Cliff and Patti Brunner

Otsego County, New York

“As I think of what we have,” Cliff Brunner says, “I almost have to slap myself. We are so fortunate.” Looking around Sunny Slope Farm, you would certainly agree.

In 1933, Cliff’s dad felt fortunate, too, when he bought this 225-acre farm which is situated on the highlands at the headwaters of the Susquehanna River, essentially the northern foothills of the Catskill Mountains.

But it is not just the natural beauty of the place that Cliff is thinking of when he considers his good fortune. He is thinking of the fact that their three grown children—Amy (with her husband Keith and their son, Jeremiah), Cliff Jr (with his wife, Natasha), and Lisa (with her husband Matthew)—live right on the farm or very close by.

He is thinking of how Amy and Lisa, both educators in the local school system, bring their classes to the farm for hands on learning about agriculture and ecology. Some students who come to the farm as seventh graders remember coming there when they were kindergartners. They’re coming from the same school Cliff and Patti attended when they were kids.

He is thinking of how his son-in-law, Keith, is working with him on the farm full-time now, and how the whole family always have and still do pitch in on the farm.

And, he is thinking of their successful bed and breakfast that has a 95% return rate. Apparently, the Brunner’s guests are fortunate, too.

Cliff is also thinking, “Thank God organic caught on, because that’s why we’re still in the dairy business. We survived all those years in the conventional market because Patti and I were a lot younger and we could do all the work ourselves. We relied very little on outside help. I listened to and rejected the preaching of the day telling farmers they had to go into big debt to be successful. You won’t find any big blue silos or tractors with air conditioned cabs on our farm. We took good care of our animals and our machinery so they would last. And we started the bed and breakfast in 1988 to keep us afloat financially when the conventional milk prices went down. All of that was the key to survival if you were a small farmer and you didn’t want to get big or get out. We milked 45 cows back then, and we milk 45 cows today.”

The Brunners have always maintained a closed herd, which means they use artificial insemination to impregnate the cows, and bring on new cows only through their breeding program. The herd used to consist of Holsteins only but, as Cliff points out, “Breeders kept refining the Holstein genetics so that the cows got bigger and bigger. It got to the point that they couldn’t fit in our old fashioned, stanchion barn. So we started crossing Jersey genetics [a smaller breed of cow] into the herd. Now our cows fit in the barn comfortably and they give richer milk.”

Cliff and Patti began farming organically several years before they made the decision to get certified organic. Cliff didn’t like using herbicides on the crops and neither did his children. Cliff and Patti’s daughters, Lisa and Amy, lived on the farm by then with their own families. Besides, Cliff says, “My dad always cultivated the corn instead of using chemicals and it worked just fine. So I stopped spraying and went back to cultivating. Then I stopped using commercial fertilizers. We never confined our cows and always relied heavily on pasture so there wasn’t much to change there.” By 2006, Sunny Slope Farm was certified organic.

Environmental awareness seems to run in the family. Daughter Amy can remember playing in the creek that runs through the barn yard and wondering how everything was connected. Cliff says, “When the growth hormone issue was so hot, one of the first things our B&B guests would ask us is if we used it. We never used it and we were part of the opposition that tried to stop it. It was a disaster for farmers who thought the product would solve all their problems.” Patti adds, “Not only was it bad for the cows, but it pitted farmers against farmers the same way the fight over GMOs does today.”

“And now,” Cliff says, “we’ve got herbicide resistant weeds, transgenic corn that’s bred to resist the pesticides and herbicides the same company sells you, and terminator technology [seeds that are sterile after one growth season so farmers cannot save seed from one year’s crop to plant the next year; instead they have to buy new seed every year]. Whenever humans try to alter the way things are naturally we make a terrible mess of it. It’s all short term thinking.”

Presently, the Brunners are involved in the opposition to big gas companies buying up land rights in the area to bore hydraulic fracturing wells to extract natural gas. In fact, one son-in-law is running for office on an anti-fracking platform. “Farmers who are against fracking and who wouldn’t sign over land use rights are at odds with the ones who did sign,” Patti says. “Once again, the issue pits farmer against farmer.”

Cliff sums up neatly why they do what they do. “I think a lot of what we feel about organic farming is because we love our kids and we love our farm and now it’s more important than ever.”