On a sun-drenched, windy day near Millerton, N.Y., Erich McEnroe squints against the glare as he coaxes his herd to greener pastures. His weathered hands work the gate with practiced ease while his hair whips wildly across his face.
Around him, black Angus mothers and their calves graze contentedly, their rhythmic chewing a soundtrack to generations of agricultural perseverance.
"My goal when I came back was to keep the farm alive for the next generation," Erich says, his voice carrying the weight of a promise made not only to himself, but also to the ghosts of McEnroes past who worked this same soil.
In a landscape where dairy farms once flourished, McEnroe Organic Farm stands as a poignant reminder of what's been lost. Nearly two-dozen dairy farms once dotted the hills of this corner of Dutchess County. Now, barely four remain.
This 1,200-acre sanctuary of organic agriculture sits just two hours north of Manhattan's concrete jungle, a living monument to a vanishing way of life.
What’s Erich’s focus? Beef and organic row crops. He operates a 150-head Angus-Waygu cattle operation. All grain and hay are grown on the farm, and his end market for beef is online sales and to a business in Brooklyn.
Transition from dairy
But long before the shift to beef it was all about dairy. Erich grew up on the farm and saw its transition.
The farm was going to be sold to a developer in the early 1980s after his grandfather died. But Ray, Erich’s late father, bought out his siblings from the business and decided to change things up.
The developer backed out of the agreement, and it came up for sale again. It was around this time — 1986 — that Ray developed a partnership with Douglas and Susanne Durst, members of the Durst family, a prominent real estate developer in New York City.
According to Erich, Douglas and Susanne, who were big into horses, wanted to dispose of their horse bedding in a more environmentally friendly manner. The couple got involved in the farm, bringing horse manure to compost.
They then partnered with Ray to start a garden, and this led to the farm growing more vegetables. The farm’s first greenhouse went up in the early 1990s, and Ray and Douglas would become full-time partners in the operation.
“We started out with a card table on the side of the road selling sweet corn,” Erich says. “Then we'd grow more, selling to restaurants and things of that nature.”
At one time, the farm grew 50 to 60 acres of vegetables with up to 18 greenhouses. They would send vans to New York City restaurants to do direct sales. But that’s largely slowed because of labor, high fuel prices and competition.
"The organic vegetable market became much more saturated than it was in the 1990s and early 2000s, but there's still big demand for local products in season," Erich says. Now, the focus is on a dozen or so fruits and vegetables.
Cows, crops and compost
In the early 2000s, Erich graduated from SUNY Cobleskill. He did an internship with Carovail and worked in commercial real estate in New York City with the Durst family. But there was always a part of him that wanted to farm.
“In 2006, I came back, worked with my father and grew the compost business,” he says.
A year later, a nonprofit, the Model Organic Farm Foundation, was set up to manage the farm, provide educational experiences to the public and promote the compost facility.
The farm has since grown to 1,200 acres — mostly plots of land the farm is allowed to manage for free.
"It's enabled us to grow our agronomy operation, and that organic agronomy … it always holds pretty strong for us, and it works well with us being able to compost. So, we can do it more efficiently," Erich says.
Rotational grazing is key to the beef operation.
"I like the numbers and the data game of it with everything, but with the cattle, I figure if we move and rotate an extra four times through the season … we gain an extra 60 to 80 pounds on the calves, and that's weather dependent,” Erich says. “If you manage it well, you can definitely have them do the work for you.”
Erich’s goal is an average daily gain of between 2.5 and 3 pounds. Calves are weaned at about 700 pounds. The finishing size is 1,200 pounds, with a 750-pound hanging weight.
He’s experimented with Wagyu to enhance beef marbling, but he’s found that they don't grow as well as Angus and take longer to feed. Erich says he likes Waygu-Angus mothers bred to Angus bulls. He says this results in good calving ease and nice growth.
The farm grows 450 acres of organic grains — corn, soybeans and hay — and 350 acres of pasture. The rest is in fruits and vegetables; woodlands, meadows and ponds — and the 30-acre compost operation.
Organic grains go to Pennsylvania farms or to brokers in western New York. Erich once sold a load of organic soybeans for $32.50 a bushel.
"I will remember that number probably until I’m old and grey," he says with a laugh. “It's gone down quite a bit from there, but it's still well into the 20s. We have no problem selling that."
Crop rotation is hay — alfalfa and timothy — for three to five years. The ground is then moldboard-plowed with corn planted behind it. Compost is also land-applied and plowed under. Soybeans come after corn.
“Having the cattle provides an outlet for the hay, so the hay ground is part of the overall agronomy crop rotation,” he says.
The manure from the cows helps feed the compost operation. The compost facility takes food waste from neighboring towns, but most of the food waste comes from recycling centers in New York City. The product is seven different organic soil blends that are sold to the community.
"Ag changes all the time,” Erich says. “We’re fortunate that the compost is still the driver behind it, and so there is more of a focus on this and the finished bag product.”
The next chapter
Last year Erich’s father, Ray McEnroe III, died at age 73. It left Erich, the only one of Ray’s five sons interested in farming, as the lone member of his family to carry on the operation.
He feels a big sense of responsibility keeping his family involved in the operation. But he learned a lot working alongside his dad.
"Just to take chances, try new things,” he says. “Be mindful of planting dates, the feed rations of the cattle. Maybe to take the foot off the gas on the production side and let nature do its own thing to keep costs lower and find markets before overproducing. It’s been a good journey to say the least.”