At dawn the sun rises just behind a line of trees on the crest of a ridge leading up to Dutch Mountain in Frankfort. A small herd of Jersey cows lies together, chewing their cud, looking at the view across their pasture: a line of moraine hills behind Swan Lake in the distance brighten from dark humps to green hills, and the water of the lake begins to sparkle. By the time the sun rises over the tree line and begins to fall on the pale tan bodies, the lead cow, the only one with horns, leans forward onto her front knees, lifts her hind-quarters, then stands all the way up, to begin a leisurely walk out of the pasture. The rest of the herd rise on her cue and follow her down a tree covered lane, past an ancient and overgrown family cemetery, and down to the miking shed for their morning ritual. Cecil Linscott and Ann Wilson are there to meet them, and walk them into the fairly new milking parlor, which can fit all twelve of their milking cows at once. Before this luxury they milked four cows at a time in a much smaller room in their barn, and before that Ann was hand milking one to three cows in their garage. "Everything you see we built ourselves," Cecil explains as he distributes hay and grain to the cows who have walked into their milking stalls. "We carved it all out of the woods when we moved here in 1989. Before that it had been an orchard with 60 acres of apple trees that was abandoned in 1949."
Meanwhile, Ann washes and dries the udder of the first cow with warm soapy water, then applies the suction tubes of the automatic milker to each teat. They milk one cow at a time into a stainless steel container that they carry from cow to cow, emptying it after each cow is milked so they can accurately track quality, as well as look for signs about the health of each cow. Cecil works in the processing room, bottling the milk as soon as it's brought to him, and then setting each bottle or jug into a cooling tank. For skim milk and cream, Cecil pours the milk into a stainless steel container set in the cooler and lets it separate overnight before hand-skimming the thick golden cream off the top and bottling those products.
White Orchard sells their certified organic raw milk and cream in a number of stores in the mid-coast area, delivering it themselves just as soon as the milk has cooled after milking. "One of the neat things of doing it ourselves is getting to know our customers," Cecil says. "Often I'll be in the store with a delivery, and a customer will ask how fresh this milk is, and I'll tell them 'it was lying in the pasture last night!'" As she is milking, Anne relates comments from their customers who tell them over and over how very much better their milk tastes than any other milk they've ever had. "Once person was convinced that it wasn't milk, but melted ice cream." Many people even tell them that they have trouble digesting pasteurized milk, but no trouble digesting their raw milk. White Orchard Farm started with Ann and Cecil selling milk from their first cow, "Twolips", to neighbors and friends. They got their raw milk license from the State in 1993 and began selling their own bottled milk to the Belfast Co-op, as well as other local food stores. They were certified organic by MOFGA in 2000, and have recently begun to convert to using old fashioned glass bottles, instead of plastic jugs, that they charge a $2 deposit for. "The glass is a big investment," they admit, pointing out that they have to go to Canada just to find the old fashioned, durable, milk bottles in pint, quart, and half-gallon sizes. "But we were spending a lot in plastic, too, and all of that was being thrown away. The milk also seems to taste better in the glass." Right now they deliver to Bangor (Natural Living Center), Blue Hill (Blue Hill Coop), and Belfast (Belfast Coop), with stops in-between (Family Country Market in Frankfort, Unity Farmers Market by preorder, and the Islesboro Farmers Market until October). Due to a strong demand for their high quality organic raw milk, it is being shipped down to the Portland's Whole Grocer, although that's not their ultimate goal. "It's stupid to have our milk go to all the way down to Portland from here," Cecil points out, and Ann agrees. "Every community should have their own raw milk producer. If someone in that area decided offer the same thing, we'd happily leave that market." That's a curious attitude given the normal state of dairy processing where farms, even most organic dairies, ship milk to processors in giant tanker trucks, often travelling out of state. In the case of Maine's other organic dairy farmers, the majority of their milk is shipped to processors in New Hampshire, Vermont, or New York before being shipped back to Maine to be stocked on grocery shelves. The White Orchard certified organic milk, with a clearly visible cream line more than a third of the way down each bottle of whole milk, competes with Horizon and Organic Valley brands of organic milk at the Belfast Coop and other stores. However, White Orchard milk is often priced less than their competitors that, although they may have started as Maine organic milk, are now "ultra-pasteurized" to withstand the transport distances and time to market. Because they're not eager to expand into larger markets (in fact there seems to be a surplus of demand for their milk and cream closer to home), White Orchard dairy is not looking to milk many more cows than the twelve they can fit into their new parlor. It seems to be just about the right size for the two of them to handle, although with all of the other chores revolving around the dairy -- mowing and baling hay, raising calves, tending to the books, their other gardens -- there's no lack of work. "I heard a song the other day that said something like, 'I've been working so long that I'll die standing up.'" Ann smiles and shakes her head. "I can relate to that!" After milking, the calves are fed and watered, the milk is put away to cool, the equipment is washed and sanitized, the stalls are swept, and the cows are let out of the milking parlor to walk back up the lane to their pasture. "I just opened up a new section for them," Cecil says, grinning. "Boy are they going to be excited when they get back and discover all that green clover!"
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