We’re getting a lot of questions about our exclusive herdshare agreement.
Here is a quick’ish explanation of what a herdshare is.
A herd share is an agreement between a farmer and an individual. A person pays a one-time refundable purchase fee to buy a single share in a herd, making them co-owners of the herd and entitled to the benefits of owning a dairy cow (milk).
Being a part owner, a portion of the milk that the cow/herd produces is yours. Like any cow owner, you need to pay a portion of her care. The way we have it structured is that one share of the weekly milk production equals approx. 1 gallon of milk/week. From the share owner’s experience, it will feel a lot like a CSA, but w/o the seasonality of it.
We are a micro-dairy. Because of our small scale, it costs us, the farmer, approx. $8 to produce a gallon of raw milk. $8 is the weekly maintenance fee each shareholder pays. Every week, you will receive 1 gal of milk/share.
If you decide you don’t want raw milk one week, you can request that we make your share of the milk into a Value-Added-Product (VAP), like cheese curds, ghee, cream cheese, etc… Just cover some of the costs of our time, supplies or other ingredients. FOR EXAMPLE: If you wanted us to make your milk into butter, we first need to run the milk through our cream separator. We then age the cream for approx. 3 days, then churn it into butter. After that, we “wash”/rinse the buttermilk from the freshly made butter. If you like a salted butter, we add the appropriate amount of Redmond Real Salt. After which, we hand shape the butter into 4 oz sticks or butter logs. It’s time consuming, but we enjoy it. We only charge $2 for turning your milk into cream… into butter.
Also, what some folks like doing, especially it they travel a lengthy distance, is pick up several weeks worth of milk or VAP’s every-other-week or once a month – whatever works best for you.
This is the short version of how this kind of works. If you have any questions, feel free to ask away.