High Lawn Farm is a Jersey Cow Dairy with an impressive history, responsible practices, and a respect for the basics that has helped them to produce extremely high-quality milk and dairy products for over one hundred years. High Lawn Farm cows are happy cows, raised with care on hay and feed proudly grown at their very own facility.
Located in Lee, Massachusetts, the High Lawn Farm team cares deeply about the future of the farm and quality of their offerings. In recent years, they’ve expanded these offerings to include a line of high-quality, local ice creams, produced right there at the farm. If you’ve yet to give it a try, you’re in luck! After years of proudly carrying their milk and other products, The Old Creamery Co-op is happy to announce that we’ll be scooping High Lawn Farm Ice Cream from our Ice Cream Window for the first time this summer.
Located in Lee, Massachusetts, the High Lawn Farm team cares deeply about the future of the farm and quality of their offerings. In recent years, they’ve expanded these offerings to include a line of high-quality, local ice creams, produced right there at the farm. If you’ve yet to give it a try, you’re in luck! After years of proudly carrying their milk and other products, The Old Creamery Co-op is happy to announce that we’ll be scooping High Lawn Farm Ice Cream from our Ice Cream Window for the first time this summer.
Folks in the Berkshires can still remember those milk deliveries, with fresh cream tops and the very best flavor. A huge factor in the flavor and cream quality is their world-renowned herd of Jersey cows, stewarded by High Lawn’s original founder, Marjorie Wilde. A truly hands-on operator, Marjorie acted as herd manager and kept close tabs on the Jersey bloodline at the farm.
Marjorie’s work was monumental, and the High Lawn herd is credited as the most influential source of Jersey stock in the twentieth century. High Lawn can currently trace breeding records for most of the herd over seventeen generations back, all of them well-loved and documented.
So prolific is this centennial herd that over one hundred thousand cows worldwide can trace their lineage back to this very farm. The result of Marjorie’s work is milk with a higher fat, protein, and calcium content than conventional Holstein yield.
This eye to stewardship goes hand-in-hand with their goal of keeping the Berkshires green and beautiful through a commitment to sustainable agriculture. High Lawn’s entire operation is essentially self-sustaining. All of the corn, alfalfa, and hay that goes into their prized herd’s feed is grown right there on the farm. Even their water supply is sourced directly from their property, where they test and run a spring-fed system that has been set up to help supply the town of Lee in the case of an emergency.
With an operational foundation this solid, High Lawn Farm has found themselves well-positioned to weather the inevitable ups and downs that come in any line of business. In the case of the dairy industry, an increasingly difficult liquid milk market is the very inspiration that has led these local heroes to expand their offerings into butter, cheese, and ice cream.
Likewise, their pursuit of sustainability and the best possible life for their herd has generated creative, technology-based, solutions that just wouldn’t have been possible fifty years ago, let alone one hundred.
Today, High Lawn Farm is equipped with not only a state-of-the-art milking system, but some of the most cow-forward farm practices available. High Lawn does not use synthetic hormones, aka rBST, to increase yields and their milk is antibiotic free. From literal waterbeds for the herd, to self-selected milking schedules, to an automated system that mucks the stalls without the need for human hands – these girls are happy, healthy, and well cared for.
Walking into the barn, visitors are greeted with adorable rows of curious and social faces, casually munching on their farm-grown feed or taking a turn on the automated scratcher.
They seem to love routine and schedules. You’ll see the same cows keeping a 6 o’clock milking appointment on any given day. Each cow wears a radio tag around her neck that provides the milking station with their activity and feed consumption, like their very own fit-bit. The mechanized milker monitors the body temperature, weight, and general well being of each cow. And each cow’s milk is tested in real time before being incorporated into the mix. The machine gently washes their udders before each session, up to 6 times a day, and is even programmed not to over-milk. If anything is amiss with the cow or her milk, the farmer is digitally notified.
Most often this just means encouraging a cow to go get milked, but if a member of the herd does get sick, they can be quickly identified and have their needs taken care of. All of this automation means the farmer has more time and space to focus on keeping everyone healthy and happy. High Lawn Farm was Massachusetts’ first adapter of this innovative technology in 2014, and these days there are now over twenty other farms who have incorporated similar versions. There would be no way to provide the same attention and care to the herd without it.
Adapting to the times has been a recent theme for the century-old farm. While they began producing butter in the early 2000’s, it wasn’t until 2018 that they started their cheese program. And when 2020 hit, the farm had an influx of requests to pick up milk directly from the farm, eventually leading to the opening of an on-site shop for direct sales. Their Ice Cream initiative is also a newer addition, starting in 2015 and going strong. The ice cream boasts a 16% fat content, the highest it can be. This isn’t some common commercial mix or industrial boxed slurry.
From grass to cone, every scoop of cream comes from the farm. And their overrun, or the amount of air that gets mixed into the cream, is an extremely low 30%. This means every scoop is packed with the thickest and creamiest ice cream on the market. These are the sorts of choices you can taste.
From their feed, to the attention paid to their health and well-being, High Lawn cows enjoy a longer life expectancy. Home to around 120 producing cows, High Lawn Farm processes roughly 6,000 gallons of milk on a production day.
And they do it all right there at the farm, with a state-of-the-art pasteurization and processing facility handling everything from fresh cream and milk to cheese and ice cream.
They even do their own packaging and shipping, delivering the freshness in High Lawn trucks. The company employs roughly 40 folks year-round, and their staff expands in the summer with 15-20 seasonal workers, mostly made up of students and local kids. Amye Gulezian, head of Specialty Foods, recalls one of the best feelings being when a staffer graduated and came back to see if there was a full-time position for them, after years of seasonal work they would return to join the specialty foods team for good.
Head on down to High Lawn Farm in Lee, and you too can meet the cows and say hey to all the great staff. Grab a scoop of their ice cream or a cheese platter. In September, the Massachusetts Cheese Guild will be hosting their cheese festival at the Farm, which would make for a great day out with the family. Their cheese department has been wowing folks since its inception, and there’s definitely more to come. Aging cheese takes time, and they’ve only just started unveiling their best stuff.
Interested in trying their milk or dairy products? The Old Creamery Co-op carries their milk in our dairy cooler, their butter and cheese in our cheese case, and ice cream pints in our freezer -or- grab a cone and enjoy a scoop on our patio.
High Lawn Farm
535 Summer St, Lee, MA 01238
(413) 243-0672
highlawnfarm.com