Mandy Randall, of Cumberland, Jared Brong and Rachel Wright Brong, both of North Smithfield, share a laugh with Bob Peloquin, of Burrillville, from left to right, after he milks a cow for the first time, during a tour of a brand new milking facility at Wright’s Dairy Farm in North Smithfield Friday. Call Photo/Ernest A. Brown

By JOSEPH B. NADEAU

NORTH SMITHFIELD — After more than a century in operation, Wright’s Dairy Farm certainly doesn’t have to build upon its reputation as an area favorite for milk and dairy products.

An attempt to visit the farm’s milk store and bakery at 200 Woonsocket Hill Road on any given weekend offers proof enough of that.
But this week, Wright’s was busy with more than just milking its herd of 150 cows and selling delicious cream pastry. The family business was also holding an open house to showcase its investment in a new state-of-the-art milking parlor built over the winter.
The $850,000 milking facility offers computerized monitoring of Wright’s Holstein cows while they are hooked up to its automated milking hoses, 20 at a time.
About 135 cows are milked twice a day, at 3 a.m. and 3 p.m., to keep the dairy store supplied with fresh milk products.
As he directed a steady stream of cars to parking spots at the dairy on Friday, Edward Wright, head of the family business, said folks from all over Rhode Island were stopping in to see the new milking operation.
“We’ve got quite a following,” Wright said, noting one family had come up all the way from Westerly to visit the farm.
The open house included free balloons for the kids, Wright’s cookies and milk, ice cream, and even a chance to hunker down under an udder to actually milk a cow.
The idea was to help folks understand why it is important to have farms and keep land in agricultural use, according to Wright.
“It keeps land as open space,” Wright said. Farms use land to grow their products and maintain livestock like cows and because the land is worked, there is no need to sell it, according to Wright.
“We use it for haying and corn silage,” he said. “Don’t you think if it wasn’t a farm here, this would all be condos?” Wright asked.
In all, the Wright’s farm about 200 acres of land off Woonsocket Hill Road to maintain the dairy operation and also lease land in Springfield, Vt., to raise calves born at Wright’s to milk producing age.
The open house allowed visitors like 3-year-old cousins Anthony Rossi and Hailey Corriveault to actually see a cow set up for milking in the milking shed.
“Anthony milked the cow and I didn’t,” Hailey said while hanging on to the white and black moo cow balloon given to her at the shed.
Hailey’s grandmother, Chris Corriveault of Blackstone, took the children to the event with her father, Michael Rossi of Woonsocket.
“We came here specifically to let the kids milk the cows,” she said. “It was fantastic and I love the fact that they (the Wrights) share this with the community,” she said.
A group of culinary students from the Woonsocket Career and Technical Center also made the trip to the farm for the open house and got a better understanding of the process involved in getting milk to market.
“I liked it because I got to see what happens when a cow is milked,” Amanda Archambault, an 11th grader, said. Lena Rithiphong was among the students deciding to actually milk a cow and said she thought it was a good experience. The milk shed is exceptionally clean with its new concrete floors and wash down areas but a dairy farm does come with its unique blend of odors now and then.
“It was interesting,” Rithiphong said of the up close experience with the cows. “It was different,” she said.
Although the girls in the group had no problem milking the cows, Alyshia Johnson said the boys along on the trip weren’t as interested at first. “I don’t know why but we had to step up and milk them and then they did,” she said.
Noelli Hernandez said she found it interesting enough to actually try milking twice. The students also visited the farm’s dairy store and tried some of the Wrights’ pastries, but there was no contest for the highlight of the trip, according to Michelle Cote. “The best thing out here was the cows,” she said.   
Chef Suzanne Marsella, one of the students’ teachers at the career center, said the trip was intended to highlight the merits of locally grown food and the sustainability of local farms.
Where food comes from can be a factor in its freshness and taste, Marsella said. “We should know where food comes from and how long it takes to get to market,” she said. “That can also be an environmental concern because its takes less fossil fuel to get locally grown food there,” she said.
The visitors also got a chance to see what it takes to work on a farm if that is what they might want to do some day.
Rachel Brong, Edward’s granddaughter and one of the family members working the farm today, said it is certainly not a job to pursue if money is the interest.
The hours are long and pay not all that great given the hard work that is involved, she said. But if you love the dairy industry as she does, the rewards make it worthwhile.
“You have to love it because it’s too much work if you are not going to love it,” she said.
Brong studied farm management and veterinary science at the University of Vermont while earning a degree in agriculture and then worked at a large dairy farm managing a 1,000 cow herd and working for a feed company before coming home to work at Wright’s.
The new equipment in the milking shed allows the farm to track its cows’ health through special collars that relay activity level and milk productivity back to the shed’s computer system. The information helps Brong and her co-workers to know if a cow’s milk production is off or if it is starting to ovulate. That information tells Brong it is time to artificially inseminate the cow to help bring on the next generation of Wright Holsteins.
“There is a lot of science behind it, and people have no idea what goes into running a dairy farm,” she said.
Among Friday’s visitors were also a number of Wright family members and their friends. Doris Donovan, Edward’s aunt, lives in Smithfield today but remembers well how it was to live at Wright’s when her father, George Wright, ran the farm. “I was brought up here and Edward use to live in that house over there,” Donovan said while pointing to one of the buildings from the original circa-1890s farm.
“I used to babysit him,” Donovan said while declining to reveal her age.
“I think it’s great what they are doing here. They are keeping it in the family,” Donovan said.