Thank you, THANK YOU, to everyone who came out this weekend to our Spring Cow Caper Open House.  The weather was beautiful on Saturday and a bit cooler on Sunday, but the crowds of customers, friends and family were AMAZING.  We figure we had over 5000 of you come and visit our farm, and to us that is truly spectacular, and certainly more than we could have ever dreamed of!  It certainly was nice to get to put a name with a face as I have spoken with many of you via the phone or email but to meet in person was very special!

Just some fun tidbits from the weekend, we had over 500 of you take part in the scavenger hunt, and made over 600 vials of butter, we churned 30 quarts of homemade ice cream, and conducted 25 tours of the creamery, and the best part was that we SOLD OUT of both beef and pork BBQ, this is a first (usually we eat BBQ for weeks afterward)

In other news, we still have some April meals left so if you want to stock up on any favorites I would encourage you to do that in the next day or so, as I have limited quantities remaining on those.  I will have 12 new menu items up by early next week, with 2 vegetarian options.

Just FYI, Tony and I returned late last week from a 2 day conference of the International Home Delivery Association.  This conference happens only once per year and allows us to “rub elbows” with some of the larger home delivery dairies in the US.  We always come home revived and ready to face the next challenge and reach for the next goal, so we have much to share with you over the next 6 months to a year as we make some changes try to become more efficient.

As for those of you still awaiting a start date, I apologize for it taking a few days longer than normal to get back to you, between the conference and then our HUGE weekend I am a bit behind, please be patient as I am working on them as quickly as possible, thanks!

Happy spring!  I sure many of you have gotten a case of “spring fever” with all these beautiful, warm days we have been having lately!  We got a case of the “fever” ourselves as we get all the planting equipment ready for the spring planting.  Right now we are hauling lots of organic fertilizer (cow manure) onto the fields, this helps to boast the nutrients in the ground in anticipation of the seeds, enabling them a better start at growth.  We will plant grasses such as alfalfa, and timothy, along with corn and soybeans.  Everything we grow here on our farm is used to feed our cattle.

We always have baby calves on our farm, we breed our cows all year round, so that we can keep a constant volume of milk for our creamery and also so that we always have new replacement cows coming into our herd.  For the month of April we are expecting to have about 20 new babies joining us in the nursery.  We raise every calf that is born here on our farm.  Our maternity field is right next to the calf barn so you never know what you might get to see when you are out visiting the farm!  Don’t forget our daily calf feeding is everyday at 4:00 pm.

Right next to the calf barn is our egg hatchery; we have recently started the incubator with turkey and chicken eggs, these eggs will take between 21-28 days to hatch so we should have babies in time for the festival at the end of the month (April 26th and 27th).  Spring is certainly a time of renewal and rebirth!

In creamery news, we have some new products for April.  From Zeke’s Coffee we have the B&O Railroad Blend, from Hillside Turkey Farm I have added bone-in turkey breasts and white ground turkey.  We are hoping to be joining up with a new prepared meal vendor, and should hopefully have more info as well as the April menu up and online very soon.

We are getting into our busy touring season and I wanted to thank those of you who offered up goodies for our bags we hand out at the completion of each tour.  By continuing to do agri-tourism we are not only helping to build our business but also helping to educate customers about where their food comes from and what good animal husbandry practices we do as farmers.  Do you have a group that would be interested in touring our farm?  Email me at cowfamilymilk@yahoo.com and I would be glad to send you my tour information.

Tony and I will be traveling to Atlantic City at the end of the month for a Home Delivery Conference.  We have been attending these meetings for many years now and always come home revitalized and excited about new ideas to try with our business.  We get to “bump elbows” with dairies like Oberweiss Dairy out of Chicago and Crescent Ridge Dairy out of Massachusetts (these dairies have been around for at least 50 years and have thousands of home delivery customers)!

Now that the weather is getting warmer it is always a good idea to remind all of our home delivery customers about the importance of having LOTS of ice or ice packs in your coolers, because our milk is all-natural our product is very PERISHIBLE, if your milk gets too warm it will ruin its shelf-life.  Also, if your cooler is located someplace that gets full sun, you may want to move it to another location, please call our office if you do move the cooler so that we can relay the message to our drivers, thanks!

Thank you for your continued patronage, and I look forward to seeing you at the Spring Festival!
~~abby
South Mountain Creamery
301-371-8565

Greetings!  It sure feels like spring here today, we actually have the office door hanging wide open and are enjoying the fresh air and the sounds coming from outside…”Mama Kitty” our creamery cat has even made herself at home here in one of the windows…personally I think she is scouting out a place to have her litter of kittens!

I wanted to bring to your attention that we have our metal boxes back in stock, and for those in the Mt Washington area that were given a substitute box a few weeks ago, I will have the drivers make the switch this week to your brand new boxes.

I also have 5 new meals up for March, so far the 3 bean chili has been selling the best!  Check them out as well as our other new items like the Hippie Blend Coffee, and the new salsas…

We are gearing up to start our farm tour season, we do guided tours from mid-April thru mid- November for school groups, home school groups, Mom’s Clubs, 4-H Clubs…etc, the tour takes about an hour and costs $5 per person.  We conduct the tours thru the week only and have a minimum of 10 people to schedule a tour.  We did tours for almost 2000 people last season and I would expect to do the same if not better this tour season.  Do you have your own business and want to do some advertising thru our goodie bags? We looking for small items to place in the goodie bags that we hand out to the children at the conclusion of the tour; be it a coupon to visit your establishment or magnets, or key chains…typically we have small erasers and a flyer about our service, but because these groups come from all over MD, VA, WV, and DC I thought having some other items might be fun to not only do some self-promo for your own business but also to make the bags more fun for those receiving them, so if you own your own company and want to contribute, please email me at cowfamilymilk@yahoo.com so that we can make arrangements for pick-up.

In just 6 short weeks we will be having our Spring Open House here at the Creamery, so please save the dates of April 26th and 27th and plan on spending them here with us “down on the farm”! (more details to follow once the flyers are back from the printers)

On another note we will be delivering as normal on Good Friday as well as on the Monday following Easter, however our store will be closed on Easter Sunday.

I hope everyone has a Happy Easter and gets some well needed R&R spent with your family and loved ones.

Abby Brusco
South Mountain Creamery
www.southmountaincreamery.com