Dreamview Creamery goes plastic bottle-free in Raglan with MPI certified raw milk sales at the farm gate in Te Hutewai Rd.
The Hill family – dad David, mum Bronwyn and the kids Jess, Kathy and Matthew – reckon you can’t beat the taste raw milk in glass bottles.
“When I have to buy supermarket milk I really notice a plastic taste in the milk,” Bronwyn says.
Jess brought the idea home with her from Christchurch while she was studying for a Bachelor of Agriculture at Lincoln University.
“In the weekends I used to sell milk at the Lyttelton Markets,” she says.
“We had such positive feedback it got me interested in doing it at home.”
With the backing of the family and support from farmworkers Nathan and Zintael Bennett, Jess and David took up the challenge to get their milk MPI certified and they say there were a lot of hoops to jump through.
“The regulations are extremely strict but we have got really great results,” David says.
Fully certified now, they are still required to test once a week for bacterium levels and say the results continue to be excellent.
Bronwyn says the highly processed supermarket milk is basically pulled apart and put back together again to standardise it, but raw milk will vary in flavour and content from farm to farm and cow to cow on a daily basis.
“People these days like to know where there produce comes from, how it’s made and that the animals are looked after,” she says.
In the future they hope to set up a pasteurisation facility to sell Dreamview milk at the markets and to cafes and restaurants.
Dreamview raw milk cows are only milked once a day at 3pm. Place your order on the Dreamview Facebook page by 1pm and for collection between 4pm and 6pm from 430 Te Hutewai Road, Raglan – just 4km from Raglan township.
One litre reusable glass bottles can be purchased for $4 plus $2.50 per litre of milk and return your empty bottles back to exchange for a full one for just $2.50.
Edith Symes
