D
A Balancing Act
airy judging coach, professor, mom, wife, business owner, and farmer are just a few of the words used to describe this multi-talented individual. Carrie Edsall, the dairy judging coach at SUNY Cobleskill, grew up on a generational dairy farm. In her youth, she could be seen as the little girl pulling around the calves she wished she could show, until she was 13 when she enrolled in 4-H. Edsall enjoyed showing her family’s registered Holsteins and Brown Swiss at her local shows and fairs. She gives credit to her interest in 4-H Dairy Judging that allowed her to go to so many places and helped her build confidence within herself and her opinions. Carrie Edsall resides in Cobleskill, New York where she owns and operates Black Willow Pond Farm, a diversified livestock farm that focuses on pasture-raised meats. Edsall is employed at SUNY Cobleskill as an Animal Science professor and has been coaching the Dairy Cattle Judging Team and advising the Dairy Cattle Club since 2015. She runs the farm with her husband, Dan, and her two sons, Luke and Jacob. Both of her sons participate in 4-H in a wide variety of projects. The main focus is dairy, but show pigs and show rabbits also make guest appearances! Luke has an intense interest in tractors, equipment, and welding. Jacob, whilst twisting Edsall’s arm, has acquired a few Guernseys to show. When it became time to choose what she would do after high school, it was with no shadow of a doubt that Edsall
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would choose to pursue a degree in Animal Science. She attended both SUNY Morrisville and Cornell University, which gave her a well-rounded exposure to the dairy industry in various different ways. “The connections I made in college continue to be so beneficial to this day. My lifelong friends came from my college days,” Edsall said, which many people in the industry can relate so closely to. Edsall made the judging teams at both colleges, which gave her the opportunity to travel, meet breeders, and compete in national contests. Staying involved and encouraging the youth of the industry is something Edsall is passionate about and she continues to find ways to do just that. After her years at college, she was presented with a position as herd manager and then fell into Cooperative Extension. Edsall worked in Extension for both Cornell and North Carolina State. Within those years, she worked closely with farmers and niche marketing - farmers that were “thinking outside the box.”
In 2009, Edsall moved back to her home state of New York to “practice what she preached.” Her farm has concentrations in pasture-raised meats such as poultry, pork, meat rabbits, grass-fed lamb and laying hens. And in recent years, she has been working with her family’s dairy to raise beef, veal, and marketing of their dairy products including milk, cheese curds, and yogurt. Roughly 90% of the products marketed are sold as retail. Edsall attends weekly, year-round farmers markets in addition to shipping meats from their website (blackwillowpondfarm.com), and what they sell out of their farm store front. The wholesale products are marketed towards many local stores as well as local restaurants featuring specialty items. They are best known for their pastured chicken and Berkshire pork as well as their escalating flock of Katahdin hair sheep. The rabbit has always been unique and they hold a special spot for Edsall as she has been raising them since she was eight. The store has come a long way, starting out like many great companies in their former
Carrie Edsall with her husband Dan, and sons Luke and Jacob. garage. At first the store was used as a place to organize products for customer orders and to prepare for markets, but their small business has grown and is still growing! During the onset of Covid-19, Edsall and her family found it very important to help the farm store flourish. Their online sales of products grew immensely in a short period of time. Every business has its challenges, and with off-farm jobs, kids sports schedules, and the daily demands and unknowns of the farm, it became a balancing act. One of the biggest learning curves Edsall has hit along the way with the farm store is shipping products. She found that shipping the meats was a “gamechanger,” but rapidly became unpredictable and time consuming. A challenge people across the dairy industry seem to be quickly realizing is the bottling and sales of fluid milk. The harsh reality of how little money can be made from fluid milk sales is hard for any passionate dairy farmer to swallow, but Edsall believed it was important to support an industry that supported her. She wanted to get their fresh, local milk into consumers’ hands all while giving a friendly face behind the bottle. Fortunately, since the farm already had a large following with their meats, it made sense for customers to buy dairy products as well.
