In addition to championing their local lobstermen, the Fox Islands are doing their part to support another group producing a different Maine commodity: the dairy farmers behind Maine’s Own Organic Milk Company, a.k.a. MOO Milk.
Islanders regularly stock dairy cases with MOO and use the company’s products to create café confections. Two North Haven filmmakers are even helping share the organic farmers’ stories in their new documentary “Betting the Farm.” The spotlight is welcome. After a shaky first couple of years for the company, MOO Milk values any support—from a weekly grocery purchase to attention from multiple film festivals—it receives.
The Augusta-based company was formed in 2009 when 10 organic dairy farms from across the state were let go by H.P. Hood “due to a softening in organic milk sales triggered by the recent economic downturn,” the Bangor Daily News reported that year. Those farms united to form Maine’s Own Organic Milk Co. with the help from the Maine Farm Bureau, the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, and the Maine Department of Agriculture.
MOO Milk first appeared in stores in January 2010. The ARCafé on Vinalhaven started ordering the milk the fall of that year. Today the café is a loyal customer.
“All the milk we use, all the cream and all the butter [is from Maine’s Own Organic Milk Company],” said Gabe McPhail, co-manager of the café. “It’s in all of our baking, every drink that gets made. Our half and half, we just make it ourselves with the skim [milk] and the cream.”
The ARCafe orders MOO Milk products through Crown O’ Maine Organic Cooperative in North Vassalboro. In the summertime, “We buy up to 60 to 80 pounds of butter a week,” McPhail said. “Milk, we buy probably eight cases—like 72 half gallons—a week, and we buy seven and a half gallons of cream a week.”
McPhail thinks MOO “just tastes a lot better. It’s richer, it’s creamier, and it’s a lot fresher” than other dairy brands. “A lot of small-scale farms are using Jersey and Guernsey cows, animals that don’t have as high a milk yield as Holsteins, but they have a higher butterfat content,” she said. “Their milk tastes a lot richer because it has a lot more fat in it.”
The milk is processed on an organic production line at Smiling Hill Farm in Westbrook and is pasteurized, not ultra-pasteurized, at a low temperature, which preserves the fresh taste, according to MOO Milk Co. CEO Bill Eldridge.
MOO Milk is also available at Carver’s Harbor Market on Vinalhaven, where it has developed its own customer base despite being more expensive than other brands, according to Donna Warren, the store’s dairy manager.
“I think people want to buy it because it’s milk from right here in Maine,” Warren said. “And one of the things I think is good is on the back of each carton, it tells a little bit about the farm where the milk comes from. There’s a picture and it tells the name of the farm, so I think people like that too. That way you know where your milk’s coming from. It kind of personalizes it.”
There are currently eight farms producing milk for Maine’s Own Organic, and three more farms will join the company at the end of the year, according to Eldridge. “MOO has been in a continuous growth mode since the beginning of the year both in terms of volume sold and farmer[s] supplying MOO milk,” which “was made possible by the strong support of our investors,” he wrote in an email in August.
The company’s future was not always so bright. MOO nearly went out of business in September 2010, but a last-minute infusion of cash from individuals and foundations pulled it back from the brink. Other problems, ranging from leaky cartons to occasional shortages, have also plagued the company and its customers. “But recently, like in the last few months, it’s definitely gotten more consistent,” McPhail said. “It’s a lot more reliable now.”
MOO’s first few tempestuous years are documented in “Betting the Farm,” a film by Jason Mann and Cecily Pingree of Pull-Start Pictures on North Haven. The filmmakers followed three farmers and their families—Aaron Bell of Tide Mill Organic Farm in Edmunds, Vaughn Chase of Chase’s Organic Dairy Farm in Mapleton, and Richard Lary of Windy Acres Farm in Clinton—as the fledgling organic milk company established itself — “a gamble that will either ruin or save them,” as stated on the film’s website.
“The biggest change in the story”¦was probably our shift in focus from the company itself to the struggles of the three families we followed over the years,” Mann said. “It became a story that was as much about the perseverance of working families as it was about milk.”
“Betting the Farm” had its world premiere at the AFI-Discovery Channel SilverDocs Documentary Festival in Silver Spring, Md., in June. Next, the film will premiere in Maine as the opening night selection at the eighth annual Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) on Sept. 27. After that screening, Mann said, he and Pingree will take their movie on a tour of theaters across the state.
“What intrigues me is that [Pingree and Mann] let their characters tell their story, and they did it beautifully and with respect,” said CIFF founder and programmer Ben Fowlie. “[The farmers] are not easily forgettable and are a constant reminder of the hard work and independent spirit that Mainers possess.”
The movie has another message, according to Mann. “If we all continue to shop for food as if price was the only important factor,” he said, “small farms as we’ve known them”¦will simply cease to exist.”
McPhail agrees. “I think there’s often a disconnect when people eat and purchase food,” she said. “They don’t necessarily think about where it’s coming from, and then how their choice to purchase certain things does sort of affect the overall economy.”
On the Fox Islands this summer, MOO is a popular reminder of exactly that. “Every week we’re getting fresh milk that has probably just gone through the plant and shipped to us,” McPhail said. “You will taste the difference.”
Claire Carter is a resident of Vinalhaven and a summer fellow at The Working Waterfront.
