We appreciate your cooperation in viewing this stop from the road only and not blocking any driveways. Tours are only available by calling in advance. Our number is 315-846-5640. Our farm is a modern 600 cow dairy farm producing 16 million pounds of milk per year. The farm has been in our family since the early 1900’s and is now owned by a partnership of father, Donald Shelmidine, and brothers, Doug and Todd. We employ 12 people full time throughout the year and our milk primarily goes to the Great Lakes Cheese Plant in Adams to make their award winning cheddar cheese. As you view our farm from the road, you’ll notice a large metal building farthest to the right with a large white tank. That is our farm resource recovery building. In the resource recovery building, we recover the solids from our cow manure, compost them, and recycle the compost as bedding for our cows. This process provides a sterile bedding material that saves Sheland Farms nearly $60,000 a year in bedding costs. The raw manure and the liquids left over from making the bedding compost flow into the large white tank attached to the building. This anaerobic digester uses bacteria to cook the manure and release methane gas. After the gas is cleaned, it is used to power a large engine that generates electricity. This is what we use to power our barns machinery and lights. Excess power flows out to the electrical grid and is used in our neighbor’s homes. We estimate that our cow power saves an additional $60,000 annually. The final phase of the resource recovery program is the large lagoon that appears to be a hill to the right of the resource recovery building. This lagoon stores the unused liquids from the initial processing. The lagoon is engineered and approved by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and allows us to store the liquids from the manure until it is the right time to spread them on our farm fields. We follow a detailed nutrient management plan that allows us to recycle the nutrients in the manure to fertilize our fields according to the needs of the specific crop growing there. We hire a certified planner to develop this plan for us. It costs our farm thousands of dollars a year just to maintain and update our plan and the lagoon cost over $150,000 to build. To continue to be the best environmental stewards we can be and remain good neighbors with surrounding homes, our farm has spent well over $600,000 to build this resource recovery system. Sheland Farms is proud to be a part of Jefferson County’s dairy industry. Again we appreciate your cooperation in viewing this stop from the road. Tours can be arranged by calling 315-846-5640. Thank you for your interest in Sheland Farms and we hope you enjoy the remainder of your 1000 Islands Ag Tour.
Sheland Farms 12043 County Route 79 Adams, NY 13605 315-846-5640
