Starting a dairy?

[babsbag]

I know there must be people out there as crazy as I am so will someone who isn't crazy please convince me that at the age of 54 I shouldn't want to open a Grade B dairy. Especially I shouldn't want to try and do this in California, the great state of over regulations. I have been thinking about this for 4 years and after a life changing event in my husbands life he is finally on board with my crazy idea and now I am getting cold feet.

Am I crazy?

Insanity is an asset in the goat dairy business. Guard it with your life. If you are not crazy, then your sanity will take over and talk you out of a good deal.

Love it

 

[OneFineAcre]

License? I don't need no stinking license!!!

I will just continue to sell my products for "pet consumption only"

Rock on bootleg milk and cheese!!!!

You are either braver than I am or crazier, not sure which.

I would like to quit my job and figure out a way to make some money from my hobbies that bleed me dry so I really need to make this a legal venture. CA has no law regarding herd shares, one way or the other, but that doesn't stop them from shutting them down. I would take the rsk, but DH won't let me. They do have laws about making cheese, so that is a no go if I want to sell it commercially. It just isn't worth the risk on the cheese making, our state inspectors can be pretty ruthless.

Ultimately I would like to sell raw milk off my farm. CA is one of the few states that will allow that if you can get through the regulation process.

I am probably crazier, but that would be pure speculation.

I was mostly joking. But, we do have a "select" clientele that we sell milk and cheese to.

But, there are ads on CL in N.C. all the time for raw goats milk. Going rate is $8.00 per gallon. Adds all say "USDA regulations restrict the sale of blah blah blah blah. This milk is sold for pet consumption only".

Some of them actualy have a picture of a gallon jug and they have a label that says For Pet Consumption Only.

 

[babsbag]

I appreciate all the hurdles you guys throw at me, it makes me think this through even more. Good practice.

WMR, you are going to get me hooked on this idea aren't you? I have a book called Farmstead Creamery Advisor, awesome book. The author has some great information and it is nice to have it in one place. I have also been to her farm and cheese classes and she is a wonderful person as well.

In CA the grade B dairy follows the rules from the USDA for manufacturing grade milk. They aren't that stringent. Grade A is much tougher, at least on my little piece of land it would be., mostly the regs regarding distance for housing from the milk room.

http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELDEV3004791

I would lilke to start small and expand to raw milk if I can, I would never want to sell to producers, just not my vision. Ultimately I would like to do an educational center with a garden and other livestock and have classrooms available for groups to use and also I would teach some basic classes in food preservation and soap making, and maybe cheese too. There is land near me for sale that I am hoping to buy, that is critical for the educational side of this project.

I have seen plans for a micro dairy that are only 10x30 and then some that are 24x 30. That is the size of the garage we built for 15000. Granted the interior would cost a little more to finish but there are cement board products and fiberglass panels that are not that much money. I also know how to lay tile if I wanted to go that route. We are very good at finding things used. My DH will do all the framing, plumbing, and electrical. I will do all the finish work inside and paint. We will probably hire roofers just becasue it is hard hard work, and hire the slab poured

I would like to use the waste water from cleaning on the pastures, but I am a little leery of the chemical residue from the cleaners. I have to do some more research on that.

I have everything for the milk parlor except the metal stands. I have a lot of friends that have nice goats in just about every breed so adding to my current collection would be easy.
The milk room, I don't really need much if I make cheese within 2 hours. But I would still want to buy a chiller and very cold refrigerator freezer.
Here is the system for the milk production or make room that I am looking at; one of many. I really only need the pastuerizer for now. This is going to be the hardest and most expensive room in the facility.

http://www.microdairydesigns.com/

It includes a legal pasteurizer with agitator, airspace heater, water jacket heater (no boiler required), approved thermometers, chart recorder. Capacity for batches from 2 to 22 gallons. Designed to function as a pasteurizer, cheese vat, yogurt vat and even as a small "bulk tank."
A packager for glass and plastic bottles as well as foil-seal yogurt cups. It will handle packages as small as a half ounce and as large as gallon jugs.
Sanitary tube pump and Chiller

I still need to figure out how to package fresh cheese and feta. The aged cheeses will come later, I need to work on my skills for that this summer and it takes more equipment. There is a real science behind cheese making and I need a better grasp of that.

 

[michickenwrangler]

Hydrogen peroxide is an approved cleaner (I believe at 30% concentration, NOT what you buy at the pharmacy, that's only 3%). The organic dairy I'm affiliated with uses that for their cleaning. Look into that.

Vacuum sealer for the cheese?

Again, dairy belt dweller here. For a few years I worked in Michigan's "Cheese Capital" the thriving metropolis of Pinconning. There are a few small cheesemakers and all of their cheese is vacuum sealed.

 

[babsbag]

Hydrogen peroxide is an approved cleaner (I believe at 30% concentration, NOT what you buy at the pharmacy, that's only 3%). The organic dairy I'm affiliated with uses that for their cleaning. Look into that.

Vacuum sealer for the cheese?

Again, dairy belt dweller here. For a few years I worked in Michigan's "Cheese Capital" the thriving metropolis of Pinconning. There are a few small cheesemakers and all of their cheese is vacuum sealed.

Never would have thought to use Hydrogen Peroxide. Thanks for the tip. Since I am not planning on owning many more animals than I currently own hopefully the county will not stress out over the waste water from the milk parlor. It will only be the water from the production part of the operation that will matter.

That would probably work for the cheese. I have a "seal- a- meal" so I guess that it the same idea, only on a commercial scale. I aged some cheese in a vacuum once and that worked pretty good, but not what I would do for aging cheese for sale if I ever get there. I keep thinking chevre in the little round wheels, but I guess those are vacuumed packed too, I just never think about it when I buy it.

Truffles will just go in a box of some kind, but they will have to be refrigerated as well.

In the store you see Feta in little tubs, dry and crumbled. I store my feta in a brine so I wonder what they do, if anything, to make it keep well out of the brine?

 

[babsbag]

License? I don't need no stinking license!!!

I will just continue to sell my products for "pet consumption only"

Rock on bootleg milk and cheese!!!!

You are either braver than I am or crazier, not sure which.

I would like to quit my job and figure out a way to make some money from my hobbies that bleed me dry so I really need to make this a legal venture. CA has no law regarding herd shares, one way or the other, but that doesn't stop them from shutting them down. I would take the rsk, but DH won't let me. They do have laws about making cheese, so that is a no go if I want to sell it commercially. It just isn't worth the risk on the cheese making, our state inspectors can be pretty ruthless.

Ultimately I would like to sell raw milk off my farm. CA is one of the few states that will allow that if you can get through the regulation process.

I am probably crazier, but that would be pure speculation.

I was mostly joking. But, we do have a "select" clientele that we sell milk and cheese to.

But, there are ads on CL in N.C. all the time for raw goats milk. Going rate is $8.00 per gallon. Adds all say "USDA regulations restrict the sale of blah blah blah blah. This milk is sold for pet consumption only".

Some of them actualy have a picture of a gallon jug and they have a label that says For Pet Consumption Only.

I think in Colorado you have to dye the milk if it is for pets. Kinda like disel oil for the farm equipment. We can eat, smoke, and drink (alcohol) ourselves to death, but heaven forbid if we want to drink raw milk. Drives me crazy.

 

[babsbag]

I just talked to the most wonderful man from our local planning dept. He is trying to find a way to get permission for me to have the dairy and make cheese with no zoning variance. He says that small wineries are allowed so he is going to try and talk to his boss and see if a micro dairy could just subsitiute for a winery. I have the zoning to produce products from things "grown" on my land so he thinks that should include a dairy as well. The most it could cost is 1200 for a written land use verification letter. He was amazingly helpful and a breath of fresh air from a government agency. he said it was his job to try and find way for citizens to do things legally without a bunch of expense. WOW!!!!!!!!!!

He also found out for me that our Environmental Health Dept does not license of inspect dairies at all and they don't want to. They leave it all up to the state. I am still not sure how I am supposed to deal with the added waste water, the state said to contact the county, but I will do it in an environmentally friendly way and be happy.

I am still in a state of happy amazement. It is seldom that I find someone that actually wants to save me money. Maybe they really are trying to be business friendly.

 

[OneFineAcre]

You are either braver than I am or crazier, not sure which.

I would like to quit my job and figure out a way to make some money from my hobbies that bleed me dry so I really need to make this a legal venture. CA has no law regarding herd shares, one way or the other, but that doesn't stop them from shutting them down. I would take the rsk, but DH won't let me. They do have laws about making cheese, so that is a no go if I want to sell it commercially. It just isn't worth the risk on the cheese making, our state inspectors can be pretty ruthless.

Ultimately I would like to sell raw milk off my farm. CA is one of the few states that will allow that if you can get through the regulation process.

I am probably crazier, but that would be pure speculation.

I was mostly joking. But, we do have a "select" clientele that we sell milk and cheese to.

But, there are ads on CL in N.C. all the time for raw goats milk. Going rate is $8.00 per gallon. Adds all say "USDA regulations restrict the sale of blah blah blah blah. This milk is sold for pet consumption only".

Some of them actualy have a picture of a gallon jug and they have a label that says For Pet Consumption Only.

I think in Colorado you have to dye the milk if it is for pets. Kinda like disel oil for the farm equipment. We can eat, smoke, and drink (alcohol) ourselves to death, but heaven forbid if we want to drink raw milk. Drives me crazy.

Drives me crazy too my friend.

 

[WhiteMountainsRanch]

In the store you see Feta in little tubs, dry and crumbled. I store my feta in a brine so I wonder what they do, if anything, to make it keep well out of the brine?

I do all our feta in olive oil. Lasts forever and is oh so yummy! Sometimes we layer with basil, or rosemary, garlic, sundried tomatoes etc... yum!

 

[WhiteMountainsRanch]

I just talked to the most wonderful man from our local planning dept. He is trying to find a way to get permission for me to have the dairy and make cheese with no zoning variance. He says that small wineries are allowed so he is going to try and talk to his boss and see if a micro dairy could just subsitiute for a winery. I have the zoning to produce products from things "grown" on my land so he thinks that should include a dairy as well. The most it could cost is 1200 for a written land use verification letter. He was amazingly helpful and a breath of fresh air from a government agency. he said it was his job to try and find way for citizens to do things legally without a bunch of expense. WOW!!!!!!!!!!

He also found out for me that our Environmental Health Dept does not license of inspect dairies at all and they don't want to. They leave it all up to the state. I am still not sure how I am supposed to deal with the added waste water, the state said to contact the county, but I will do it in an environmentally friendly way and be happy.

I am still in a state of happy amazement. It is seldom that I find someone that actually wants to save me money. Maybe they really are trying to be business friendly.

Awesome! Is he just Nor Cal? I'd like to have his contact info- maybe he knows someone down here. Last time I tried to get permitting for the farmers market I literally went through like 4 different agencies and about 15 different people and no one could answer any of my questions.