How the milk thing works:

We keep a weekly milk schedule. Each family chooses how many gallons of milk they want weekly and is assigned a fixed day each week to pick up their milk. The first week you provide two weeks’ worth of jars – one week replaces our jars for the milk you take home that day, the second weeks’ jars are what we fill for you the following week. Each week you’ll bring clean jars so that we have jars to fill for you the next week and so on. Your jars will have your name on them so they are easy to keep track of. We recommend the 1/2 gallon Ball canning jars.

If you forget to bring your jars when you pick up then you’ll need to find a time to bring clean jars before your next scheduled day, otherwise we won’t have anything to put your milk in. Exceptions to this are rare and on a case by case basis. We get it, sometimes things happen (like the sheep and the pigs getting out multiple times in a day because you forgot to reconnect the electric fence at the charger or kids forgetting every possible thing while you are trying to pack up and leave) and you might run out the door less prepared than you’d planned. We’d love to have enough jars on hand to let people catch up next time, but we’ve found that many times jars we loan out don’t come back and we can’t keep replacing them.

If you aren’t able to pick up your milk on your assigned day, it’s usually not a big deal to pick up a day or two late, but please keep in mind we don’t have unlimited fridge space so if we get several people needing to delay a day or two, that can cause an issue on our end. Please also keep in mind that if you delay pick up, your milk was still poured in preparation for your planned pick up. For example, if your scheduled pick up day is Tuesday, we bottle for you Monday. If you don’t pick up until Friday, that’s still Monday’s milk. The clock does not reset. So, for the freshest milk, we highly recommend sticking as close to your assigned day as you can.

If you are unable to pick up your milk one week, such as if you are out of town, or if you will be picking up less than your allotted amount, it’s usually not a big deal, but you need to let us know at least 3 days in advance (more is better) so that we can find another person to take your milk. If you aren’t able to give us at least 3 days advance notice and we are not able to find someone to purchase your allotted milk, you’ll still need to pay for the full amount of that week’s milk. The cows still eat their feed and so we need to make sure that we can cover the cost of that, not to mention the work.

Your milk is not poured more than 24 hours before you pick up. We need to keep a tight schedule so that everyone gets the freshest milk, families get how much they want, and we can keep things straight as there are a lot of moving parts on a farm like ours. 

To summarize everything…

Your responsibilities:

• Provide 2 weeks worth of jars initially.

• Bring clean jars every week to replace what you take home. We rinse your jars with hot water before we fill them, but we do not wash them. If you bring dirty jars, you’ll have funky tasting milk. We are happy to replace the milk if available, but you will be charged full price for replacement milk.

• Pick up on time and each week, unless prior arrangements are made as discussed above. If arrangements aren’t made in advance, you agree to still pay for the milk. Failure to do this will result in being dropped from the milk schedule.

Our responsibilities:

• Produce the freshest and best tasting milk possible.

• Provide cows with optimal nutrition and care so they can give you the best and most nutrient dense milk possible.

• Communicate any production issues on our end.

A few last things to mention… Milk flavor changes with the season, especially in the spring as the cows return to eating fresh grass. It takes nearly a full month for the rumen to rebalance and adjust the types of bacteria that break down the different kinds of plant materials. It common to have a slightly grassy flavor to the milk during this time. That is the beauty of seasonal and natural foods, flavor and even nutritional value change throughout the year. You should not expect any “off” flavors in your milk such as salty or barny. These are primarily related to metabolic issues with the cows and despite our best efforts, sometimes cows are like kids and refuse to eat what they should to keep proper rumen health and activity. We don’t expect these things to happen and if/when they do, we’ll cover that. We constantly quality check the flavor of the milk. Remember, our family drinks the same thing as you, often from the same day’s milk so it’s also in our best interest to have the highest quality milk we can produce.

Lastly, we greatly appreciate the opportunity to serve you and share this wonderful alabaster udder nectar! It brings us great joy to see the look of pure dairy elation when people try our milk for the first time. The reason we have all the above rules is so that we are all on the same page which means we can focus on bringing you the best possible product instead of dealing with issues. We send out a lot of milk each week and it’s the only way we have to keep it all straight and orderly. Thank you for understanding.

If you have any questions about the above or anything else, just ask!