Twin Brook Creamery
This is where the milk is processed and bottled
And delivered in this truck – our order is small enough so that he doesn’t come all the way to the store but he does run it into Bellingham to a drop point that we use for other deliveries.
Larry’s Great Granfather cleared the land and built this barn in 1910, almost 100 years ago. The land has been in the family’s hands ever since.
Imagine building such a structure without power tools, cranes or scaffolding.
Here are some of Larry’s ladies waiting to be milked.
Jersey’s are sweet and personable – good cows.
These are fed on open pasture and raised without hormones
Larry doesn’t use pesticides and is mostly organic – he looked at becoming certified
but the current organic standards prohibit the use of antibiotics – if you use them, you have to sell the cow.
Larry preferrs to keep the cow out of production for a few months until the antibiotics have flushed from their systems.
Here is one of the hands applying the milking machine.
These use air pressure and are very gentle.
Here is the milking machine attached and running.
You talkin’ to me?
The cows are fed some tasty grain treats along with some vitamin and mineral supplements.
They look forward to milking as a treat.
The milk winds up here – a 2,000 Gallon refrigerated bulk storage tank.
You can see a motor on top – this is for a large rotating paddle that keeps the milk from seperating.
Here is Larry in the Creamery explaining how the bottles are washed and sanitised.
Here is Larry again with a dishwasher that has been modified to handle the glass bottles.
When they get ready to process the milk (three times/week), the milk is pumped from the bulk storage tank in the barn over to this pasturising tank in the creamery.
The temperature is raised to 140 which kills any pathogens without harming the flavor.
The milk then passes through this plate chiller which cools it down to 35 in a few seconds.
And then through this seperator which allows Larry to set the level of cream in the product, from Whole to Non-Fat or pure Cream.
The seperator has been disassembled for sanitizing and will be reassembled on processing day.
And last on the line, here is the bottling machine. It has a capacity of two bottles at a time.
And finally, here is our order sitting in their walk-in cooler.
They had just finished a large delivery so the cooler is pretty empty.
All in all, a wonderful day spent learning about where our food comes from… — Dave Halliday
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