pit then that we pump

twice a day out into separator and separate the solids out, which we

will use for bedding.

The liquid portion again we're using to dilute with,

but the excess then gravity flows out to

earthen base lagoon.

We are using deep bedded solids,

so the solids are 12 to 18 inches deep

in the stalls. It provides a very comfortable surface

for the cows probably more comfortable than

sand itself in that it's less abrasive

and as far as the quality of milk

and health issues at this point

we feel that it's looking very positive.

Gases,

pulled off the top of the silo, comes down and is

pulled into the engine where it is burned off

and as the engine is running it's powering a 37 killawatt

generator. Power then from the generator is used first in the

digester plant to power all the pumps

and lights; excess energy then is sold directly

to the grid through our utilities turns electric.

In order to operate and maintain this digester

at this point is taking me about 20 minutes a day

on average, except for that probably one day a month

it will take an additional two to three hours

to clean the screens on the separator;

the oil changing will be automatic, at this point it's not, but it

will be eventually. The advice that I would give to somebody who is

interested in the digester is

go ahead and work on it.

I think that one of the things you'll wanna do is contact people who have done it

and learn about the grants, potential grants that are out there.

You'll also want to do research with companies

who have the ability to do it. And start early

in order to secure the grants that I think are necessary at this point in

order to make a

digester feasible, person or

an operator I think should give themselves at least a year

to work on those things. I think the

the future for digester projects is

going to explode as energy costs rise,

environmental concerns rise,

interest in digesters will rise exponentially.

We hope that you enjoyed your visit

to Jer-Lindy Farms today and if you have questions regarding

the anaerobic digester we'd be happy to

answer those, or if you'd like to give us a call or email us.

Thanks.