Unity family's organic dairy farm earns annual honor from conservation district

Todd Frescura has established a clear path for his cows to move through mud-prone areas of his family’s organic dairy farm in Unity.

The cattle walkways help keep dirt out of the farm’s milking parlor and out of a stream on the 100-acre spread that is part of the Sewickley Creek Watershed. That method of erosion control is just one of the steps Frescura — with wife Marla and sons Dante and Evan — has taken that earned them recognition from the Westmoreland Conservation District as 2024 Conservation Farmer of the Year.

“It’s like we’re building a road,”Todd Frescura said of the walkways for the farm’s 60 cattle. A layer of topsoil is removed and replaced with a permeable fabric followed by more layers of rock and stone dust.

“They don’t create more mud, and their hooves don’t get damaged by a stray rock here or there,” he said of the cows. “They’re not covered with mud when I bring them in to milk, and it’s also keeping the water clean.”

“The Frescura family takes pride in the conservation practices that they have implemented to protect the high quality watershed,” said conservation district official Chelsea Gross.

Frescura’s grandparents, Thelma and the late Roy Kemerer, purchased the farm in 1948 and decades later placed it in an agricultural conservation easement to protect the land from development.

Frescura purchased the farm in 2008 and began soil and water conservation efforts including constructing the cattle walkways and adding gutters and drains to barns.

“We did a lot of work getting stormwater runoff away from where the cattle are,” he said.

He’s also worked with the conservation district to establish a nutrient management plan and keeps on top of the farm’s manure management plan.

Frescura tracks the amount, frequency and location when he applies manure his cows produce to add nutrients to the fields where he grows a hybrid forage plant to help feed them. The cross between sorghum grain and Sudan grass is drought-resistant and packs the same nutritional value as field corn with a greater potential yield, he said.

“It’s still considered a grass,” Frescura said of the hybrid plant.”You can get multiple cuttings off it in a season where corn is a one-cutting deal.”

In other areas, Frescura rotates his cattle among paddocks where they can graze on clover and alfalfa.

“I do a lot of soil testing,” he said. “I send samples to the lab for results of the pH and other components of the soil. They will provide me with a recommended amount of nutrient I would need to add to produce a certain crop.”

Frescura is committed to organic practices, which he said support the health of his cows as well as the economic viability of the farm.

“It’s like farming was back in the 1950s, but with added knowledge about crop production and animal health,” he said.

He doesn’t spend money on chemicals to apply to his fields, but he acknowledged his labor investment is high. Several times each season he makes passes through his crop rows with a cultivator, to cut back weeds.

The family’s income is supplemented with Frescura’s earnings driving a school bus and his wife’s salary as an elementary teacher in the Yough School District.

Family affair

In addition to chores inside the family’s home, Marla Frescura takes care of mowing grass and tending garden crops the family grows for its own use. The couple’s sons pitch in as needed at the farm. Evan is a senior at Greater Latrobe Senior High while Dante, 21, is living on his own in Slippery Rock.

“He will come home on weekends if I need him to help do something,” Todd Frescura said of his eldest son.

Frescura continues to make improvements to enhance his farming practices.

He currently hauls water to some areas where his cattle graze but is planning instead to install a 2,200-foot line and hydrants to bring water to more sections of the farm.

Federal funding is helping to support Frescura’s water project as well as planting of a pollinator buffer area and installation of fencing to further delineate an area solely devoted to grazing.

He’s applied for additional funding to install a high tunnel structure that would provide an extended growing season for organic vegetables he would like to market to clients including area restaurants.

In the long haul, he hopes the Frescura farming legacy will continue.

“I hope it rubs off but I’m not forcing them,” he said of his sons. “They need to go work for other people first before they work for dad.”

Mellon Foundation recognized

The Westmoreland Conservation District also recognized the Richard King Mellon Foundation with the J. Roy Houston Partnership Award. Established in Pittsburgh in 1947, the foundation has funded projects related to habitat conservation, stewardship and sustainable communities.

Over the past several decades, funding from the foundation has helped the conservation district complete projects to improve water quality and restore habitat in the region. Some recent efforts include: stormwater basin retrofits at Ligonier Valley School District; stream bank stabilization and tree plantings along Shupe Run next to the Coal and Coke Trail; parking lot and stream bank stabilization at Irwin Park; a stormwater pond to control runoff at the Winnie Palmer Nature Reserve; and stormwater retrofits in Manor Borough.

The foundation has provided additional funding to like-minded organizations including Westmoreland County Parks and Recreation, Westmoreland Cleanways and Recycling, Westmoreland Conservancy and the Loyalhanna Watershed Association.