Paperboard yogurt cups - not plastic! We're serious about reducing our use of plastic here at Sidehill Farm, so we are really excited about our new paperboard 6oz cups! These are made of Forest Stewardship Council Certified paperboard. The first ones are hitting the stores this week - just the Whole Milk Plain 6oz for now, but we'll be switching over all of our 6oz flavors over the next several months. And we've got news about our returnable stainless 32oz cup project too, so we'll let you know more about that soon!
Returnable Yogurt Cups Anyone?
At Sidehill Farm, we are very happy with the quality of the yogurt we produce, and with the many relationships we have built within the local food network. We have great customers, and a fun and highly skilled team in the creamery. But we are not so happy about the volume of plastic that we bring into the world.
Right now, we are producing about 6000 quarts of yogurt a week, and that's a lot of plastic to be responsible for. Though it is true that in Massachusetts recycling rates are very high, world-wide only 2% of plastics are recycled. 2%! That is both shocking and appalling! We are feeling this weight.
What to do? Glass is not realistic - it is heavy, energy intensive, and prone to breakage. A shattered glass container in the middle of a packaging run would be an emergency and a food safety nightmare!
Instead, we are considering a returnable, reusable stainless steel 32oz container.
Imagine a stainless water bottle, but in the shape of a yogurt cup, sealed with the same foil that is on the current plastic containers.
We are currently working with River Valley Market to design a deposit and return system for these cups. We will wash and sanitize the cups in-house, and then refill them - just like we used to do with glass milk bottles!
We are applying for a grant to do a trial run. But it is best not to get ahead of ourselves - there is a question to be answered first. Are people actually interested in this? To us it sounds like a no-brainer, but there is a catch. Stainless is very washable, easy to sanitize, and essentially unbreakable; but it is also expensive. We are not yet sure what the ultimate cost would be, but we are expecting a deposit in the $7-$12 range. Of course, you only pay the deposit for the container once, and then exchange your empty when you next buy yogurt.
So we're taking a poll! If this deposit is in the $7-$12 range, are you likely to switch to the returnable stainless container, or are you more likely to stick with the plastic container?
Please click on this link to our super quick and painless poll. Just one yes or no question, and you are done! Thanks in advance for your help!
https://form.jotform.com/Amy_Klippenstein/stainlessyogurtcupsemaillist
(Thanks to James Lombino for photos, visioning, and engineering on this project!)
Come join our Yogurt Making Team!
We are looking for a fun, detail oriented, morning person to join our Yogurt making team and creamery crew. Check out the full job description at Sidehill Jobs.
We are looking for a Production Manager!
We are looking for an experienced Production Manager to lead the yogurt-making process and skilled creamery staff. We are also willing to train a person with significant relevant experience, who is ready to grow into the role.
The Production Manager will be ultimately responsible for the quality of the finished yogurt, the smooth running of all production equipment, coordination with suppliers, regulators, and sales folks, and facilitating a positive work environment where all team members can thrive. We are a small business with a great crew and a solid set of production practices, and everyone does most everything. We will provide extensive training on our current methods and procedures, and even a very experienced person can expect in-depth training on how our process works right now.
Please go to http://www.sidehillfarm.net/jobs for more details!
Introducing Sidehill Farm Aged Cheddars!
After many years of careful aging, our Sidehill Farm Aged Cheddars are finally ready for you to try! Our Aged Cheddars are made from the very same grass-fed milk used to make our yogurt. We send the milk up to the master cheesemakers at Grafton Village Cheese in Grafton Vermont, where they craft that lovely milk into delicious cheddar cheese. The cheese is then aged in their caves until it reaches perfection.
We offer three different ages of cheddar - each one with it’s own unique flavor.
One Year Certified Organic Cheddar: Aged at least 12 months. Smooth, with just enough snap to keep it lively! Great for everyday eating, melting, or snacking.
Three Year Cheddar: Aged at least 3 years. Medium sharp with full-bodied cheddar flavor. Fancy enough for a cheese plate; versatile enough for grilled cheese or nachos.
Five Year Cheddar: Aged at least 5 years. A special extra sharp cheddar with robust flavor for true aged cheddar lovers. This cheese sometimes shows the natural bloom of white calcium crystals on the surface that is typical of a long aging process. It is not mold.
The 1 Year is certified organic. The 3 Year and 5 Year were made with certifiable organic practices, from the milk of our cows eating all certified organic feed, but went into the aging cave before our organic certification for the milk was in place. So they are organic in every way except the label!
Right now, you can find our Schoolhouse Cheddars only at a few special locations, but we will be expanding our distribution in summer 2021. Ask your favorite grocer to carry it!
Join the Sidehill Farm Yogurt Team!
Are you the kind of person who likes to make things shine? Do you like to clean down to the smallest detail? Then we are looking for you to join us making fresh, delicious, organic yogurt from local dairy! Primary responsibility will be to join our yogurt-making team on cleanup and production day wrap-up. Tasks will include washing of yogurt-making equipment, operating milk pumps, running clean-in-place loops on vats, and pH testing of finished yogurt. Alternating Mondays will entail larger scale or more detailed cleaning projects, working mainly on your own.
We are looking for someone with clinical levels of obsession with cleanliness, who is always looking to improve their work, and who believes in the work we do here. Plus likes to laugh and have fun!
Possibility of increased hours and responsibilities over time, though this would not be required.
Experience not required; we are happy to train a dependable person. Beginning pay rate of $15/ per hour, or according to experience.
Sidehill Farm is a certified organic creamery, making fresh, delicious yogurt for distribution all around Massachusetts. We love good food, rewarding work, teamwork, and the occasional nacho party.
To apply, send a letter of introduction, a resume, and 3 references to info@sidehillfarm.net
The Crackpot Idea Comes to Fruition!
Sidehill Farm News
The Crackpot Idea Comes to Fruition!
Last evening, Paul and I sat at the east end of the red barn, watching the light fade on the hills beyond the Connecticut River. This has always been one of our favorite spots - early in the morning with a cup of coffee, watching the sun come up; and into the shadows of evening, witnessing the slow fade from blue to pink to purple at dusk. Monadnock stands sentinel to the northeast, catching every tiny color shift as the sun fades west. The white birch trunks along East Road are glowing gold, and the tiny leaflets sparkle brilliant green. Barn swallows swoop by our heads - completely unfazed by our presence. A field swallow, ever invisible, but always singing temptingly close, bounces its ping pong ball call through the grass. Bobolinks have returned, and are chattering in clumps of last year’s tall grass. Our resident groundhog, with whom we made a deal 2 years ago when she was a baby, that if she stayed out of the garden, we wouldn’t shoot her, sits up and watches from her secret escape hole. (She has held up her end of the deal, and so have we.)
Ivy Donovan used to sit in this place too - it was he who introduced us to the pleasures of the spot. The big chunk of white quartz was his chair, and there were many mornings we would find him there, cup of coffee cradled in one arthritic hand, his familiar pipe and Captain Black tobacco cradled in the other. There are times I know that I can feel him here, sitting with us, wondering at the view. We learned many things from Ivy, and the practice of wonder was one of the best.
But this may have been the last time we have the pleasure of this spot. After a long, long, year of paperwork, negotiating, running numbers, and signing and re-signing documents; the moment finally arrived. At 11:30 this morning, we signed the papers to transfer the cows, the dairy, the pastures, and the farm shop to Gus and Kyra Tafel. This whole process has been in the works for more than 2 years now, and the last 12 months have been a rollercoaster of frustration and hope, sadness and joy. I am wiping away tears as I write this, but at the same time, I am relieved and to be honest, completely thrilled that what at many times seemed to be a crackpot idea of forming a mutually beneficial partnership with younger farmers, has finally come to fruition.
Gus and Kyra will bring new energy and ideas to the farm shop. They will be stocking their own certified organic lamb, as well as beef and pork, and hope to be bringing in some cheeses from farms they knew back in New York. There are other exciting plans in the works as well. As with any transition of this magnitude and level of detail, we are all trying our best to make the changeover seamless. And despite all of our best efforts, there will be hiccups. Gus and Kyra are bright, and hard-working, and good farmers who care for their animals; and they will get their systems worked out over time. But please be patient if everything is not perfect on the first try!
So thank you all for your many, many years of support. We would not be in a position to pass on a vibrant and thriving farm and farm shop to new folks if it were not for you all believing in our crazy ideas, and being willing to stand behind us. Your words of encouragement, your friendship, and your loyalty have kept us going through many rough spots, and we can’t thank you enough. And we hope you will be willing to believe in Gus and Kyra the same way.
And don't worry! - we will still be around here making yogurt. We are buying milk directly from Gus and Kyra, and will continue to make Sidehill Farm grass-fed, organic yogurt right here in the creamery at the farm. You will find Sidehill Farm Yogurt in all the usual places, including the farm shop here at the farm. We aren’t vanishing. But we will miss the every day interaction with people coming to the farm shop, and we just want to to say, thank you. Thank you for everything.
With gratitude,
Amy and Paul
The Farm Shop is Open!
The farm shop is open for business as usual! We are open every day, from 7am to 9pm. We are experiencing a huge increase in business right now - great to see all the new faces, and we hope you keep coming back! The farm shop is self-serve, and we accept cash and checks (good ones! - with a phone number!). Unfortunately, we do not take credit cards at this time - Hawley is a little behind the times on internet, and we can’t support a card reader yet. They promise us it will be soon!
We are making yogurt and bottling milk as fast as we can these last couple of weeks! Apparently, no one told the cows that demand for yogurt and milk was suddenly going to double, so we are making as much as the cows can supply. The cows make milk twice a day, so there is no danger of running out of milk in the big picture. However, since we have been experiencing such high demand, we do occasionally run out of milk in the farm shop between milkings. It will be back within 24 hours! We are happy to set aside pre-orders of milk Monday through Friday, with 24 hours notice . (Sorry - we can’t accept pre-orders over the weekend - the business office is closed).
We’ve also been getting lots of calls from folks in the Boston area asking if we’ve stopped making yogurt. We’re still making it - folks are just buying it all out really quickly! We are making it as fast as we can! We are shipping yogurt to Boston area stores every week, and new deliveries should be arriving in stores soon, so keep looking at your usual sources - it will get there!
Thank you to everyone for all the safety precautions we are seeing in the farm shop - gloves, masks, social distancing. We really appreciate your concern. Please know that we are sanitizing all surfaces and handles frequently, and taking every precaution we can ourselves. Thank you for supporting local farms - we can get through this if we all keep working together!
Visitors in the Night
Last weekend, Paul and I attended a weekend-long tracking workshop at Rowe Conference Center. We spent Friday evening through Monday lunchtime with a group of 15 amazing folks, led by 3 incredibly skilled and incredibly generous trackers, and came home feeling both grounded and fired up, and full of wonder for the world.
Tuesday morning after the workshop, I was walking down the road to the farm, and just where the red maple/alder swamp meets the schoolhouse pasture (just to the west of the main barn), I saw a set of tracks heading south from the edge of Forget Road. Just about jumping out of my skin with eagerness to try out my newly sharpened tracking skills, I moved into observation mode. The tracks were huge! - each print was 5” across and 6” long. The stride was 66” long - this was a big animal! I followed the tracks along the alder edge, and found a perfectly clear print. Clearly a giant cloven hoof. The tracks were alternating, and direct register, meaning the hind feet landed directly in the print left by the front foot, making a four-footed animal look like it walks upright on two feet. Wind direction - light breeze from the NW. Crusty snow, several days old. Tracks had appeared sometime between dusk the evening before, and 6:30 in the morning. Clear skies overnight, but no moon. No obvious scat or sign of feeding.
Clearly, we’d had a moose visitor overnight! I was vibrating with excitement, and just about ready to run to the office to send an email to my fellow workshop participants, when I noticed that the tracks did not come from across the road. Strange! We’ve had moose cross the farm before, but they always come from the woods on the north of the farm, cross the road, and continue south. This moose had not come from across the road. I scratched my head, and tried to channel both the animal, and the wisdom of our instructors. I walked up Forget Road towards the barn, and directly across the road from the barn with the sheep and horses, there was a second set of giant tracks. The moose had come up from the pond - of course! But why had it walked down the road and then turned south again? And why were the bales of hay for the sheep all tossed around in a big mess?
And the stride length is not quite long enough for a moose. And the trail width is really too wide...
As I was pondering all of this, Gus came walking quickly down the road, looking very perturbed. And the light dawned. I said “Any chance you are missing a cow this morning?” His eyes got really big, and he said “How did you know?”
Apparently Robin had not shown up for morning milking, and the search was on.
In the end, Robin was very happy to be shown the way home from the swamp. We have no idea what inspired her to go there. The mind of a cow is a mysterious thing. And I got to send my email to the group anyway, setting my fellow trackers a challenge that morning that no one but the instructors were able to solve!
Sidehill Farm Organic Grass-fed Beef in Bulk!
Sidehill Farm News
Halves and Quarters of Sidehill Farm Grass-fed Beef
If you've enjoyed the beef you've picked up in the farm shop and are hungry for more, you're in luck! We are offering our flavorful Sidehill Farm grass-fed beef in bulk - at a bulk price! Here's the chance to stock your freezer with a quarter or half beef, (or a whole beef, if you have a big freezer!) - you will receive a wide variety of steaks like tenderloins, rib-eye, NY strips, and sirloin; chuck, sirloin tip, and round roasts, some braising cuts, and ground beef, shanks, stew meat. Organs are available if you want them.
Quarters are $750 for 100 lbs of beef. ($7.50/lb)
Halves are $145o for 200 lbs of beef ($7.25/lb)
And if a half or quarter isn’t enough for your family, we are offering the option to add on extra 30 lb boxes of ground beef at $6/lb ($180 for the box), and soup bones at $2/lb (random weight boxes).
Here at Sidehill Farm, our beef animals finish beautifully on the sweet summer grasses we have here in New England, and don't need to be force-fed corn in a feedlot in order to develop deep flavor and tenderness. The beef is lean, and full of old-time rich, beefy flavor.
The animals that we raise for beef are treated exactly the same as we treat our milking herd. The calves are raised by their mothers or by nurse cows, drinking milk and grazing fresh green grass. Once they are weaned at 5 months, they are out on pasture full time with their herdmates. The beef animals stay with the herd, grazing certified organic pasture in summer and eating organic hay in winter, until they are 28 to 30 months old, when the meat is nicely marbled and tender.
This year, in addition to our Normande beeves, we will also be including Gus and Kyra’s Red Poll beeves in the mix you will receive. Red Polls are a gorgeous chesnut colored heritage breed of cattle that are always polled (hornless). The breed was developed in the early 1800s in Britain, but is now endangered. They are known for the quality of their grass-fed beef - juicy and fine-grained, with excellent flavor. The beef is leaner than Normande beef, but just as tasty! They are also smaller animals than the Normandes, so the Red Poll cuts will be smaller in size, but you will receive the same total number of pounds of beef. So you’ll get both Normande and Red Poll beef in your half or quarter this year!
Other exciting news is that our beef is now officially certified organic by Baystate Organic Certifiers! We have raised our animals to certified organic standards for as long as we have had cows, but now we’ve taken the plunge, done all the paperwork, written the checks, and now can officially say that the beef is certified organic.
Pickup for halves and quarters will be at the farm, on October 12th - the first Saturday in October. The slaughter date is September 12th, and it usually takes about 4 weeks for proper hanging, aging, and then cutting and wrapping.
If the October pickup date doesn't work for you, we will be sending a second round of animals on October 10th, for pickup at the beginning of November, so just let us know if you would prefer the second round! We will be sending excellent, well-finished animals in both rounds.
We will need a $100 deposit will hold your place on the list. Please send us an email with a quick yes or no as soon as possible, and then have a deposit to us by September 16th - you can send it to the farm mailing address:
Sidehill Farm
58 Forget Rd
Hawley, MA 01339
Thank you for all your support for local farms!
And we are about six weeks into an exciting transition for Sidehill Farm. If you have not heard the news, read our previous blog post: http://www.sidehillfarm.net/news/2019/8/16/the-next-adventure-starts-now We are super excited about this new adventure, and we think you will be too!
