Manager Dairy

First, it’s grass fed beef. That means it’s leaner than store bought beef and will dry out quicker than what you are used to. When you cook your first steak, pull it before you think it’s ready. It’s better to be a little under than a little over. The way I cook my steaks is:

☛ Take your steaks out of the fridge and let them come up to room temperature. No you won’t die if your steak gets warm.

☛ Sprinkle kosher salt and black pepper on both flat sides of the steaks.

☛ Place a cast iron griddle pan over high heat till it’s nuclear hot. Leave it on high for 15 minutes on a gas burner, I don’t know how long for electric. Yes you will scorch off the seasoning. It’s worth it and not a big deal. Make breakfast the next day and the grease from your sausage or bacon will quickly reseason it.

☛ At the same time pre-heat your oven to as hot as it will go.

☛ When everything is hot, and you’ve unplugged the smoke alarm (the pan will smoke as it heats) place the steaks onto the hot pan AND DON’T TOUCH THEM for at least 45 seconds. There will be lots of smoke and noise, that’s good. When you flip the steaks to the other side for another 45 seconds, you should see a crust on the cooked side that is brown and in some spots almost black but not quite. It should look like these pork chops (yes this is basically the recipe for pork chops)

☛ After another 45 seconds for the second side, the whole pan goes in the oven for 2-3 minutes. 2 for medium rare, 3 for medium.

☛ After two minutes, pull the pan and flip the steaks, then 2 or 3 minutes again.

☛ After the last bit of cooking, pull the pan and place the steaks on another pan, covered with aluminum foil for at least 7 minutes. Don’t cut them, touch them, poke them, or peak. This is the time you finish your veggies, call the kids, set the table, and open the wine (or second bottle if you are at our house).

☛ Enjoy, and send me an email and let me know how your beef was.

☛ Note I didn’t include times for well done. I have family members who only eat well done steaks. If they come here, they get medium steaks, sorry. If you are going to cook your steak well done, you are murdering something I’ve spent years making as good as I can. Leave a little flavor in the meat and have some pink so you can taste the flavor.

French doctor and scientist Louis Pasteur invented the process of pasteurization more than a century ago. Pasteurization is the process of heating milk to at least 161° Fahrenheit for 15 seconds to remove milk-borne pathogens. This simple process destroys harmful bacteria while maintaining milk’s quality, taste and nutritional value. Since its discovery, pasteurization has safeguarded much of our food supply, including milk and dairy products. By heating raw milk in specially-designed equipment, pasteurization ensures the safety and wholesomeness of milk.

Federal regulations require that all milk intended for direct consumption be pasteurized – as a matter of food safety. Some state laws circumvent these regulations by allowing raw milk sales through farms and cow shares. All raw milk sold to consumers in the United States is required to be labeled as such.

☛ At Dairy Farmers Milk Co-Operative we always strive to provide the best products to our clients. How do you ensure a product is of high quality?

☛ Wholesale and distribution requires strong negotiation skills. How would you rate your negotiation skills from 1-10?

☛ Do you have any training in sales or business negotiation?

☛ At Dairy Farmers Milk Co-Operative we are always interested in finding new vendors and clients. Tell me about your experience in business development.

☛ Wholesale and distribution requires excellent organizational skills when it comes to purchase orders and inventory management. How would you rate your organizational skills from 1-10?

☛ At Dairy Farmers Milk Co-Operative we prefer to hire candidates with a post-secondary education in Business or Marketing. Take a moment to walk me through your post-secondary education.

☛ Market analysis is very important to us at Dairy Farmers Milk Co-Operative. What steps do you take to research the performance of a product before choosing to import it?

☛ What has been your best performing product in the past 12 months? Why do you think it has done so well?

☛ How do you feel that globalization has affected the wholesale and distribution industry in the USA?

☛ How familiar are you with NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement)?

☛ Many of our clients and vendors operate in other countries and time zones. Are you able to accommodate their needs by making yourself available outside of typical work hours?

☛ How do you properly vet potential new vendors?

☛ Many of our clients and vendors operate in other countries. Do you speak multiple languages? If not, how do you manage potential communication barriers?

☛ At Dairy Farmers Milk Co-Operative we are looking for sales professionals who can make an impact on our business immediately. How do you plan to do that?

☛ Tell me when you have delegated tasks effectively.

☛ Do you have any experience training or coaching others?

☛ What motivates you?

☛ How do you like to be recognized for your accomplishments?

☛ When have you had to change a major component of your project due to new information being presented?

☛ Where do you see yourself a year from now?

☛ What are your salary expectations?

☛ What career path interests you the most in this company?

☛ Tell me about an idea you have implemented at your last job.

☛ Tell me about an error or mistake you made because of a breakdown in communication from you or one of your team members.

☛ What do you know about our company culture?

☛ How do you manage a large workload?

☛ How do you deal with uncomfortable situations?

☛ Are you applying for any other jobs?

☛ Tell me about a time that you were asked to collaborate on a project with a colleague whom you did not necessarily see eye-to-eye with. How did you ensure that you got along well and met your deadline?

☛ Tell me about a time that you narrowly missed a deadline. How did you ensure your project was completed on time?

☛ In a team environment, tell me about a critical decision you have made in the past that greatly affected your team's performance.

We use no commercial fertilizers, nor organic ones. Our program is all about building soil health, not about applying a band-aid to resolve a problem. If we build the soil health, we don’t need fertilizer. We are into our fourth year of building soil and have over 2″ of topsoil.

About 2″ of topsoil, from 2014, in an area that has underperformed other areas of the pasture.

We feed produce daily and much of that produce goes back into the soil either through a byproduct of ingestion by our animals (poop) or by direct contact with the soil (biodegradation). Fresh produce is the only thing we add to our farm and we bring about 20,000 pounds of produce per day onto our farm. That means we divert from the landfill over 7 million pounds of organic material where it instead goes into our soil every year. Obviously much of it is water in the produce but we are still adding quite a bit of actual organic matter to our soil.

We base it off of demand, and what we can grow sustainably on our farm. I’ve been offered sheep for free which I refused because we didn’t have the carrying capacity on our farm for them and the cows. I’ve been questioned about goats, which are verboten on our farm. I’ve had goats before, never again.

Currently we raise cows, because I like cows and that’s really our main product. We also raise pigs because they do well in the woods and about half of our farm is wooded. Otherwise half of our farm would go unused or we’d have to log it. Plus we can turn pigs in about 8 months, vs. 2 years for cows so it’s a quicker turn around on our investment. Lastly for pigs, I REALLY love our pork so even if we went 100% to cows, I’d still keep a few pigs on the farm for our family.