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Farm manager Lauren Perkins leads her family’s 250 cows to pasture.

Farm manager Lauren Perkins leads her family’s 250 cows to pasture.

It was September 2001, right around 9/11, Rem Perkins recalls, when he and his father had a major disagreement.

“I was going on vacation, and he wasn’t happy about it,” Rem says of a planned trip with his wife and children.

A family vacation isn’t typically considered unreasonable. But Rem worked on the family farm and Harry Perkins looked at things a bit differently.

“He said if I left, I was not to come back,” Rem says. “I said that was fine. I’d go get a job somewhere else.”

So, Rem headed to the beach and his mom — “ever the diplomat,” he says — went to work on her husband.

“She told him unless he wanted to hand the farm over to a complete stranger, he better reconsider,” Rem recalls.

Turns out, his dad didn’t like that idea. He was second generation himself, having returned to the farm decades earlier when his own father had made a similar threat.

“Dad was going to school at Potomac State, playing football, and he got a scholarship to play for Virginia Tech,” Rem says. “But when he told his dad, he told him if he went, he was going to sell the farm and it wouldn’t be there when he got back because he wasn’t going to do it by himself.”

Harry Perkins was 19 or 20 when he returned to Perk Dairy Farm in the small Greenbrier County community of Frankford.

“He ran the farm and was the one in charge from then on,” Rem says.

Rem was a few years older before he took complete charge.

But when he got back from that beach vacation, after a couple weeks of “heated discussions,” he assumed control of everything but the finances.

It was always in the plans for him to do that at some point anyway. He had, after all, returned to the farm after receiving a degree in dairy sciences from Virginia Tech, his father’s almost alma mater.

And though her path wasn’t always as clear as her father’s, it was probably always in the cards that Rem’s oldest child Lauren would join him when the time came.

“I don’t really remember not wanting to do this,” Lauren says, looking out at the farm. “I always knew I wanted to be like my dad.”

A few things have changed since Mason Perkins established Perk Dairy Farm in 1942.

It was in the neighborhood of 150 acres back then with milk coming from about 50 cows.

After Harry Perkins took over, he grew the farm to 150 to 200 cows and about 350 acres.

“We’ve got the farm up at 1,200 acres now and we’re milking about 300 cows,” Rem says of the changes since his tenure began.

Although it has more than tripled in size under Rem, the biggest change in the 80-year history of the farm came about in 2008, when he decided to go organic.

Rem had attended a meeting in Harrisonburg, Va., the year before, but it took some time for a decision.

“We were working so hard, but not making enough money to support employees and family,” recalls Lauren, who was in middle school and helping out on the farm at the time.

Soon, the proposition of a stable pay price — which ensured how much money they would make from year to year — convinced Rem.

“The simple fact is, we went organic because of the money,” he says.

As a conventional dairy, Rem and Lauren say, the pay — or the size of the monthly milk check, as they call it — varied.

As a member of Organic Valley’s co-op of farms, however, they knew what to expect.

The difference, Rem says, was significant.

It didn’t happen quickly, though.

For organic land certification, Rem had to change the way he farmed.

Fertilizers and chemicals can’t be used in organic farming and any cow treated with antibiotics has to leave the herd.

“We have to rely on Mother Nature,” Lauren says.

After a year of transition, Perk Dairy Farm was certified organic, becoming Perk Farm Organic Dairy in 2009.

In 2010, it shipped its first organic milk.

Though Rem says he was convinced the move to organic was the right one, it took a bit longer to get his father on board.

“He wasn’t a fan until about a year into our first year of shipping organic milk,” Rem says. “Then I showed him one of the milk checks.”

Rem laughs as he talks about the change in his father’s attitude.

“It was great,” he says. “It really was. He had the organic hat, the organic bumper stickers. He told everybody how organics was going to save our farm.

“And he was right. It really did.”

Though the change from conventional to organic farming was no small task, Rem says it was made easier by his father’s years of hard work.

“Because he had won a National Soil Conservation award, we very rarely plowed ground,” he says. “We were rotational grazing and a lot of the things we do now.

“His motto was, ‘Always take what you need and put everything else back into the farm, 'cause that’s where the money comes from,’” Rem continues. “(He said) ‘If you don’t take care of the farm, you won’t have anything to live on.’

“My dad was a tremendous farmer and he taught me so much about how to take care of the land.”

After Rem proved his plan a success, his father handed over financial control, stepping into retirement.

“I was able to show him I was going to be able to keep the farm a dairy and the farm would be successful,” Rem says. “And then he passed away the following year.”

Lauren Perkins is often compared to her grandfather.

“We say, ‘The Harry Perkins comes out in you.’” Rem laughs as he describes his father’s quick temper. “We joke about Lauren because she is so much like my dad it’s unbelievable.”

But not just in temperament, Rem says. Lauren, he says, shares his father’s work ethic.

“Just like my dad she’s an extremely hard worker,” he says. “She’s very smart and makes good decisions. She isn’t afraid to get dirty. Not afraid to do things the hard way if that’s what it takes to get it done.”

Lauren draws on those traits daily working as the herd manager, tending to the cows and dairy while her father focuses on the land.

When Lauren graduated from Greenbrier East High School in 2014, she says her dad told her she had to complete a checklist before he’d allow her to work on the farm full-time.

“He didn’t think I was quite ready so I had to do three things,” she explains.

Rem wanted his daughter to obtain training or a college degree in a field that would be useful to her on the farm. He also told Lauren he wanted her to spend time working for another farmer. Finally, he said Lauren would need to bring ideas back to the farm that would help with future growth.

She completed those prerequisites, working as an intern for an organic farm in California, obtaining a poultry science degree from North Carolina State and coming back with ideas for adding poultry to the business as well as setting her sights on agrotourism opportunities.

Upon graduation, she received offers to work in research and development from four different poultry companies.

Two weeks at home, though, showed her she was in the right place.

“My family has done this for so many years and I wanted to be part of that legacy that kept it going making it better and better,” she says. “I think it’s a pride thing. I’m the first female to come back to the farm in a managerial role and I’m a part owner.”

At just 26, she’s also, at the moment, the only one of Rem and Mary Perkins’ five children interested in a career at the farm.

“It is a lot of pressure,” she says. “Luckily my dad is still here and he can understand.”

Lauren, who lives in the farmhouse where her dad was raised, begins her mornings — she gets one morning off each week — at about 4:50 a.m.

The cows spend their nights grazing in a fresh pasture before coming in for milking during the day.

“I head up to the barn on a four-wheeler to bring them in,” she says, explaining they can be as far as ¾ of a mile away, depending on the pasture in use.

By 5:30, she has them back and ready for her employees to begin milking.

It’s a finely tuned process that takes about three hours and begins again at 4:30 each evening.

“It’s an Irish-style parlor,” she says, watching as a pair — there’s usually a trio — of high school girls work the evening milking shift.

The cows more or less herd themselves from the barn into the parlor, where they line opposite walls — 24 on both sides. In a walkway below, their udders are hooked up to a suction cup of sorts that milks them for 4 ½ to 6 ½ minutes.

“It calculates and senses the flow of her milk,” Lauren explains. “When it (milk) slows down, it turns off.”

She continues, pointing to the red-tipped udders of a group of Jersey cows, “So, these cows have just been milked. They post-dip them with iodine that protects and seals them from bacteria and infection.”

A few minutes later, a bar lifts and the cows slowly see themselves back to the barn while a new group comes in.

“See the chewing motion?’” Lauren asks, pointing to the mouths of passing cows. “It means they’re content. They’re happy.”

The cows are accustomed to being handled. They were, after all, bottled-fed for their first few months.

“I’m the momma,” Lauren says, back outside in front of a line of small pens.

Inside, young calves — some born just hours earlier — bellow and stumble out on new, wobbly legs.

“We hand-feed all of them so that they are used to us handling them twice a day in the parlor,” Lauren explains.

Both she and her father say people don’t often understand why they take the calves from their mothers within minutes. But, in addition to setting them up for a more comfortable parlor experience in 14-16 months, they say it also protects the mothers from potentially developing mastitis.

The farm’s average cow produces about 28 pounds of milk per day.

The milk, which is filtered four times, is stored in a cooling tank and picked up three times a week by an Organic Valley milk truck.

“The normal pickup load is about 10,000 pounds,” Lauren says.

The truck driver, she explains, collects samples of each pickup, as Organic Valley pays its farmers based on the butter fat and protein levels of their milk.

“Butter fat goes into the high-quality ice creams and cheeses,” she explains. “The higher butter fat we have, the more pay we get on top of what we get for the milk.”

Though the pay is what prompted the move, both father and daughter say the benefits of organic farming have proven equally important.

“We’re improving the health of the cow, doing everything we can for the ground and ultimately the whole environment,” Rem says.

Without fertilizers and chemicals, and using limited store-bought feed, Rem cares for the ground, carefully planting crops, plants and flowers that nourish the land and even act as medicinal agents for the herd.

“Your soils are like a bank,” he says. “The more you put in it, the more you can take out. So organic farming allows us to put things back into the soil. To build the soil, make the soil healthier, make the cows healthier and (in turn) do more for the animals and for ourselves.”

Those who have visited the State Fair of West Virginia in recent years have likely noticed the pregnant Jerseys and newborn calves at the Dairy Birthing Center.

The attraction is run by Rem, who spends 10 days and nights on the fairgrounds, answering questions and keeping watch over the expectant mothers and the newest members of Perk’s herd.

Back at the farm, Lauren keeps her regular routine, managing the herd, managing employees, collecting milk and caring for the cows.

Just down the road — on evening weekends July through September — she also oversees a small site where visitors can buy sweet corn and colorful wildflowers.

The Perkins family acquired that smaller farm in 2020 to provide additional space for their herd.

Lauren also looks at it as an agrotourism opportunity.

In time, she’d like to offer parlor tours and find more ways to attract visitors who might be interested in learning about farming.

“I just want to try to do things to get the community involved,” she says.

Lauren is also putting her poultry science degree to use as she cares for 300 chickens.

Through the “side hobby,” she provides eggs to the majority of businesses in downtown Lewisburg.

New ideas, after all, are what Rem asked her to bring back to the farm.

“She’s got lots of big ideas,” he says. “And we need to try them. Every time you try, you learn something new.”

It was a new idea, after all, that saved the farm.

In time, Rem will, like his father and his grandfather before him, step away, handing the farm off to the next generation and its new ideas.

For now, though, he and Lauren are enjoying their relationship. And like any good farmer, Rem says he draws from past lessons – most of them learned at his father’s side — for help.

“My dad gave me 30 to 40 years of training to be able to deal with my daughter and to get along so we could run this farm together,” he says with a slight chuckle. “But this is what you dream of.”

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