Holy moly the last 48 hours in particular have been LONG hours. Like all of you, we've been navigating how to respond to the corona virus (COVID 19). We are acting now to keep ourselves, our coworkers, and community healthy and well fed. We want to keep our team employed. We want to weather this global crisis and resulting economic fallout. Luckily, we are in the business of farming and food production. Farming teaches us every day to be observant, vigilant, to weather upheavals and challenges. And in our creamery, we know how important it is to make yogurt that is nourishing, delicious and made with care and best sanitation practices. We've now been bottling raw milk and making yogurt for eight years now. We take the responsibility of sharing our dairy with the community of Maine very seriously. We've had standard operating procedures (SOPs) and good manufacturing practices (GMPs) in place for years. With the COVID 19 outbreak, we are continuing to follow such procedures as using a food contact surface sanitizer, continually sanitizing work surfaces and frequent hand washing that follows proper hand washing protocol. Our health policy is that anyone sick with fever or respiratory illness symptoms will stay home, and anyone with sick family members will stay home.
It is important to note that the CDC says coronaviruses are generally thought to be spread from person-to-person through respiratory droplets. Currently there is no evidence to support transmission of COVID-19 associated with food. Because of poor survivability of these coronaviruses on surfaces, there is very low risk of spread from food products.
There is no option to work remotely in farming or food production if you're the one doing the requisite hands on work. The cows are not going to stop making milk because of this pandemic. We've gotta milk them and magic that milk into yogurt on a weekly, nearly daily basis. Our business depends on this cycle of production and resulting cash flow. We all have a boatload of concerns for our families right now, but we must remember to support our community, including the abundance of small, local, independent businesses that make Maine such a unique place to live and work. Many of those businesses are farms of differing sizes and stripes. In the likely absence of farmer's markets in coming days or weeks, reach out to them to see if you can stop by the farm to pick up root vegetables in bulk, winter greens, or arrange a delivery to one location for several neighbors. We all need to eat, and eating good, local, nutrient dense food can go a long way to community resiliency, peace of mind and healthy bodies. Shop at your local food coop or natural food store to get the best of what Maine has to offer in winter. Seek out local products when you go to Hannaford or Shaws.
We at the Milkhouse are faced with several large accounts disappearing overnight-we've been providing yogurt to Bowdoin and Colby for years, and more recently UMaine. We staunchly support the decision to close these institutions to protect the health and best interests of Maine people, but like so many hard decisions being made right now, this one carries financial repercussions. With the loss of these accounts for an unknowable period of time, our business will take a significant hit.
Please continue to support us if you can. Look for our yogurt in 12 Hannafords, coops, and natural food stores all over Maine. There is a complete list of where our yogurt can be found on the distribution tab of our website. If you are local to Monmouth, know that our on farm store will continue to be open. It is a low contact way to pick up essential food items-milk, yogurt, and meat from the Milkhouse. Eggs from Apple Creek Farm, chicken from Grace Pond Farm, local dry beans, and maple syrup from Gray Jay Maple Works. We have half and whole pigs available now-stock those freezers! Every person who goes out of their way to get a portion of their vegetables (especially root crops at this time of year!) from their local farmer, every person who buys a quart of yogurt, every dollar spent, every morale boosted, will help farmers weather this unprecedented challenge.
Take good care of each other out there, folks, and wash your hands.
With love from all of us here at the Milkhouse,
Caitlin