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Pennsylvania Dairy Farmer Decides to Bottle His Own Milk Rather than Dump It. Sells O

Bamby

New member
The American spirit lives on at a 300-year-old, cream-line dairy farm, where a farmer is working around the clock to bottle his own milk after his processor told him to dump it. Locals are lining up to support him.

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When Ben Brown’s dairy processor told him they could no longer buy his milk, he got to work bottling it himself.

Brown’s Whoa Nellie Dairy farm has been providing high-quality, cream-line milk since the 1700s.

He sells some of it at his on-site farm store, but a large portion of it used to be sold to a dairy processor who pasteurized and bottled it for local restaurants and markets.

When he realized he would have to dump hundreds of gallons of milk each week until his 70 milking cows dried up, he couldn’t bear it.

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So he got to work, literally around the clock, pasteurizing it in small batches in his 30-gallon vat and bottling it up.

He posted on Facebook that they’d open up the farm store for additional hours to sell the milk directly to consumers, and the response was overwhelming:

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? Some photos need no words.....
THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts!
Photo credit: michaelmphotos.com

The line to get in the store was at least 20 customers deep for several hours, the local news reported.

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“I know their uncle, Larry Basinger, and we want to help the Brown family through this,” one customer said. “We’re going to buy 10 gallons. I have orders from our whole family.”

They sold out within hours and have sold out almost every day since. On days they don’t sell out, they donate their fresh, non-homogenized milk to local charities.

“I hate waste, and I don’t want to dump milk. People can use it, and I still have to pay my bills,” Brown said.

Brown and his wife Mary Beth purchased the farm four years ago from Ben’s parents. He admitted to a local newspaper that his family has “barely been scraping by” in recent years, and that at first, he was afraid the lockdown would be the end of them.

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“I don’t want us to go under. This farm has been in the Brown family since the 1700s,” he said.

Two weeks ago, the farm was able to purchase a second 45-gallon pasteurization vat, so Brown won’t have to stay up all night processing it anymore.

https://returntonow.net/2020/05/04/pennsylvania-dairy-farmer-decides-to-bottle-his-own-milk-rather-than-dump-it-sells-out-in-hours/
 

XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

Master of Distraction
Staff member
SUPER Site Supporter
I'm sure some marketing board will sue him or send in some government henchmen ... errr ... "regulators" for bypassing the bureaucracy.

I hope that this doesn't happen but I would not be surprised.
 

mla2ofus

Well-known member
GOLD Site Supporter
I'm sure some marketing board will sue him or send in some government henchmen ... errr ... "regulators" for bypassing the bureaucracy.

I hope that this doesn't happen but I would not be surprised.

That's when all his customers need to show up en masse!!
Mike
 

JimVT

Bronze Member
GOLD Site Supporter
it use to be that only one farm was licensed to sell raw milk in washington state. i see that they have a pasteurizer . if inspected and licensed a new building may be required.
just a smallcrack across a floor will upset the inspector.
i'm unfamiliar with the term "cream-line Dairy" maybe they were paid by the amount of butterfat in the milk rather than volume.
 

Bamby

New member
Enough negative Nellie,, :thumbup: What I'd like to see is this springboard into a local farmers commodity market. How about farm fresh eggs and yes there is a difference. How about a posting board as to where a farmer having a beef or two near ready could post it for sale at hanging weight price per pound.

Locally grown sweet corn and potatoes, tomatoes and any number of things farmers can sell off at retail prices for the benefit of everyone concerned...
 

m1west

Well-known member
GOLD Site Supporter
Thats right, if the middle man wants to play games cut them out and go directly to the customer. The customer may find that it is a better system and just keep it that way. I for one would like to know where my groceries originated and who handled it. I have a garden started and if the meat business becomes un reliable I will buy a cow or 2 and have them slaughtered locally later or if that doesn't pan out do it myself, it can't be that much different than a deer just bigger. Screw the big commercial meat packers and milk producers, support the farmers.
 

EastTexFrank

Well-known member
GOLD Site Supporter
That's what we have started doing with the farmer at the other end of our county road. We get our free range eggs from him and, yes Bamby, there is a difference, a big difference. We also get our chicken and bacon from him. My wife has also started picking up whatever veggies he has available. There's no telling what they will be so we still supplement them from the grocery store but the difference in quality is amazing. They actually have some taste.

Cutting out all the middlemen wouldn't upset me at all. All they do is take a substantial profit for doing very little and drive the prices up to the consumer.
 

mla2ofus

Well-known member
GOLD Site Supporter
We usually donate our excess tomatoes to our senior center and it does our hearts good to be at their lunch and hear one remark "hey, these are vine ripened!!". I think there's a lot of young ones today that don't know the difference.
Mike
 

Bannedjoe

Well-known member
Cutting out all the middlemen wouldn't upset me at all. All they do is take a substantial profit for doing very little and drive the prices up to the consumer.

Of course this is all good on a rural level, but would never work for them city slickers.
 

EastTexFrank

Well-known member
GOLD Site Supporter
It depends on how far the city slickers want to drive.
Mike

That is true. In the good old days there used to be a bunch of roadside stands all over East Texas selling veggies, eggs and miscellaneous other things. People used to take a week-end drive out from Dallas to buy stuff. It was kind of amusing to see some broken down, rickety looking roadside stand surrounded by BMWs and Mercedes. I stopped using them when I found out that some of the bigger ones had started importing veg from the Rio Grande Valley in order to meet demand.

We used to have a Farmer's Market in town every Saturday morning. My wife used to go there to get whatever veg was available, especially tomatoes, and home baked bread. There was sometimes a guy there that sold his own honey. My Lord, that stuff was good.
 

EastTexFrank

Well-known member
GOLD Site Supporter
Can, like a person in NYC, hop a subway out to a local farm to get some eggs?
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I've never been to NY City, and don't intend to ever go, so I can't answer your question except to say that my wife has a cousin who is a big time doctor in NYC. He comes home to visit his country cousins a couple of times a year. He said that about the only time he uses his car is to drive out of the city to get farm fresh eggs. It's one of the things that he really misses about country living, probably one of the few things.
 

Bannedjoe

Well-known member
I've never been to NY City, and don't intend to ever go, so I can't answer your question except to say that my wife has a cousin who is a big time doctor in NYC. He comes home to visit his country cousins a couple of times a year. He said that about the only time he uses his car is to drive out of the city to get farm fresh eggs. It's one of the things that he really misses about country living, probably one of the few things.

I'm willing to bet only the folks like big time doctors, lawyers and such have cars.
I'm also willing to bet most people don't even have room in their apts to store a bicycle.

Things will have to get back to normal, but it would be nice to see the small farms flourish again on the local level.
 
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