Lew and Aaron stack haylage bales on a trailer truck for the deer farm.

Today was a busy day at the farm.   In addition to milking and the usual chores, Thursday’s our day to get hay down.  (We drop a week’s worth of square bales down through the hay holes and stack them in front of the cows.  We are currently feeding dry hay in the mornings and haylage in the afternoons.)   We also loaded some round bales for our friends who have a Red Deer farm in Linneus.   We hear that the deer love eating hay and haylage from our farm and are doing really well this winter.  We’re looking forward to going to visit them very soon.

We’re also getting ready to travel to Westbrook tomorrow for the MOOMilk launch.  We are very excited to see the first batch of MOOMilk come off the production line at Smiling Hill Farm and be loaded on a truck for delivery to grocery stores in Maine this Saturday.  This is great news for consumers AND family farms in Maine.  Go, MOOMilk!

For more info on MOOMilk, please visit www.moomilkco.com.  Here’s an excerpt from a recent press release:

“The start of the production marks a new step in the recovery of the Maine dairy industry. MOOMilk with be produced and processed entirely in Maine, with trucking, processing and delivery all done by Maine family businesses. Ninety percent of the profits from the sale of the milk will go to the family farms producing the milk. MOOMilk is not a cooperative, but a low-profit company with a mission of helping Maine organic family dairy farms survive by earning a fair price for their milk.”

Hooray!  We can’t wait to get MOO Milk on store shelves!

Find out all about MOOMilk at our new website, www.moomilkco.com

Visit MOOMilk’s new website for a link to a national news story about our new, partially farmer-owned company by Fox News yesterday: Organic Farmers Band Together To Survive.  Our company manager, Bill Eldridge, filmed several live video segments at Smiling Hill Farm in Westbrook, ME, where MOOMilk will be processed.  He answered questions about our new company, our new brand of organic milk, and the jobs being saved and/or created in Maine in connection with MOOMilk (Maine’s Own Organic Milk Company).

You can read the business blog at Fox News for a related news article, Organic Dairy Farmers Create New Brand: MOOMilk.  Lots of lively discussion going on there!

Also, one of our farmers did an interview for My Fox Maine that’s available at www.myfoxmaine.com/dpp/news/20091124_maine_organic_dairy_farmers_form_company.

Both bulk tanks are full to the brim today...

Well, today is the last day of September and that means it’s the last day of our organic contract.  We will be shipping our milk conventionally for a bit.  We hope to have everything in place to ship organic milk again in about a month’s time.   Maine’s Own Organic Milk Company (MOO Milk Co.) is a work in progress, and it’s a lot of work (especially for busy farmers) but good progress is being made.  Hopefully, the ten family farms in Maine that have lost their organic milk contracts will soon be putting 100% Maine organic milk in Maine stores!  Visit Maine Organic Milk for more information and to show your support.