Spend some time walking the farm with dairyman Tom Trantham and you begin to understand the connection between the earth and the food we eat-even the milk we drink.
That's because at Happy Cow Creamery in Pelzer, everything starts with the fragrant, chocolate brown soil.

Trantham will proudly tell you that for the past 18 years, no chemicals have touched the rich earth where his cows graze. The 66-year-old farmer who could be described as a natural farming evangelist followed a circuitous route to get here.

In the 1980s, Trantham was a conventional farmer who even made a run for commissioner of agriculture. His dairy boasted some of the largest cows in the state. Those cows were also among the top producers. But the cost of feed and the lack of an adequate return on his product was driving Trantham's farm into bankruptcy.

On one particularly difficult day, Trantham's herd broke out of their confined feeding area and headed for a nearby pasture lush with fresh grass. Trantham was stunned. His cows had never acted in such a way.

Today, Trantham will tell you he considers the act a bit of "divine" intervention." Trantham's upbringing as the son of a preacher had taught him to take notice of the rhythm of the world around him, but the daily worries of farming had dulled that innate skill. Trantham noticed, however, when his cows moved from their manmade feeding area and headed for the tall grass, nipping the nutritious tops off the plants.

When the renegade cows were milked later, their production was up. Trantham pondered the results and tested them. Again, after pasturing in a nearby field, Trantham's cows produced more than they had when eating conventional feed.

Desperate to save his farm, Trantham began to consider a whole new way of dairying, and ultimately obtained a Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) grant to look further into the process and its possibilities. SARE is a program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (www.sare.org). In 2002, Trantham was the sole recipient of the organization's biannual Patrick Madden Award for Sustainable Agriculture. He has taught his methods to other farmers throughout the world.

Trantham calls the system "Twelve Aprils Dairying," playing off the idea that his fields allow peak-of-spring quality pasturing year-round. Over a period of 29 days, he rotates his cows through 29 feeding paddocks of between 2.5 and 3.5 acres each. Cows eat only from the tops of the grass, where the greatest nutrition is located, and then are moved to another paddock. At the end of this rotation, the cows return to the initial paddock, which has by now replenished itself.

"Below the knee, we graze," Trantham explains. "Below the waist, we bale. Above the waist, we bushhog and leave on the ground."

Trantham believes the system is as natural a process as the sun coming up in the morning. "This is a gorgeous crop and it's like velvet," he says, bending down to pluck some gloriously green, knee-height grass from a field in early March.

"This is April in March. That's why Happy Cow milk is different from any in the whole country," Trantham says.

With the development of his new system, Trantham did away with all pesticides and fertilizers with the exception of natural compost. He has never been a believer in growth hormones. Of his 90 cows, 75 are currently milked daily, for a yield of 500 gallons.

Trantham's cows' creamy white milk is bottled on site, immediately cooled in a 1000-gallon refrigerated stainless steel tank, pasteurized and placed in refrigerators in the small Happy Cow store within hours of milking. He also makes buttermilk, chocolate milk and salted and unsalted butter.

"Our milk travels only 48 feet from the cow's teat to the low-temperature pasteurization to the bottle and is never exposed," Trantham explains, proudly showing off the tiny dairy operation that has made him a very content man. His three-story processing plant is a converted Harvestor silo.

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Terry Sudduth, interim assistant dean for field operations at Clemson University, worked with Tranthan as a dairy extension specialist several years ago, and has high praise for the work he's doing. "All of his products are excellent," Sudduth says. "He was probably one of the first to go into what I call a grazing-based program." And that grazing has an impact on the makeup of the cows' milk. "It has been documented that cattle on a grazing program enhance the CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) composition within the milk," Sudduth says. "He's been a leader and innovator in this area."

Customers swear by it for its delicious taste and potential health benefits. Cheryl Middleton, a physician assistant from Easley learned about Happy Cow from her mother-in-law, but she was resistant to trying it at first.

"As a physician assistant who had preached 'low fat' dieting for years, I could not bring myself to buy or recommend whole milk," Middleton said. "I had fallen for the 'fat is fat' no matter the source theory, and it was all bad."

But Middleton did some additional reading and learned about the value of omega-3 fatty acids and the body's actual need for some fat. "I also learned that what you feed the animal determines the kind of fat you get from the product. My two-year-old son, who had been under the care of a pediatric gastroenterologist, drinks Happy Cow milk regularly and no longer takes medication for digestive problems", she says. The entire family now drinks the milk.

Trantham attributes positive health results to the enzymes and omega-3 fatty acids that remain in his milk because of the grazing system and his low-temperature pasteurization process. He has customers who travel from Florida, Georgia and North Carolina regularly, including a group of physicians who make monthly trips from Charlotte.

Trantham believes the modern consumer's desire for instant food and low prices has had a huge impact on individual health as well as the quality of the local farm. We're totally out of touch," he said. "We're looking for gorgeous and cheap-the worst thing you can look for."