A unique expression of our land

Our fabulous raw whole milk comes straight from our free-ranging Montbeliarde herd. It’s the freshest, most delicious milk you can lay your mitts on and is completely unprocessed. We promise! The Monty is an ancient breed of cow, originating from the alpine Jura region of France. She doesn’t give much milk but the milk she does give is protein-rich and delicious.

Our raw milk is a unique expression of the fertile soils of our wildlife-rich grazing marshland and the wide variety of grasses and herbs that grow here. A true and edible account of our happy herd and the “terroir” of our special part of Suffolk, nestled in the elbow of the Waveney River Valley.

If you stop by the farm and pop into the cow-print shed, you can pick up a pint or two of our incredible unpasteurised cow’s milk from the UK’s first raw milk vending machine! You can see our cows if it’s milking time, or as distant specks grazing on the beautiful Stow Fen, just behind the farm. We also now ship our raw milk locally and nationwide.

Raw Dairy Farm

The making of our Raw Milk

Our raw milk is completely unprocessed and so there really is no “making” involved! It comes straight from our own free-ranging Montbeliarde herd and either directly into our vending machine, into bottles or to different areas of the farm for cheese or butter making.

1
Every morning at 4am we head down to the fields to open the gate and let the cows head back to the farm for milking. During the summer months, this part of the day is the most beautiful in our opinion. The same routine happens again every afternoon at 3pm.
2
The cows are usually very keen to head back to the farm and like to walk in a line following the cow in front. The same cow is always the leader. While they’re being milked, we set up the fences on their next grazing field, ready for them to enjoy when they come out of the milking parlour.
3

The girls enter the collection yard by the milking parlour where they watch the milking and queue for their turn to be milked. They love to queue and have established their own system, with certain cows taking their “favourite” places in the milking parlour. Each cow will watch and wait until her preferred place in the queue becomes available.

4
In the milking parlour, each cow has what we call teat preparation, before we milk them. During teat preparation, we first squeeze a little milk from the teat to visually check that the udder and milk looks healthy.
 
5
Next, we apply a gentle cleaning foam that covers the teats for 30 seconds. Then finally, we give each teat a double wipe with a sterile flannel to get the area spotless. Our flannels are reusable and are sterilised between milkings.
 
6
Finally, the milking clusters go on. These are soft suction cups designed to milk the cow in a comfortable way and it takes about 5 minutes for the cow to be fully milked. We then dip the end of the cow’s teat in a little iodine before she leaves the milking parlour. The iodine helps to keep the open end of the teat safe from dirt and infection as she walks back to the field.
 
7
Our raw milk is gravity-fed straight from the milking parlour to our making rooms, to make many different products around the farm during the week but here it is going straight into our raw drinking milk vender at only a few minutes old.