When pasteurising we process and bottle milk from our cows three days a week. On bottling days, we're able to get milk that came out of the cows that morning on the shop shelf that same morning.
At Southview Farm milking is done automatically. Since 2012 two robots allow the cows to be milked whenever they want. This cutting edge technology gives the cows and staff more freedom without compromising cow welfare and milk hygiene. The cows actually visit more often, give more milk and are healthier now that they choose when to be milked. The Milking machines take the milk directly from the cows' udders to a storage tank, where it is kept at a temperature of 3 - 5C°. All of the processing work takes place in the milk plant which is in a separate building.
When it's time to bottle whole milk, the milk is heated to kill bacteria and other microorganisms. This makes milk stay fresh longer. Southview Farm uses a method called high-temperature, short-time pasteurisation, meaning the milk is heated to a high temperature for a just a few seconds and then cooled.
From the pasteurising vats, milk is pumped to a homogeniser. This blends cream particles into the rest of the milk. Normally, whole milk contains between 4 and 5 percent cream. Without homogenisation, the cream would rise to the top of a container of milk because it's less dense. The homogeniser breaks down the fat molecules in the cream.
The pistons help pump the milk in high-pressure streams of 2,000 pounds per square inch through small tubes. This causes the larger fat molecules in the cream to break into smaller molecules. They become heavier and then are no longer able to float to the top.
If the Hughes’s aren't processing whole milk, however, they don't want that cream in the milk in the first place. To make skimmed or skim milk, they separate the cream from the milk before pasteurisation using in a machine called a cream separator. Whole milk goes in, and out comes 60 percent skim milk and 40 percent cream. The separated cream is pasteurised, but not homogenised. Then it is bottled individually for sale as cream. Or it may use it to make ice cream. After the cream is removed, skim milk is processed just as whole milk is.
Milk is bottled by a machine that can be adapted to handle various sizes of containers – 2 litres, 1 litres and 500ml. Once the milk is bottled, it's stacked in crates and taken to cool storage to be delivered to local stores, restaurants, nursing homes and schools.
On bottling days, the work starts while you're still asleep in bed: One of the Hughes’s has to get up by 5 a.m. – sometimes earlier – to start processing milk! Around 7 a.m., two employees come in to help, and the three of them process milk until around 11 a.m. Then it's time pot cream or help out with the other farm chores.