Our farmstead creamery is expanding! To meet the growing demand for our cheeses and yogurts, we are upgrading our milk house facility. When we purchased the farm in December 2010, the old milk house from the early 1940's was cleaned up and put back in service. In February 2011, the creamery was constructed in one of the two existing garage bays attached to the house. While this was a great idea for plumbing, it means our milk house and creamery are as far apart as possible in the building.
As true New Englanders, we been able to 'make do with what you have', but this winter we have 5 heifers that are going to enter the milking herd. More milking cows = more milk!  We currently hand carry pails of milk from the milkhouse to the creamery - sometimes 800-900lbs (about 100 gallons) of milk per batch of cheese!
Our Kickstarter Project focuses on tying the two essential parts of our farm together: the dairy and the creamery. Funds will be used for materials to construct a new milkhouse space within the existing dairy barn. The milkhouse equipment will be moved from its current location, to the space attached to the empty garage bay.The existing creamery equipment will move into the bay, creating a back to back, more efficient work space.This arrangement will free up space for increased cheese aging space and dry goods storage.  The old creamery space is already dually certified as a commercial kitchen- with the creamery equipment removed, it will then be dedicated for that purpose.
Funding of this project will:
- Improve energy efficiency by reducing the distance hot water will be traveling. The milkhouse and creamery will be able to run off the same hot water source, eliminating frozen pipes in the creamery and milkhouse in the winter.
- New construction with high efficiency spray foam insulation will reduce energy used in heating the milkhouse. Our current milkhouse's concrete block construction is very ineffective for heating in the winter and we often find ourselves thawing frozen pipes.
- The new space for the milkhouse has higher ceiling clearance, where we can lift the bulk tank off the floor, improving sanitation and work space for bottling milk. We will also be able to gravity feed the milk from the cold storage bulk tank in the milk house to the cheese vat, improving milk safety and quality by handling it less.
- The cheese vat will be closer to the boiler, reducing heat loss.
- Farmer safety and work efficiency will be improved with the elimination of hand carrying pails of milk (especially over the snowy winter driveway- which in Maine can be 5 months of the year!)
 - Increase the types of products we can offer by separating the kitchen and creamery spaces.
 Log on to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/354080505/mooooving-the-milkhouse  top check out the short video we made about the project and see our great rewards for backers! The project can easily be shared on Facebook and other media by copy and pasting the URL.
Thanks for helping us MOOOOOVE THE MILKHOUSE!