4-H Highlights

Home Made Pie, with International Flair

You can call her “Pie.”

Her given name is Indian Acres MM Pistachio Pie, and she is the reigning World Dairy Expo (WDE) and All-American Dairy Show Supreme Champion in both the Junior and Open Show categories. That, incidentally, is four separate titles. Any one of them would be more than enough for most Guernseys. To garner them all is nothing short of remarkable.

At home, among friends and family at Indian Acres Farm in South Deerfield, however, she is Pie. Just Pie. Oh, and on the web . . . she’s Pie there, too.

“She just gets better and better,” says 18 year-old Ashley Sears, who bred Pie and has raised her for the past five years. “She came from a really good family, but she was only 40 pounds which is small for a calf. But then she just started growing.”

“I call Pie our late bloomer,” adds Ashley’s mother, UMass Extension animal and livestock specialist Carrie Chickering-Sears.

To properly assess Pie’s bovine celebrity far beyond her home turf is an exercise fraught with firsts and superlatives. She is only the second Guernsey ever to win the WDE Supreme Championship, the first in both the Junior and Open categories, and the first with a junior owner to also take both All American and WDE titles – a little like the World Series and the Superbowl. At the WDE competition in early October in Madison, Wisconsin, she was competing against 2,400 animals from seven breeds.

Still not convinced this is real celebrity? Think Manolo Blahnik. That’s right . . . stiletto heels. Pie beat out the likes of Vivian, a 9-year-old Holstein from Connecticut’s showcase Arethusa Farm, owned by George Malkemus, president and co-owner of Manolo Blahnik USA. Vivian was described by the " target="_blank">check it out on YouTube). Ashley did, in fact, raise Pistachio Pie at home – or in nearby Cummington to be exact – as part of a 4-H project. She is now a freshman at Cornell, studying agricultural economics – an endeavor that has been made somewhat easier by Pie’s winnings and a number of prestigious scholarships, including the National Dairy Shrine McCullough scholarship.

“4-H really helped me learn how to take responsibility and be a leader,” says Ashley. “I learned how to deal with people one-on-one, without my parents’ help.” Throughout her years in 4-H, Ashley showed Pie in progressively larger venues, from the Massachusetts State 4-H competition to the 4-H Dairy Show at the Eastern States Exposition.

After another year in collegiate 4-H at Cornell, Ashley plans to become a 4-H volunteer and work with younger members.

If the saga of Pistachio Pie says something about the vitality and relevance of 4-H, it also says something about the enduring quality of the family dairy farm in Massachusetts, notes Carrie Sears. Indian Acres, with over 200 head, has been in the Sears family for four generations, and is one of 186 dairy farms still shipping milk. The future is bright and the commitment is strong, says Carrie Sears.

As for Pie, she has earned some downtime, says Ashley. Being on the road in a trailer, even one with a private compartment can be taxing. At five, Pie still has what the judges like: she is “tall and sharp with deep ribs” and a first-rate mammary system. Like may supermodels, she tends to look a little skinny to the casual observer. That, however, is typical of milking cows. In 2007, Pie will have produced over 27,000 pounds of milk.

It may also describe many of the attributes of Pie’s next offspring. Her son, Indian Acres Challenge the Pie, was the toast of the International Guernsey Classic Sale, and was sold to a breeders’ syndicate for $18,000. Not taking any chances, Sears is having Pie cloned. A sample of Pie’s tissue was recently overnighted to Iowa, where cell division is now commencing.

We don’t know what the naming convention for the new calf will be, but if we are not mistaken, Pie x Pie = π2.