The American spirit lives on at a 300-year-old, cream-line dairy farm,
where a farmer is working around the clock to bottle his own milk after his
processor told him to dump it. Locals are lining up to support him. When
Ben Brown’s dairy processor told him they could no longer buy his milk, he
got to work bottling it himself.
Brown’s Whoa Nellie Dairy farm has been providing high-quality, creamline milk since the 1700s. He sells some of it at his on-site farm store, but a
large portion of it used to be sold to a dairy processor who pasteurized and
bottled it for local restaurants and markets.
When he realized he would have to dump hundreds of gallons of milk each
week until his 70 milking cows dried up, he couldn’t bear it. So he got to
work, literally around the clock, pasteurizing it in small batches in his 30-
gallon vat and bottling it up.
“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.