John might go micro dairying...... kind of.....

[Jaffa Cakes]

No, I was selling raw milk. A lot of hoops to jump through but I’d had some decent past experience of milking and cow management and the dairy inspector could see that. (The main problem came when I moved the mobile parlour to a different linked holding, as it was the original holding and not the parlour that was approved....!! Effectively it meant I would have had to go through registration again from scratch, and could produce milk for consumption until I’d passed! Fortunately my dairy inspector was blessed with lots of common sense and we found a way round it.

The drawback was all my land at the time was on grazing licences so I couldn’t put a vending machine anywhere. I was selling some at the front door and a lot as mail order, packed in ice and couriered for next-day delivery

Thanks, that's really interesting. Do you still milk?

 

[The Ruminant]

Thanks, that's really interesting. Do you still milk?

Unfortunately not. Although I had someone milking for me during the week, (because I worked elsewhere), I was bottling the milk at 10pm at night then getting up at 4am to package it and send it off to customers before my normal day started at 6am. With very little sleep over several years, it was getting too much and was putting pressure on the rest of the family. If I’d been able to install a vending machine it would have been easier but circumstances at the time meant I couldn’t.

It was a real shame, in many ways. I started with virtually no capital, just enough to buy 2 i/c heifers and the milking unit, and within a couple of years had 20 animals and could have continued growing.

Mind you, I was selling the milk at a sensible price - £2 per pint (which sounds expensive but was half the price of a pint of beer, by comparison!)