Organic Valley turning pasture into green ‘buzz-worthy’ billboard on Minnesota farm

When traveling out of Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport this fall, be on the lookout for some strange crop circles just south of the cities.

Cows are grazing around fences on the Zweber Family Farm near Elko New Market to spell out “buzz-worthy” in overgrown pasture — a green billboard if there ever was one.

Organic Valley enlisted three of its dairy farming families in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Maryland to promote not its milk but the grass that creates it.

“Why did our cows graze a giant message visible from miles above the Earth? To let the world know just how green Organic Valley’s pastures truly are,” the company says. “They [and the ads themselves] not only provide our cows with lush, green grass to turn into delicious milk, they provide critical habitat for buzzing bees, butterflies, birds and other wildlife.”

Organic Valley is a 36-year-old cooperative owned by 1,600 organic farms. The coop is based in Wisconsin and has many members in Minnesota.

While the Minnesota and Maryland farms are still grazing their ads to life, the first completed project popped up on a northern Wisconsin farm this summer.

“My initial thought was, ‘I don’t know if we can pull this off,’” Melissa Weyland, an organic dairy farmer, said in a news release. “The idea of making my cows walk into letters and weird spaces felt unusual.”

Bees and monarch butterflies became abundant as clover overgrew inside the fencing, which is easiest to see flying to and from Green Bay.

“It quickly became more than just about pulling it off perfectly,” she continued. “It became about doing something great for the plants, nature and migratory birds passing through.”

The Maryland farmer, Ron Holter, said the ad’s slogan and its picture of a bee “means our land and farm is worthy of the bees and pollinators.”

For the Zweber family that has farmed just west of Interstate 35 for more than a century, “there’s a lot of life on our farm,” Emily Zweber said.

The campaign runs through the end of pasture season in October.