NEW Milk Price for a start - It made headline news yesterday. It's official. Milk is now cheaper than bottled water! How can that be? Farmers, consumers and pundits all aired their views via Facebook and Twitter (of which I follow #teamdairy, #discoverdairy, #DairyCrisis) and it even made half an hour on the Jeremy Vine lunchtime programme on Radio 2! Simon Mayo played songs for dairy farmers in his Drivetime early evening show! Articles have made it into The Daily Telegraph, The Mirror and countless others!
NEW Enterprise - Having heard a criticism on the radio that dairy farmers aren't good a marketing or branding their products like they have done with bottled water. So we're doing something about it. We have decided to sell our milk at the farm gate! We have got the approval from the Food Standards Agency so we've bought litre sized bottles and intend to fill them with fresh milk from the tank and sell at £1 each. The all important branding and logo (seen right) says exactly what it is! This milk is not pasteurised - so totally whole, farm fresh and proper healthy milk. Just Milk, Just Healthy!NEW Facebook Page - this is very new. Today with the help of my sister Susan, I've built a FB page for Just Milk Somerby (there's already a site for Just Milk - so don't get us mixed up) and learning to market it, the 21st century way - Social Media! To join the page tap in Just Milk Somerby and follow us! I will add plenty of photos of the moo moos, especially the baby calves and some of the new bulls on the farm.
NEW Bulls on the farm - Hello to Bandit and Paddington! Goodbye to Windfall and Oreo! Bandit and Paddington are the same age (not quite two years) and share the same pen. They're good mates! Bandit is pure bred Ayrshire (red and white) and Paddington is an Aberdeen Angus so black all over with the cutest head full of curls and a friendly face! They take it in turns to run with the herd of cows! We're in bulling season at the moment then the bulls will have a rest from the beginning of February until May/June. We had to say goodbye to Windfall and Oreo, who were over 3 years of age, as they had done their duty on our farm. (We have to move the bulls on after two years as they can't run with their daughters can they?)
NEW Lowest Number of Dairy Farmers in England and Wales - at the beginning of this new year, the total has now dropped to below 10,000. By comparison, back in 2001 (F&M year remember?) there were 20,191 dairy farmers and today we're down to 9,960. Sixty dairy farmers went out of cows in the month of December alone! If the trend continues, we could see further drops in numbers to 5,000 by 2025! That's only 10 years away and I should be retiring by then! But it's OK, we're not planning to give up quite that easily. Anyhow, we've got Harry (18yrs) who's been bred for the job!!!
New Year, New Beginnings and New Hope for the Future. We've got to stay positive and keep doing what we're good at!
Producing farm fresh - high quality - totally
BRITISH MILK.
