When a processor told a 9th-generation dairy farmer to dump his milk during lockdown, he worked around the clock to bottle it himself! Locals lined up around the block to support him!
When Ben Brown’s dairy processor told him they could no longer buy his milk due to restaurant lock-downs at the beginning of the pandemic, he got to work bottling it himself.
When he realized he would have to dump hundreds of gallons of milk per week until his 70 milking cows dried up, he couldn’t bear it. So he started working around the clock, for weeks, pasteurizing it himself in a 30-gallon vat.
Locals lined up around the block to support the 300-year-old Whoa Nellie Dairy farm, which been providing high-quality, cream-line milk since the 1700s.
And now, thanks to popular demand, he sells his grass-fed milk raw, which means he doesn’t have to work so hard, and his customers get more nutritious milk!
Brown originally posted on Facebook on April 11, 2020, that he would open up the farm store for additional hours to sell the milk directly to consumers, and the response was overwhelming:
The line to get in the store was at least 20 customers deep for several hours, the local news reported.
“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.
“I don’t want us to go under. This farm has been in the Brown family since the 1700s,” he said.
But from the looks of their Facebook page, it looks like the Brown’s are doing better than ever, cutting out the middlemen and selling all kinds of products in their farm store and on local food trucks.
