The Cow Club - & the rest of the story...
Milk Customers! Let's talk about what things will look like for the near future. At this point our cow herd is about ⅓ of what it was in September. We couldn't afford to keep feeding cows and paying employees and then dumping all the milk. This means we have about ⅓ of the milk we did previously - it's a little bit like starting over.
We will have cow milk available to purchase in our farm store this week on Thursday (11/30) & Saturday (12/2). We currently have a great supply of goat milk, which can be purchased in store or ordered online through our website.
Beginning next week, cow milk will only be available to those in our membership - The Cow Club. To manage the shortfall we've decided to sell cow milk to a limited number of people to start. If you are interested in buying cow milk please complete the following application. Customers will be chosen through a lottery system with priority given to those who have been purchasing milk from our farm the longest. We will do our best to verify the information by the date a milk waiver was signed here at the farm.
Okay, and now the rest of the story (any Paul Harvey fans out there? :) An updated timeline of events and more information is also posted on our website here: Local Farm Questions Validity of State of Utah Lab Results
The Utah Department of Ag & Food (UDAF) released a statement yesterday regarding the reinstatement of our dairy license. We did begin testing with UDAF again on November 14. One sample was taken that week. Two more samples were taken the next week. We received notification of a negative result within two days for each test. Our license was reinstated this past Friday and we began selling cow milk on Saturday.
The department's press release is interesting in that it states, “We are grateful for the efforts by the UDAF team as well as the dairy owners to isolate the cause of the illnesses and to ensure the milk is safe to be sold once again.” It also says, “The dairy owners took appropriate actions and worked with UDAF inspectors to make improvements and ultimately get the three clean tests required.”
We have emailed a follow up to UDAF inquiring what specific “efforts” their “team” made, as well as what their inspectors did to “make improvements”. In our experience, the Department of Ag offered no real assistance to us - only offers to test again.
Honestly, this feels like they are taking credit for the hard work of so many other people. The department claimed there was a pathogen in our milk but we weren't seeing it, so we searched out help to figure out what was going on and what to do next. Shayn spent countless hours on the phone visiting with other dairy farmers, lab technicians, scientists, and friends in the ag industry to brainstorm with him. Symbria at Red Acre Center put us in contact with those who could help and assisted where she could. We even spoke with Mark McAfee of Raw Farm in California as he virtually walked through our dairy with us. And so many customers who reached out to see how they could help, praying for us, contacting their representatives - thank you so much for all you have done!
We are happy to sell cow milk again but this is the sad reality - we're told we are the first raw dairy here to have a suspected pathogen and get back to business. The norm is for a raw dairy in Utah to shut down permanently. Why is this the standard instead of our public servants giving assistance to help get a dairy back up & running as quickly as possible?
Ultimately, we're grateful for the small agriculture community here in Utah who stepped up and helped us however they could, even if it was just a listening ear. Many farmers called to check on us. And especially for our UNM community - thank you for continuing to shop here and for your prayers. They have been felt.