Dairy farm will sell its own milk in glass bottles

Rick Nutcher stands ready to fill glass bottles with milk produced by his cows in the next building over.

He and his family are launching Nutcher Milk Co., which will sell directly to consumers at their farm southwest of Modesto. The milk also will be at the Turlock Certified Farmers Market and at yet-to-be-announced grocers in and near Stanislaus County.

The venture, which could be up and running by early June, is a rare departure from the industrial-scale milk production in the San Joaquin Valley.

“The reason why I decided to do this is that the cows make great milk,” Nutcher said during a tour last week of the farm, on Grayson Road west of Jennings Road. He added that “people want to know where their milk comes from.”

The Stanislaus County Planning Commission voted unanimously Thursday evening to let Nutcher convert a former storage building into a bottling plant. He already has equipment on hand to process up to 3,000 gallons a day, about half of the output from his 800 or so cows. The rest will continue to go to Hilmar Cheese Co.

Nutcher said he is close to getting final approval from the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The milk has to meet the same standards for pasteurization, nutrients and other details as the products from large plants.

Nutcher plans to offer whole and reduced-fat milk, as well as chocolate, strawberry, orange and root beer flavors. Customers will pay deposits on the bottles and bring them back for cleaning – a common practice before paper and plastic containers took over the industry.

“That’s one of the things I want to bring back – the nostalgia for glass bottles,” Nutcher said.

The products will come in pints, quarts and half-gallons. They won’t be cheap – Nutcher is thinking $3.99 for a half-gallon of whole milk – but they will be about as fresh as this stuff can get. He figures just an hour from milking barn to bottle, compared with several hours for milk that travels to large plants.

Nutcher declined to say how much he has spent on the venture, other than that it is a “large” amount. The dairy farm will continue to have seven employees, but the bottling line and sales will be mostly family, including his wife, Debbie; daughters Kayla, Casey and Courtney; and his sons-in-law.

The 3,000 gallons is tiny amid the 1.9 million gallons of fluid milk sold in the state on an average day, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The total does not include milk that becomes cheese, butter, yogurt, ice cream or other products, which use the vast majority of the supply.

Three other Valley dairy farms are bottling their own milk, said Jennifer Giambroni, director of communications at the California Milk Advisory Board. They are Rosa Brothers and Dairy Goddess, both in Kings County, and Top o’ the Morn Farms in Tulare County. A larger number make their own cheese, but this too is a small part of the industry.

“California dairy families are passionate about the milk they produce and getting that product into consumer hands,” said John Talbot, the board’s chief executive officer, in an email statement. “We’re seeing a number of our dairy farm families going from the production side to manufacturing and marketing of their own farmstead products – from fluid milk to artisan cheeses and more.”

Nutcher, a third-generation dairyman, said the bottling also will ease the wide swings in income resulting from California’s system for farm milk prices. The monthly minimums that processors must pay are sometimes below the farmers’ production costs.

The milk will be pasteurized to kill bacteria and homogenized to keep the cream from separating. Planning Commissioner Richard Gibson admitted to a liking for non-homogenized, and Nutcher said he would keep that in mind.

“We might do cream on top if the demand is there,” he said.

This story was originally published May 24, 2015 at 5:19 PM with the headline "Dairy farm will sell its own milk in glass bottles."