Crescent Ridge Dairy

I am a milk machine. Put a glass in front of me, and I will chug it in seconds. When I was younger, I literally drank more milk than water. At the peak of my milk drinking days I was drinking about half a gallon daily. I am also a milk snob. I will not drink milk out of plastic containers because I think it tastes funky and much prefer cardboard or glass containers. Suffice to say, I am very into milk. In the beginning of the summer, I started doing a lot of research about the history of milk and its actual nutritional value; however, I didn’t feel comfortable writing about it until I visited a dairy farm. That opportunity did not arise until I found out that my cousin Adam’s girlfriend Laura had a connection to Crescent Ridge Dairy. Jubilant at the idea that this means someday I might have a connection to a dairy company, I contacted Laura and asked if someone would be able to show me around. As luck would have it, the CEO Mark Parrish contacted me and offered to talk to me about Crescent Ridge Dairy. I recognize that had it not been for my connection to Laura, Mark may not have been as kind as he was or willing to show me as much as he did, but independently, Crescent Ridge deserves a standing ovation. I was blown away by Mark’s honesty and transparency about the company. Not only did he speak to me honestly about the inner workings of the company, the future of Crescent Ridge, but he also showed me everything from the raw milk holding tanks, the bottling factory, the refrigeration systems, the inclement weather barn for the future free range –grass fed beef cows, the ice cream store, and more. It was clear that Crescent Ridge had nothing to hide and fully supported their own products. Crescent Ridge Dairy is a company that does dairy right, and I feel incredibly lucky to have been afforded such the opportunity to spend a morning there.

Crescent Ridge Dairy was founded in 1894 and was purchased in 1932 by the Parrish family. The company started as a dairy farm that supplied schools with milk, and then evolved into a milk delivery company. Today, Crescent Ridge continues to deliver milk weekly to its customers, as well as to sell their products in thirty-five grocery stores throughout the North East.  Over time, Crescent Ridge has expanded its line of delivery products to now over a hundred quality items such as eggs, breads, and Crescent Ridge ice cream, which was rated as one of the ten best ice creams in the world by National Geographic.

The company used to raise and milk its own cows, but now they get their milk raw from Howrigan Family Farm in Vermont. This transition occurred so that Crescent Ridge could continue to expand its customer base without compromising the cattle’s quality of life. Howrigan Family Farm is part of the St. Alban’s Dairy Co-op. The heifer cows from Howrigan come down to Crescent Ridge Dairy for five to six months of the year to graze on their fields. Mark referred to this as “cow summer camp” because they get to play all day on forty-four acres of pasture. The cows come to Crescent Ridge when they are not being milked. This is beneficial for the cows because it incorporates a grass fed component into their diet.

The pastures reach beyond the horizon

In addition to producing milk,  Crescent Ridge is expanding their company to include beef. They will begin raising Hereford or Angus beef calves, which will be entirely grass fed and free range. They are also currently updating their barn so that the cows will have shelter for particularly bad days during the East Coast’s winters. They will market their beef to their current dairy customers. This program was developed in response to consumer demand for more local, grass fed beef, and Mark figured that they already had many of the supplies, so they might as well make the customers happy. Similar to Lou at Hill Farm, Mark believes that raising grass fed free range animals is easy because so many problems are reduced by raising them in a natural environment. Mark invited me to visit again soon so that I can see the new calves; I will.

This year, Sustainable Bizness Practices presented Crescent Ridge with the Green Packy Award. This award is given to a company if their packaging is sustainable. It is sponsored by Whole Foods Markets, Whole Food Markets Green Mission, United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI) and the Food Trade Sustainability Leadership Association (FTSLA).  Crescent Ridge uses glass bottles that can be returned and refilled. This requires less waste and energy than plastic or cardboard milk containers. In addition, glass does not hold onto flavors from previous usages, whereas plastic does. Crescent Ridge was one of nineteen recipients of the Green Packy Award. The Green Packy Award confirms that Crescent Ridge uses responsible packaging for its products, and is an accurate reflection of the company’s commitment to sustainability.

Making Crescent Ridge products is a straightforward process. The raw milk is stored, blended, and bottled onsite. Crescent Ridge has a unique process for making different percentages of milk. Instead of constantly skimming off cream to make the different milks, Crescent Ridge blends their whole milk with the non-fat milk in order to make the 1% and 2%. This is important because this method increases the cream content for all of the milk, thus making a creamier, tastier product. In addition, Crescent Ridge milk has a higher cream content than the federal requirements. The minimum cream content in whole milk is 3.2%, but Crescent Ridge’s cream content is 4-4.1%. This also adds to the milks distinctly creamy flavor. After the milk is mixed, it is bottled on site. 

Just like the milk making process, the packaging process is also transparent. Before this fresh and creamy milk can be bottled, the containers all need to be sanitized. This is done on site in their massive dishwasher. The cycle takes about twenty minutes. This method of cleaning uses a lot less energy than sending the bottles to be recycled at a plant, broken down, and reformed into other glass products. It is more energy efficient to reuse the original bottles. Consumers are responsible for returning the bottles. They can either be returned to a grocery store or to the dairy delivery person. Once the bottles are washed, they go on a conveyor belt that brings them to the filling room. In these photos you can see the pasteurizing machine that records the time it takes to reach the highest temperature and what that temperature is as well, as the coolest temperature and how long it took to cool that batch of milk. In this room the milk is also homogenized so that the cream will not rise to the top. Here you can also see the capping machine and the conveyor belt that takes the completed product to the refrigeration room. All of Crescent Ridge’s milk is tested onsite in their own lab for bacteria levels as well as by the government.

Giant Dishwasher where the bottles get cleaned.

The milk capper (right), the recorder that measures how quickly the milk heated and cooled (center), a larger photo of the pasteurizing machinery (left)

Once in the refrigeration room, the crates of milk are sorted. Crescent Ridge only makes one batch of milk a day, so it is fairly easy to organize. The following day, that batch of milk is delivered to costumers by their own milk truck. Since they deliver the milk to majority of their customers, Crescent Ridge designed an insulated box for the products. The boxes stay on the customers’ doorsteps and are refilled weekly. When they finish a bottle of milk, the customer can rinse it out and leave it to be picked up and returned to the creamery. I was very impressed by the milk-processing center. When I visited, they were just cleaning up the machinery from that morning’s batch.  Once again, Mark invited me to come watch the milk being bottled early one morning on another day; hello transparency.

As if this was not enough generosity and friendliness for one day, Mark then took me to the ice cream store. Yes, I had ice cream for breakfast and it was phenomenal!!! All of the ice cream is made with Crescent Ridge milk. The Dairy Bar has forty-four different flavors of ice cream. I tried tons of flavors on my sampling spree, each one just as delicious as the next. Mark told me that he has to work out every day because he eats so much ice cream. He sent me home with a gallon of ice cream; it has been less than a week and we’ve made a significant dent in it because it tastes so good. 

By the end of my tour, I was confident that this was the best day of my summer. Being such a milk lover, I was overcome with relief to know that my milk was coming from an ethical, sustainable, and personal source. To know that I could get such quality milk in a grocery store is exciting because it shows that less conventionally produced products can be successful in the market. It should also be noted that Crescent Ridge’s prices are comparable to any other brand’s prices. I cannot thank Adam, Laura, and Mark enough for connecting me to Crescent Ridge. In a way, I may remember this visit the most because I already regularly purchased products from Crescent Ridge, so it was especially rewarding to really shake a hand that feeds me.