Author Topic: Transporting milk from farm to home  (Read 5442 times)

Antita

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Transporting milk from farm to home
« on: November 26, 2012, 09:54:52 AM »
Hey everyone,
I'm new on here, although we've been making cheese at home for a while (and my partner used to work as a cheesemaker!).
We have just found a great source of raw milk that's not too far from home (30 mins drive), and are a bit lost as to what to transport it in! What does everyone else use? And where can I buy something? Keep in mind I'm in a small country town...
Thanks for your help :)

boothrf

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Re: Transporting milk from farm to home
« Reply #1 on: November 26, 2012, 10:26:47 AM »
Hi Anita,  I collect my milk in 10 litre plastic buckets with lids that you can get at most hardware stores. They look like paint buckets. They have tight fitting lids that don't leak and you can get 15 & 20 litres ones as well.  It is chilled when I collect it and as I live only a few minutes from the dairy it easily stays cool until I get it into the fridge. I did transport some for an hour in the car once and it remained cool, the plastic is a good insulator.

Offline Tiarella

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Re: Transporting milk from farm to home
« Reply #2 on: November 26, 2012, 12:16:37 PM »
Bob,  are those food grade, BPA free buckets?  You can buy food grade buckets pretty easily either new or used although I'm not sure how many are BPA free.  You'd want to avoid scratching the plastic as you clean it because scratches are great places for contaminating bacteria to lurk.  My dairy inspector warned me about that.

Depending upon how much milk you're picking up you could use glass gallon bottles (wide mouth for cleaning ease), half gallon canning jars or order metal milk cans.  Then, with a properly sized cooler (if your transport is more than a short jump) you can easily transport your milk even in the summer.

Congrats on finding good milk!

Peynirci

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Re: Transporting milk from farm to home
« Reply #3 on: November 26, 2012, 01:13:13 PM »
I use a food grade, 4 gallon (15 liter) plastic bucket.  The milk is already chilled when I pick it up and I keep it cold, even in the hot DC summer, by putting it on ice in a cooler filled up with ice.  I've put a thermometer in the milk after keeping it on ice on my patio (I don't have a large enough fridge for it) on a hot summer night and it was 38 degrees, a decent temperature to inhibit pathogen growth.  I believe the state health rules and the cooperative's regs for my parents' cow dairy require the milk to be kept between 35-40 degrees prior to pick-up by the hauler, so this seems to work well, especially because I never use milk more than 48 hours old.  In general, I'd say the closer to 33 degrees you can keep the milk the better (without freezing, of course, that's a rancid-causing disaster for cow and goat milk, but apparently not a big problem for sheep's milk). 

Hope that's helpful.

Tomer1

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Re: Transporting milk from farm to home
« Reply #4 on: November 26, 2012, 01:29:32 PM »
I use a blue 30L HDPE drum (it has a metal closure which goes ontop of the lid making it liquid tight).
The drum can be fitted with a tap allowing you to let the milk sit , fat to rise and collect the "skimmed" milk from the bottom.

Antita

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Re: Transporting milk from farm to home
« Reply #5 on: November 27, 2012, 07:09:44 AM »
Thanks for your replies! :)
I haven't been able to find much in my local hardware stores, but there's still a farm trading store to try, so fingers crossed.

boothrf

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Re: Transporting milk from farm to home
« Reply #6 on: November 28, 2012, 09:36:35 AM »
Anita there are plenty of plastic food grade buckets with lids on E Bay.  Alternatively, local food producers like bakeries often sell buckets that have had ingredients stored in them, and will be food grade. Just give them a thorough clean and sanitise.. 
Hi Tiarala. Scratches only become an issue if they are quite deep. Good cleaning and sanitizing is adequate for normal fine scratches. I'd rather use plastic than glass which is heavy and prone to chipping and cracking.  Yes, I'm very lucky to have friendly farmers close by!

Tomer1

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Re: Transporting milk from farm to home
« Reply #7 on: November 28, 2012, 04:47:36 PM »
you can also try a winemaking or brewing shop.

Antita

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Re: Transporting milk from farm to home
« Reply #8 on: December 01, 2012, 01:38:31 AM »
Found a 20L bucket (with lid) yesterday at my local trading store :) It's even a funky turquoise colour... That's big enough for us to start with.

Offline Al Lewis

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Re: Transporting milk from farm to home
« Reply #9 on: December 01, 2012, 01:47:33 AM »
The small farm where I buy mine has it refrigerated in regular milk containers so I just put it in the back seat of the truck.
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boothrf

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Re: Transporting milk from farm to home
« Reply #10 on: December 01, 2012, 01:55:23 AM »
That sounds perfect Anita. Whereabouts in northern Victoria are you?

Antita

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Re: Transporting milk from farm to home
« Reply #11 on: December 03, 2012, 02:41:57 AM »
That sounds perfect Anita. Whereabouts in northern Victoria are you?

Goulburn Valley area :)

Peynirci

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Re: Transporting milk from farm to home
« Reply #12 on: December 03, 2012, 04:20:20 AM »
The small farm where I buy mine has it refrigerated in regular milk containers so I just put it in the back seat of the truck.

I saw that the milk jug says that it's raw milk.  I'm curious, do you happen to know what the law is in Washington state?  On my parents' dairy in Pennsylvania we were allowed to sell raw milk but the customer had to bring their own container to the farm, so we wouldn't have been able to bottle and label the milk like this.  I'm in DC now and sadly there are no longer dairy cows on the White House lawn nor sheep in front of the Capitol, but I can at least get golden guernsey milk in Virginia.  It's illegal to sell raw milk in VA but the work around is to join a cow share.