Farm Fact Friday May 1, 2020: Jersey Milk is a Smart Ecological Choice

#FarmFactFriday

Last week, the U.S. celebrated its 50th Earth Day. Did you know that drinking milk from Jersey cows is a smart choice, ecologically?

“A scientific, peer-reviewed life-cycle assessment published in the Journal of Dairy Science (Capper & Cady, 2012) determined that for Jerseys and Holsteins to produce the same amount of protein, milkfat and other solids, the Jersey population needs 32% less water, requires 11% less land, produces less waste and uses substantially less fossil fuels with a 20% reduction in total carbon footprint. In terms of the amount of Jersey milk needed to produce 500,000 metric tons (1.1 billion pounds) of cheese, the reduction in carbon footprint is equal to taking 443,900 cars off the road annually.” (Source: www.usjersey.com)

You all know that Jersey milk is the most delicious, but it turns out it’s pretty efficient, too. So come get some! We’ll be open today as usual on the farm in MOOringsport (address in profile). Our hours are MWF 2-5 PM and Saturdays 9 AM-noon. As a reminder, we’ll still doing our drive-through service, so please stay in your car - we’ll come to you! See you soon!

Farm Fact Friday 4/17/2020: How Cows Stand Up and Lie Down

Time for another Farm Fact Friday! This one is specifically from Farmer Randy, who wants everyone to know that when a cow stands up, she always stands up on her back legs first, then her front legs. When she lies down, she does the opposite: kneels down on her front legs first, then lowers her back legs. 
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If you click here, you can see a video on our Facebook page of Jennin, our bull calf, demonstrating! Come by and see him today (4/17) at the farm in MOOringsport - we’ll be open 2-5 PM, as usual. As a reminder, we’re doing drive-up only - we’ll come to your car to take your order!
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#morelldairyfarm #farmfactfriday #jerseycow #alljersey #farmfresh#buylocal

Farm Fact Friday: How We Process Our Milk

We’re starting a new feature called Farm Fact Fridays! Every Friday, we’ll try to educate you a little bit about our farm or dairy farming in general.

We’re going to start by walking you through our milk processing, since we get a lot of questions on it!

First, we milk the cows. Twice a day, every day, rain or shine, weekday or weekend, work day or holiday, normal day or pandemic. Every. Day. Thanks, Farmer Randy!

As we milk our lovely Jersey cows, the milk runs through pipes immediately to our chiller, where the milk stays chilled until we process it. 

Next step is pasteurization. All of our milk and dairy products are pasteurized, per Louisiana law. We use a process called vat pasteurization. We heat the milk to 145 degrees F and hold it there for 30 minutes. This is in contrast to big processing plants, which do flash pasteurization, which means they heat the milk to above 186 degrees F for 1 second. Those high temperatures can denature some of the proteins so that they are not digestible. That’s why some of our customers find that they cannot handle supermarket milk but love ours!

After we heat the milk through vat pasteurization, we chill it back down to below 45 degree F - it just takes a few minutes. Then we bottle and seal.

Although we pasteurize, we do NOT homogenize. This means you get that amazing layer of cream at the top of our whole milk!

In future posts, we’ll talk about how we make butter and our addictive chocolate milk. Stay tuned for more #FarmFactFriday posts!
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#morelldairyfarm #farmlife #familyfarm #buylocal #alljersey #farmfresh#localfarmer