Frequently Asked Questions

We have soap available for purchase in the milk room. We do not ship soap, it must be purchased on farm. Hilary used to have a goat milk soap store on Etsy called The Northwoods Goat and she sold soap world wide. She is now selling cow's milk soap here on the farm. Only one or two varieties will be available at a time, not the entire selection she used to offer. Soap can be ordered in bulk (batches of 32 or 64 bars) for a discount.

Yes. You may opt to butcher a whole hog purchase yourself and save the butcher processing fee. Please contact us and we can work out details. Hilary teaches personal home butchery instruction if you want to do it yourself but need some guidance.

That depends on how big your actual hog is and how you have it processed, but to be safe you should plan on 3.5 cubic feet for a half hog or 7 cubic feet for a whole hog. In many cases it will take less space.

When a butcher custom processes an animal for you, they need to know how you want it broken down. They fill out a cut sheet to record your choices. Different parts can be cut different ways. For instance, the loin can be made into pork chops or loin roasts. You get to choose how much loin you want made into roasts and/or chops. Same with the rest of the pig, you get to choose if you want: smoked and sliced bacon or pork belly... how much of the animal you want ground... if you want any of the ground meat made into sausages... if you would like your hams smoked... It's completely what YOU want. Our butcher is very good about walking customers through the process if they have never done it before.

Raw milk is as safe as any food, as long as it is produced under strict sanitary conditions. The state of Vermont has standards for selling raw milk that we meet, which includes testing our cows to make sure they are healthy, rapidly chilling the milk, and keeping our equipment sanitized. We maintain a clean milking parlor and test our milk twice a month. We invite you to come visit our milking parlor and processing room so you can see for yourself!

That's impossible to answer because we do not standardize milkfat like a factory does, and fat content changes with the season, cow's diet, and stage of lactation. Broadly speaking, it's higher than Holstein milk, but lower than Jersey milk. However, individual jars of milk will vary widely. Similarly, at times the cream is noticeably yellow, other times it is more snowy white. The cream always rises to the top which makes it easy to collect for making butter or sour cream.