Growing up in western New York, the best treat after school was Mom’s chocolate cake and a glass of cold milk. The milk was delivered by a milkman and arrived in glass bottles with foil lids, placed securely in the metal milk box near the side door to our house on Navarre Road. On snowy winter days, I knew there was a special delicacy in store. After school, I would open the milk box and take a bottle, carefully skimming the frozen cream that had escaped from under the lid. It was an ice cream-like dessert. I can taste it now as I write this. The days of milk delivery men are gone, replaced by factory dairy farms and refrigerated grocery aisles. In Maine, local dairy farmers have persisted, yet here is the latest news: the Houlton Pioneer Times reports this week that all local milk production ends this month. Houlton is our metropolis to the north in Maine. The owner of Lilley Farms, the local supplier to the family-owned milk distributor Houlton Farms Dairy, is selling his herd of 130 cows and will stop producing milk by the end of the month. Apparently, their business was negatively affected by the popularity of plant-based milk-like products. When this story broke, I called my friend and local Rochester historian, Arnie, to ask him to research the old milk suppliers of our youth. Hudson-Cloverdale dairies delivered to those milk boxes embedded in the sides of our homes, he reported.
Milk will now come from Portland, some 220 miles away. Deliveries will be less often and perhaps less available during the heavy tourist season. What does this say about life in the far reaches of northern Maine, one of the most distant geographical reaches of our vast county? “The times they are a-changin’,” as they say. The local dairy farmer has ceased to exist due to changing food demands. Those of us “elder” citizens who remember the frozen tops of the glass bottles with ice-cream-like cream spilling over the edge have only their idyllic memories of youth to look back upon.
I lament the loss of the dairy farmer who labored to maintain his cows to produce the most organic of raw milk for some 75 years. I support Houlton Farms, which hasn’t changed some of its formulas for 43 years in honor of its forebears, which have long been supported by a loyal public of consumers. Next season at camp in Maine, I will be scouring the local grocery store for their remaining dairy products -- seasonal ice cream flavors, ice cream bars, and butter. I opened our refrigerator at home in the Hamptons and saw various milk products – oat milk, for instance, with an expiration date of June 2025. There is a gallon of whole milk, but it is lactose-free. Still, it is whole milk, so I pour a glass and sneak in an Oreo cookie and a glass of milk before bedtime — next will be the chocolate-covered graham cracker – don’t tell anyone, please.