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CapitalPress.com
Friday, June 3, 2022
Harrold’s Dairy: Family
continues farming tradition
Max, as a partner in 2014 and hasn’t looked
back.
Harrold’s Dairy milks 450 to 500 cows
CRESWELL, Ore. — When Bobbi Harrold daily and grows most of its own feed on about
Frost went off to college to earn her animal sci- 1,200 acres in Creswell, Ore. They are one of
ence degree, her folks hoped that she’d become only three dairies in Lane County.
a nutritionist or take another job in the
Frost is currently board vice chair
industry — anything but farming.
of the Oregon Dairy Farmers Associ-
ation and enjoys getting to know fel-
“They understood how hard it is to
low dairy farmers around the state and
really make your living on a farm, but
lobbying on their behalf on issues that
farming is just the only thing I’ve ever
matter to the industry. She said most
really wanted to do,” Frost said.
of their job is educating the public and
One day she was talking to a sales-
man visiting the dairy who shared that
the legislature about dairies and their
he’d been in a similar situation, but Bobbi Frost practices. Ag overtime, water, animal
that by the time he was old enough to
welfare and manure management are
join the family farm it was out of business. He among the issues they frequently address.
encouraged her to follow her heart.
Working with ODFA requires time away
“He told me that I could get a job in the from the dairy, but Bobbi says she gets lots of
industry and see animals every day but that it help from her family.
would never be the same as having my own
“Every generation of the family that has
farm,” Frost said. “I realized that I wanted to come before me has prioritized being active in
see my own cows every day and I am extremely our community and in the industry,” Frost said.
fortunate that my grandparents, parents and “My grandparents and parents all do what-
everybody did such a good job that there was a ever they can to help me with my kids and
my responsibilities on the farm; I absolutely
farm left for me to come back to.”
Frost graduated in 2011, joined her father, couldn’t do it without them.”
By BRENNA WIEGAND
For the Capital Press
S221093-1
Royal Riverside Farm:
‘We love our animals’
By GEOFF PARKS
For the Capital Press
ALBANY, Ore. — Ben
and Amy Krahn’s dairy
encompasses only 5 acres and
20 milking cows, but the cou-
ple has always had big dreams
for the lifestyle it could pro-
vide for them and their two
ag-centric daughters.
Situated on Riverside
Road and nestled in the lush
farmland of the Willamette
Valley southwest of Albany,
Royal Riverside Farm comes
by its regal name purposely.
Amy and both of her daugh-
ters are past and current
tiara-wearers of the state dairy
industry’s promotional pro-
grams, such as the Oregon
Dairy Princess Ambassador
program and similar contests.
Amy was the Oregon State
Princess Ambassador in 1996
(as Amy Poole) and Gracie,
20, is the current State Prin-
cess Ambassador — the first
mother-daughter title-hold-
ers in the program’s 62-year
history. Clancey, 17, cur-
rently reigns as the program’s
Linn-Benton County repre-
sentative, so next year possi-
bly could see a Krahn fam-
ily trifecta if she, too, is
crowned the State Princess
Ambassador.
The daughters raise the
family’s mostly Jersey herd,
the basis of which are nation-
al-award winning cows they
say are, appropriately, “pam-
pered like princesses.”
Ben, 48, claims fifth-gen-
eration status as a dairyman
while Amy, 47, is the third
generation of her family to
work in the industry.
Ben grew up on a dairy
in Wisconsin with Holsteins,
while Amy’s roots are on a
Hood River dairy farm, work-
ing with Jerseys.
“He was managing the
OSU Dairy and I was teach-
ing at Linn Benton Commu-
nity College when we got
Geoff Parks/For the Capital Press
The Krahn family outside their dairy barn near Albany,
Ore. Left to right: Amy, Clancey, Gracie and Ben.
together,” Amy said. “We
both had this big heart and a
dream but we couldn’t afford
anything.”
But they were commit-
ted to teaching their daugh-
ters the same life skills that
they grew up with, she said,
“a lifestyle that instills faith,
family and farm values
(through) hard work, dedica-
tion and commitment.”
They purchased the Albany
acreage and house at auction
in 2010, all four of them work-
ing together with that lifestyle
commitment in front of them.
By 2018, they had built
a barn for the cows with an
adjacent milking parlor and
old-style glass bottling line
where they process 650 gal-
lons of creamline — pasteur-
ized but un-homogenized —
milk each week. They deliver
that product to 50 stores
around the state, as far away
as Bend and Portland.
“There’s not a lot of dairies
where there are people doing
the milking, doing the bot-
tling and doing the distribu-
tion,” Amy said.
In June of 2021, in a nod
to the ongoing pandemic and
in a further effort to maxi-
mize the return from their
small operation, the family
converted a small shed at the
front of their property into the
Classy Cow Farmstand.
There, they sell drive-up
customers half-gallon and
individual-sized bottles of
their cream line and chocolate
milk as well as meat products
from their herd of hogs and
fresh fruits and produce from
Amy’s parents’ farm in Hood
River.
Their good husbandry prac-
tices have rewarded them with
exceptional cows providing
high-quality milk, Amy said.
That, and the family’s pas-
sion for the show ring.
“We don’t just have milk
quality, we have really pretty
cows, show cows,” Clancey
said, “and we are nationally
known for being good show-
men. As much as we are in the
milk business, we’re market-
ing also, because we want that
genetic superiority.”
“We said we can’t just feed
our milk to our pigs, we need
to recoup some of the costs
of its production,” she said.
“One of the dreams of our par-
ents was to channel our grand-
parents’ ways, and that’s what
really founded the idea of put-
ting the milk into bottles.”
“At the end of the day, we
love our animals.”