bringing the people behind our food to
life the reason I decided to raise
jerseys is I I grew up with them that’s
predominately what my father milked but
they’re a more personable cow they’re
inquisitive they’re curious they want to
be around you and they’re smaller and
they’re easier to manage for me they
have fewer health maintenance issues
they’re very efficient with reproduction
come on ladies come on ladies as far as
their product they’re the components of
their milk or what differentiate their
milk from other fluid milk which is
basically Holstein milk
and here where the milk is Jersey milk
is 15 to 20 percent higher in protein
calcium vitamin A vitamin b1 and b2 more
lactase and it also has a higher fat
content note fat content in it there’s
nothing nothing that is as close to me
as those girls
I suppose second to family they’re the
most important thing in my life my whole
life literally revolves around them from
my business to even what motivates me
and drives me is the challenge of
developing and raising these little
girls from the time you see a baby calf
hit the ground when she comes out all
wet to the time she gives birth to her
first calf at two years of age to the
time they become mature cows so when I
go on vacation I guarantee my vacation
venue is going to have a cow involved in
it somewhere
now is that really vacation she’s been
champion at Clark County Fair three
times at two times last year she was
reserved been champion at the Oregon
State Fair once we see how she’s got
veins in her inner utter dairy farmers
we like that typically a good sign of
milk production and there was her
daughter mama and Mama Cass
last year I went the vacation to Madison
Wisconsin to the world Dairy Expo and a
descendant from one of my cows won her
two-year-old class at both the world
Dairy Expo and the all-american Jersey
show that was a probably one of the
biggest highlights of my career should I
say the biggest challenge of being in
the dairy business prior to my bottling
operation was the volatility of the milk
prices I mean they’re constantly
changing and never really kept at a high
enough level to sustain profitability so
you’re always at a constant financial
battle which is why I decided to try and
find my own niche in the market
establish my own price this is a tube
out filler the smallest they made new is
a six valve rotary filler a dairyman in
Vancouver Washington had retired from
the bottling business and he had a small
setup and he priced it very fair at a
point where I could purchase it and get
it installed and then it was just a
matter of marketing the product getting
it out there and hoping it would sell we
use bat pasteurization which is the
lowest heat held for the longest time
and we do not homogenize we leave our
milk natural in its natural state with
the milk fat still in its original state
as it comes right out of calyx
when we started bottling we we did
plastic and glass and when we got to the
market started selling we sold out of
glass milk instantly and quickly
discovered that the niche forest was in
the glass bottled milk there’s little
cows clementine not very big
this is Keeley this is
Keeley’s daughter Kendra and that’s
classy sister Kathy and that’s another
cousin over there key its cami Casey
dairyman are by nature pretty
conservative and unless you’re willing
to take a gamble in a risk and accept
the challenge and the workload of not
only running a dairy farm but an
entirely second entity itself in a
distribution of processed milk may be
pretty daunting to a lot of people it
was daunting to me but I knew that it
was going to be the only way I could
keep these cows so I took the risk
ladies ladies give us some room to get
to where I am now I would say took a lot
of perseverance a great deal of
determination and not not allowing
yourself to give in to the challenges
that a person’s face within the dairy
industry and taking on another business
like become on a producer distributor
and without the great product I have
I might not have succeeded but because I
have a great product with Jersey milk
it’s it’s going in the right direction
originally I think most everything was
was the VAT pasteurization style but
because that pasteurization even though
it removes the risk of harmful bacteria
it doesn’t give you an extended
shelf-life