Grass-based Dairy Farming at PastureLand

Butter is back!

PastureLand Summer Gold butter is back in stock, and no one is happier about it than we are! This pic is one of the first cases off the line during the first churn this summer at Pine River Dairy.

We are getting ready to move in to a new mail order facility, and won’t be offering cases of butter until we complete the move in mid-August, feel free to order smaller quantities until then. 6 – 8 lbs of butter fit nicely in our small cooler though, so order up!

If you’ve been tracking our story, you know that the slow market for organic skim milk kept us from starting to churn butter in early spring. Conditions have improved a bit, and we are converting the majority of our skim milk to non-fat dry milk powder at Plainview Milk, near the Stellings in Millville.

It’s an imperfect solution, and is not without its ups and downs (Plainview canceled this week’s drying at the last minute due to an equipment failure), but it’s working. The more weeks we are able to dry our skim, the more butter we will be able to churn, and the better the butter price will be this winter.

We are still seeking solutions to our skim milk puzzle, and would like to have other options in addition to drying. Feel free to contact us if you have need of 50,000 lbs (a full tanker!) of certified organic, 100% grass-fed non-fat skim milk every week. We can definitely hook you up.

In the meantime, we are building our inventory of nonfat dry milk powder (NFDM). All of it is from our own milk, and it is probably the only source of certified organic, 100% grass-fed dry milk in the country (world?). Let us know if you are interested. We can make it available on our website for single bag (50 lbs) orders, or FOB Plainview for pallet orders.

Onward into the summer. It’s been a beautiful season, lots of rain, lots of sunshine, and we are blessed to be doing the work we’ve been given. Spring milk flush was strong, first hay was early and great quality, and we are well into second crop hay now. We’ve wrapped up calving until fall, and have settled into the summer routine of farm work. Keep your fingers crossed for us that rain continues, cows stay cool, and that Plainview keeps drying milk!

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