Note: The latest in our series on farming in Westport, from the farmers' perspective.

Shauna greets me at Westport Dairy, located at 729 Gifford Road, which opened its doors last winter.  Along the wall is a line of coolers full of their cows’ milk, chocolate and coffee milk, and an array of flavored drinkable yogurts. She introduces me to her Aunt who is tending the store this morning and the two of us walk through the shop into the processing room in the back. Shauna and I delve into her farming story — Westport Dairy is both a culmination of generations of hard work as well as a new beginning for a traditional dairy farm which has faced its fair share of challenges along the way. 

How big is your operation?

We milk about 48 cows.

What breeds do you raise?

We have a mixed herd with Jersey, Linebacks, Dutch Belts, Holstein, Gurnseys.  We choose breeds based on protein counts and butterfat, with a focus on quality over quantity. Our bulls rotate out.  Right now we have a Gurnsey bull.

Who do you sell to?

The bulk of our milk is still sold to the co-op, then we have the raw milk over on Pine Hill Road which is a pretty small percentage of the total milk we produce, and now we have the Dairy here to sell pasteurized milk and our first product, drinkable yogurt.

Can you tell me more about the co-op, and how it works when you sell to the Co-op?

So the “co-op” is the Dairy Farmers of America, or DFA. We truck our milk to the co-op and they buy it at the rate they are offering. We cover the trucking expense. The co-op pays for a percentage of the milk we send; at times it’s been as low as 70 percent. Right now the price we get is about $1.70 per gallon. So that’s why we started doing raw milk, and why we have opened Westport Dairy, so that we can have a direct market connection and have a little more control over the price we receive for our milk.

Who are your essential partners that make your business possible/sustainable for you?

This dairy operation and creamery would not be possible without everyone who participates. So much time and labor goes into it. My Mom and aunt help in the store, and my aunt also helps me with the business end of things, like if I need to check out our profit and loss she can help me with that. My brother helps out in the processing room, and of course Andrew’s parents are highly involved too. Debbie’s family (Andrew’s Mom) had bought Martin’s Cheese so she has that background. Andrew’s dad sold his cows and focuses on haying now. We’re lucky to have so much support. It would be hard, maybe not possible for a newcomer to just step right into dairy without any training or background in it. Andrew is fourth generation, he grew up with it, and not just in his immediate family but also his Uncle Manny and all his cousins.

How did you get into farming? Obviously, you’re married to Andrew, but was that what got you started in agriculture?

Andrew and I met in high school. At that time, he played football, and I wanted to do make-up. After high school I went to New York City and became a Certified Makeup Artist. I love the city; I loved living in the city; I love walking around the city and exploring. Andrew not so much, but we had fun when he would come to visit. He would much rather be outside, on the farm with the cows. When I graduated, I came home and eventually I realized this was our life. I just knew that this is what Andrew wanted to do with his life. For him it’s a deep-seated passion, it’s his whole soul. We knew that we were going to have to find a way to make this work for us. Andrew taught me how to milk the cows and I was pretty good at it!

So we decided to stick with dairy, and to figure out how to make it work. I had read that the average age of a dairy farmer in the US is 55, and that’s for a reason, that most young people are not getting into dairy, or sticking with dairy if they grow up in dairy families. In 2012 we became certified to do raw milk and that has done really well for us. Every year we grow a little more, still today raw milk sales are growing. It’s just a portion of the total milk we produce but it’s great. We have customers who form co-ops for milk pick-up, with some coming from as far away as Cape Cod. Since it’s raw milk, we can only sell it onsite, so that’s a limiting factor for the business. After a while we started to think about what else we could do with our milk. We already have really clean milk per the raw milk standards. I started experimenting in our kitchen, making yogurt in the insta-pot, and it took off from there. We landed on drinkable yogurt as our first product, which has the benefit of being zero waste, and I’m proud of it. It’s a good clean product, low sugar, and we use all pure extracts for the different flavors.

Tell me about the search for your processing equipment. Where do you find equipment like this to process dairy on a small scale?

When we were researching our product, we traveled to visit the Amish community in Lancaster Valley, Pennsylvania. We had to talk to a few people before we could get started. Some didn’t want to talk with outsiders. But those who we did talk to have a deep knowledge about what they do — it’s all they know, all they’ve ever known. We learned so much by visiting the different farms over the years. I remember one of the women making butter in the kitchen while we were talking. When we purchased the equipment and got it home, we set it up for the first run. The man who was helping us said that it always takes a little adjusting, maybe a few tries before you get it right. But we ran it and it was — it was incredible. Our first run came out perfect.

And from there you got cranking?

Yes, we have been open since January! We have our pasteurized milks available, our flavored milks: chocolate and coffee, and all the drinkable yogurt flavors. We are selling everything here in the Dairy, open from Monday and Saturday, and I will also be selling at the Westport Winter Farmers’ Market this November and December. It’s been about eight years in the making!

What is one of the challenges you face in your operation?

The hardest part for me right now is keeping up with social media, creating posts that really get people here. I see other people’s posts and they’re dressing up the cows in Halloween costumes and Santa hats! Since we’ve been open I’ve been working on my social media skills.

What is something about you and your farm operation that would surprise people to know?

Well I have a degree in Environmental Science. I wanted to understand sustainability better and learn more about a healthy environment so that we could understand the impact of our operation.

What’s next for Westport Dairy?

We are working on building a milking parlor with a viewing window so that people can come by and see the cows. They’ll be close enough to read their names — We name all our cows! We really want people to have the opportunity to see firsthand where their milk come from. We hope to have it built by February, so people can see the calves. So, we see ourselves interacting with the public more, doing more public education about where food comes from, and giving people the ability to experience it for themselves. Before, we never even met the people who were drinking our milk.  Now I enjoy meeting our customers and getting to know them each time they come, hearing their stories; including many stores about their own families’ dairy farms. There are a lot of people who come in here who either grew up on a farm, or whose family owned a dairy farm but they’re not doing it anymore. We are hoping that when we open the milking parlor, it will be a fun aspect of the experience for people to look in on the cows and to be able to see their names and maybe even get to know one or two of them. I’m also thinking up ideas for different products, like spreads which are somewhere between cream cheese and ricotta, using local herbs and garlic. It would require additional infrastructure of course, but I would like to add more products to our offerings down the line.

What are your long-term goals on the farm?

We want our operation to be successful; we want to keep doing this. We would be happy to do it for the rest of our lives.