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The Milkman Cometh
Crusading farmer Michael Schmidt touts the benefits of raw milk from a rural oasis where happy cows listen to Mozart and produce dairy products with 'soul'
MARGARET PHILP - Globe and Mail
The Christmas decorations will soon be hung at Michael Schmidt's farm, angels and stars fashioned out of straw and a pine wreath nailed to the front door. Moss has been gathered for the nativity scene, its wooden baby Jesus hard-carved and miniature sheep made of wool sheared from the farm's own flock. In the next few weeks, the family will trudge into the forest to chop a majestic pine, standing in worshipful silence around the tree before cutting it down.
In the lofty, century-old barn, life will be just as festive for the cows: old-fashioned tin oil lamps hanging from the ceiling, pine boughs tied with bright red ribbons draped over rafters and doors. A Christmas tree with straw decorations will stand in the corner. On an unusual farm where the animals are respected as part of the family, tradition holds that the herd be lavished with holiday trappings like everyone else.
This odd show of Christmas cheer is hardly surprising for an eccentric and wildly charismatic farmer who talks to his cows like children, a towering heavy-set man in straw hat and Birkenstocks who makes a habit of strolling through the barn every evening to bid "good night" to the animals, a professionally trained orchestra conductor who's known to play Mozart recordings to his cows.
"When you come into the barn, you look at it and you can't believe how clean it is," Mr. Schmidt boasts, with a thick German accent. "Not that I'm totally fanatic. It's just that we share with the cows the same thing we have in the house."
"It's clean, beautiful, and you enjoy going in there. I don't go into the barn and say I want so many litres. To us, it's how can we take care of the cow so she actually likes giving us the milk? Then you get a different quality. Then the food becomes medicine. That's what I always say."
This quaint, almost child-like philosophy of farming is the essence of Michael Schmidt, the maverick dairy farmer facing at least one charge of breaking the law after openly providing unpasteurized milk to a few hundred Toronto families for more than a decade. For him, happy cows produce milk that is more abundant, healthy, delicious to drink, and alive than the bags of industrially processed, pasteurized milk sitting in most refrigerators across the nation.
He is old-fashioned and hard-working.
His farm, located near Durham, 145 kilometres northwest of Toronto, is described by one friend as "one of the few Old-MacDonald-Had-a-Farm farms that are left." But when Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources officers raided the property last week and confiscated thousands of dollars worth of cheese and butter-making equipment, computers, and files, it became obvious that this humble farmer has tapped the zeitgeist of socially minded, health-conscious modern urbanites outraged by government meddling with their right to choose food unadulterated by big agri-business.
Outside a press conference in downtown Toronto this week hosted by celebrity chef and longtime friend Jamie Kennedy, the sidewalk was jammed with dozens of Mr. Schmidt's middle-class customers waving placards like hardened protesters. Plenty more defiantly blocked police and government inspectors who'd arrived without a warrant from boarding the old blue school bus in the parking lot of the private Toronto Waldorf School where he distributes sterilized glass jars of raw milk every Tuesday to many of the 200 families who own shares in his cows.
"I think there's a groundswell of interest in the providence of food amongst consumers," Mr. Kennedy told reporters at the press conference. "The response to Michael's plight points that out graphically. It shows to me the public, society in general, is more interested in the providence of their food, more interested in sustaining local economies in food, more interested in supporting rural partners."
What is it about this colourful immigrant farmer that has captured the moment in Toronto -- so much so that his devoted following wants unpasteurized milk, heedless of the dire warnings about E.coli and salmonella poisoning from public health departments? Part of his appeal lies in the promise of the milk itself -- it contains natural enzymes, antibodies, and vitamins destroyed in the heating process of pasteurization, and people who are lactose intolerant say they can drink raw milk without trouble. But there's also something about Mr. Schmidt and his strict philosophy of organic farming that lifts lowly agriculture from the anonymous back roads of the province to the stature of fine art.
Mr. Schmidt was 28 with a master's degree in farming and stints as a musical conductor under his belt when he immigrated to Canada back in 1983 with his wife Dorothea and three children. Left behind was a thriving organic farm with livestock in the barn and grain in the fields. The couple was looking to cross a new frontier, importing their quasi-spiritual brand of organic agriculture -- called biodynamic farming -- from Europe to the entrenched conventional farming system in Canada.
Biodynamic farming is an obscure, spiritual brand of organic agriculture founded almost 100 years ago by an Austrian philosopher named Rudolf Steiner who subscribed to farms being mixed with crops and livestock where one supports the other in a cycle. Biodynamic farmers will store manure underground over the winter, for example, later diluting it with water in a sort of homeopathic preparation to be sprayed onto the soil where crops are planted. The philosophy also holds that cosmic forces and energies influence the workings of the farm.
Over the years, Mr. Schmidt and his wife have drawn on these beliefs to build a thriving 400-acre farm (he owns 100 and rents 300 more) with cows, pigs, sheep and fields of spelt and rye. (The two say they're responsible for bringing spelt, an alternative for people with allergies to wheat, to Canada at a time when the grain was unknown to farmers here.) At the same time, Mr. Schmidt has built a reputation as a proud and meticulous farmer with a renegade streak and a quirky bent for mixing the two distinct worlds of agriculture and arts and culture.
In the aftermath of his last brush with the law more than a decade ago, when he was charged for the first time and slapped with a $3,500 fine for providing raw milk to the public, Mr. Schmidt concocted the idea of raising money to cover his legal bills by combining his love of classical music and farming.
For an event called Symphony in the Barn, he hired choir ensembles and professional musicians to play to more than 100 guests while the cows lowed in their stalls, swallows swooped from the rafters and cats clambered onto the stage. The symphonies have become almost an annual affair. Mr. Schmidt has relished conducting, though he has handed the baton a few times to the conductor of the Vienna State Opera, another of his high-profile friends. One time, Canadian pianist Anton Kuerti performed. A few of those years, world-renowned chefs like Mr. Kennedy and Michael Stadtlander, another long-time friend, have prepared elegant multi-course gourmet feasts to be shared with the music, using food produced on the farm.
"It's a very out-of-body experience. A joyful experience, with all the realities of farm life," says Joanne Thomas Yaccato, a business writer and long-time customer and friend. "Michael is a renaissance man. He believes music and the earth are intrinsically bound. This guy is deeply, deeply spiritual. Everything he touches is beyond a normal human experience."
Ms. Thomas Yaccato does not purchase raw milk because Mr. Schmidt stoutly refuses to provide any form other than the whole, unprocessed milk. Conscious of her weight, she has begged him for skim milk. But the farmer, firmly set in his ways, will not budge. "I was pleading, 'Please let me have skim milk.' And he said, ' It's dead milk. It has no vitality. No energy. You've got to stop drinking it.' "
A father of five, Mr. Schmidt has a soft spot for children. At least once, he has invited a Grade 2 class from the Waldorf School -- which shares roots in the same philosophy as biodynamic farming -- for an enchanted tour of his farm. After travelling by horse and buggy to the woods, the children encountered tea and treats left by hidden gnomes and fairies and heard strains of music coming from high up in trees where Mr. Schmidt had positioned violinists.
Over the years, he has welcomed dozens of young farm apprentices from Germany and opened his farm to troubled teenagers to spend time as farm hands.
Former Waldorf teacher and long-time customer, Eric Philpott, recalls a difficult time when his daughter hit a "rough patch" as a teenager and spent a few weeks on the Schmidt farm.
"The farm is an oasis in a way," he says. "If you're a teenager from the city, not only are you out in the country, but there's this love of the animals. I think it's one of the most precious things he does. There's no hoopla about it. No deal. No noise. But they've been doing this for years and years."
When asked about Mr. Schmidt's uncommon magnetism, his cow shareholders -- his customers own shares in the herd under a shrewd scheme to circumvent the law forbidding the sale and distribution of raw milk -- often speak of the man's genuine caring for people.
"He has a curiosity in other people," says Tim Schlachtenrodt, his son-in-law. "It's why people stand in line for over an hour to get their milk. He takes time for everyone. It's like going to the hairdresser."
It would seem that what Mr. Schmidt does, he does big. But as with other passionate people, his intensity comes at a cost. He and his wife separated last year after 29 years of marriage. "It's hard to live with me," Mr. Schmidt acknowledges. And a stubborn refusal to break his word has spurred him to launch a hunger strike as he vowed he would do 11 years ago if authorities again raided his farm.
"Anyone who's really gifted has demons they wrestle with," says Ms. Thomas Yaccato. "His heart is so big and his capacity for giving is enormous. But the downside is he's a lightning rod for not only what's good. He gets into trouble, as this [latest problem] will attest."
In the end, according to Mr. Stadtlander, his magic is that "you can taste the soul of the food."
The chef says he would purchase Mr. Schmidt's raw-milk cheese in a heartbeat if it wouldn't invite legal troubles.
"You can see he's definitely a protector and a steward of his land. It's exactly the opposite of when you go into the supermarkets and all the food is crap. His is the opposite side; it's full of life and energy."
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