Four Girls Dairy, a 247-acre hill farm in Fairfax, Vermont, has been named the 2025 Vermont Dairy Farm of the Year.
University of Vermont (UVM) Extension and the Vermont Dairy Industry Association, in cooperation with the New England Green Pastures program, chose this farm for its overall excellence in dairying, including its quality milk production; outstanding pasture, crop and herd management; and sustainable environmental practices, among other criteria.
Owner Peter Rainville grew up on a dairy farm, developing a love for farming and a strong work ethic at an early age. He farmed first with his parents and brother in the town of Georgia, six miles up the road. In 2000, Rainville and his growing family moved to his current location and bought what was known as Homestead Farm from his aunt and uncle. He renamed it Four Girls Dairy after daughters Sarah, Marie, Hannah and Ashley.
He turned a tragedy in 2008 — a barn fire that killed 48 of his 86 cows and destroyed his tie-barn — into an opportunity to rethink his operation to make it more efficient and sustainable. He decided to build a free-stall barn and purchased a Lely Astronaut A3 milking robot to milk his new, smaller herd of 60 cows.
His cows, primarily Holsteins, consistently average 80 pounds of milk a day for a rolling herd average of 24,000 pounds. Butterfat is 4.5 percent and protein, 3.3 percent. The farm ships its milk to the Dairy Farmers of America Cooperative in St. Albans, earning premiums and numerous milk quality awards over the years.
The dairy farmer raises his own replacements, working with Premium Select Sires to breed for the “total package” as he says—strong feet and legs and good teat placement for the robotic milking system.
Heifers are bred at 14 to 15 months although Rainville says that he considers the animal’s size more than actual age when making the decision to breed. He strives for a calving interval of 21 months.
The farm grows all its own forages, supplementing with purchased grain, including 120 acres of grass, yielding 3.5 to 4 tons of dry matter per acre and 45 acres of corn yielding approximately 20 tons of silage per acre. Cows are fed a PMR (partial mixed ration) of corn silage, haylage and grain with additional grain when they enter the robotic milker.
The dairyman worked with the UVM Extension Northwest Crops and Soils Team to increase the quality and quantity of his forage, focusing on improvement strategies in the field and the barn. The team currently is conducting an on-site trial to evaluate the impact of cutting height and harvest frequency on productivity of perennial forage stands.
Rainville also is involved in an ongoing trial with neonicotinoid seed treatments and has had success with wide-row interseeding of cover crops to improve soil health and decrease the risk of surface runoff.
He has been enrolled in Ben & Jerry’s Caring Dairy program since 2011 to help lower his carbon footprint. The program supports the implementation of innovative solutions on dairy farms that promote animal care and mitigate the environmental and climate-related impacts of dairy farming.
He was the first participant to install solar with a 72-kilowatt roof-mounted solar system on his main dairy barn that houses the cows and the robotic milking system. He also installed a Lely Juno robotic feed pusher to provide consistent access to feed for his cows, which has significantly increased his milk production.
Other finalists for this year's award, listed alphabetically, were the Miller Farm, Inc. (Peter and Art Miller), Vernon, and Taft’s Milk and Maple Farm (Bruce, Mary, Tim and Margaret Taft), Huntington.