Keeping Safe and Sane When Selling Your Farm Produce

In the 1950s, millions of Americans supported their families by selling produce directly from their farms. Today, corporations grow most of our food and small farmers are required to juggle many legal hurdles to even sell excess produce from their farms. This produce is often superior in nutrition and flavor to what can be purchased in grocery stores, and when we buy locally, we support both the farmer and our community. If you are wanting to sell produce, I’d like to share what I’ve learned about keeping “safe and sane” when selling produce directly from our small farms and backyard homesteads.

Milk: On our 13 acre farm, my husband and I only intended to grow food for ourselves while helping to save endangered breeds of farm animals. However, when our first two Dutch Belted cows together gave ten gallons of milk every day, we quickly needed other outlets for this bounty. The pigs and chickens were glad to help by consuming excess and I made lots of cheese for us. But raw milk is such a beautiful and nutritious food that we did want to share. Besides, some friends and neighbors were eager to have access to this raw milk.

“Sharing milk” sounds innocent enough, but the federal government doesn’t see it that way. Currently, raw milk cannot be sold for human consumption, no matter which state we live in. However, some states allow consumers to buy “shares” of a farmer’s herd and thus access raw milk via “herd-shares.”

I might have found navigating the legal system overwhelming if a national group hadn’t been formed just as we were puzzling over our excess milk. The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund was founded in 2007 to help small farmers keep legally safe when selling produce from their farms. This national organization provides the basic knowledge of state-specific laws, contracts, advice, customer information and even access to its lawyers, if needed. The annual fee varies for farmers, consumers, artisans or co-op; it is a great bargain to keep our small farms safe.

Here is some of the “legal-speak” that they taught us for doing herd-shares. Rather than buying milk, customers buy shares of the herd. These “owners” then pick up the amount of milk weekly that is equivalent to their share. For our share-holders, one share cost $50. For owning one share, a customer got a gallon of milk-per-week. An individual could buy a half-share, a single share or more than one share. That money was refunded when they no longer wanted milk or when we no longer wanted to do herd-shares.

We were not the owners, but the “agisters,” or care-takers of the herd. The way we got paid for our mucking and milking duties was a monthly fee. You can base the amount of your monthly “agister fee” on what you want to charge per gallon of milk. That fee varies by how many shares (or partial shares) an individual owns and therefore how much milk they get. We charged $28-per-share each month. People picked up their milk weekly on their designated day, but paid monthly at the barn’s entrance while checking off their name for that month. Remember, if there happens to be five Fridays in the month of March, the person who picks up their milk on Friday still pays the same monthly agister fee. In this way, the customers get pleasure with this rare bonus, and we stayed safe with the law.

Besides doing things legally, the other aspect of keeping safe is to have a safe product. That’s nothing different than any of us want to provide for our families, so we only need to hold that standard when increasing production. Raw milk does demand a higher standard of cleanliness than ultra-pasteurized, deadened store milk, but raw milk excels in safety and health because the “good” lactobacilli keep bad bacteria in check. Our job is to keep the bad bacteria in low numbers.

A brief summary of how we keep our milk safe begins with cleaning any dirty teats with sanitary wipes and then dipping each teat in a 2% chlorhexidine mixture. We keep the udder dry to prevent bacteria from dripping down onto the teats. We found it easier to use disposable latex gloves when milking than washing our hands between cows. Our milk buckets are stainless steel which allows us to sanitize with a food-grade iodine solution after a hot soap-and-water wash. The milk bottles are glass and so they are sanitized with a less-expensive diluted bleach solution. Milk is filtered twice and put immediately into a cold refrigerator. We did change from hand-milking to a bucket-milker when the first two cows became three, but this was meant to help our aging hands as much as keeping the milk clean.

Let me share one more thing about safety with herd-shares. When we sought advice from another couple who had begun herd-shares a few years before us, they stressed how important it was not to attempt to “sell” our product. They offered this advice after reading my very enthusiastic, two-page handout on the many health benefits of raw milk. They kindly stressed not to try to “sell” people on how great raw milk is, but instead to allow well-informed people, who truly wanted this product, to find us. This has served us well because having supportive customers who wanted us to succeed made our lives and work much easier. These customers were also less likely to look at raw milk as the culprit if they got a stomach ache.

Although I put safety before sanity, keeping sane while having herd-shares isn’t so difficult either. For us it meant keeping things as simple as possible. The barn was set-up to allow customers to pick up their milk and leave payments without our assistance. This was accomplished by having the milk refrigerator and payment container by the front door of the barn. When originally signing contracts, each customer was given a handout on how to clean and sanitize their own milk containers. They were responsible for leaving these empty and labeled bottles when picking up milk. It seemed obvious that “keeping things simple” meant sharing the work!

Not carrying milk into the house was a great labor-saver too. We turned the barn’s tack-room into a wash-room, complete with a small water heater on a twice-daily timer. The wash-room is just across the hall from the milking stalls and contains a double sink, plenty of counter space for drainage racks and shelves for equipment. A used, restaurant-supply store was our source of the entry-way refrigerator and the wash-room equipment.

Although we really enjoy having raw milk, we don’t enjoy it enough to milk year-round. We found that we could freeze some of the milk for winter consumption while also enjoying the cheddar cheese made during the summer. So part of our sanity was to give the cows and ourselves a break during the winter months. The herd-share members were good sports about viewing their milk as a seasonal food.

Eggs and honey: Having herd-shares also made it easy to sell other seasonal produce when it became more than we could use. Cartons of eggs were put on the top shelf of the milk refrigerator and jars of honey on the adjacent shelf. A sign listed prices and this money would find its way into the same money container that held the agister’s fees.

With the sale of eggs and honey, we had unintentionally entered the world of “cottage food” sales and therefore came under both federal and state cottage food laws. Again, the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund, the online Cottage Food laws (different for each state), and the local County Extension office can give the required preparation and labeling of produce for each state. Fortunately, my artistic niece loved making colorful labels that not only included the information required by law, but added some pizzazz to the barn’s produce display.

The purpose of our sales was to sell seasonally excess produce. Of greater consequence, small farmers today are attempting to sell directly from their farms as a means to keep financially viable in a world of corporate food. The most successful I’ve seen have begun small and grow their skills and workload as they increase their customer base. One model may begin by selling produce seasonally at a local farmers’ market or road-side stand. This allows you to meet supportive customers who then become the basis for a CSA (community supported agriculture). As the CSA gradually grows, having a designated “farm-market” building at the farm allows produce to be sold to an even larger customer base. This may require both a larger financial and time commitment, but small farmers have a better chance of remaining on financially secure ground when they’ve grown to this stage slowly--slowly enough to keep things financially manageable, but also slowly enough to keep their lives both “sane” and enjoyable.

Kitchen produce: You’re correct if you’re thinking that selling a larger variety of food involves more laws. Fortunately, most states’ Cottage Food laws agree that it’s legal to sell “non-hazardous” foods that are produced in our kitchens. These usually include jams, jellies and baked goods that don’t require refrigeration. Before you begin, check online or with your county’s extension office for what’s required in your state.

Meat: Selling meat is a bit trickier, but not so much so. As with all produce, there are both federal and state laws governing meat sales. When our cows' herd grew to six and some years gave us a majority of bull calves, we sold excess meat. Because we had plenty of time between birth and butchering, it was easy to find customers by word-of-mouth and from previous customers. These people, who bought ½ or whole steer, became the “owners.” This designation was necessary because the facility we use is USDA inspected and approved, but doesn’t have an inspector on site. Therefore, after we bring the steers to the butchers and then get their “hanging weight,” we call the owners and they paid us per-pound of meat. In this facility, the meat is marked “NOT FOR SALE,” with the owner’s name on it. The owners were responsible for picking up their meat and paying the butcher’s fee.

The above method is called “custom slaughter” and works well for our small farm and known customers. However, when you want to sell meat to the general public, you need to use a processor at a “fully-inspected plant.” These facilities in our state had an inspection program that results in each package being marked to allow it to be re-sold anywhere in the state, including directly from the farm. It’s perhaps easiest to unravel which facility does what by going to the nearest meat processing plant and let them advise you where and how to proceed.

Selling meat from chickens has fewer rules than red meat and allows butchering to be done on the farm. For example, Ohio allows processing up to 1,000 birds without an inspector, processing in “open air” and selling directly to the consumer—all without a license. Joel Salatan discusses his method of butchering and selling poultry on the farm in his book, “Pastured Poultry Profits.” Having a dedicated team and a mechanized chicken-plucker sure does help!

Keeping Sane: The above guidelines on selling produce and meat directly from the farm is about keeping safe. It’s equally important that we keep “sane” by enjoying what we do and having what we do be profitable.

Both enjoyment and profit are directly related to the size of our operations. If we grow too quickly or too large, profits will actually decrease along with our enjoyment. It amazes me that well-meaning folks—usually those who have never done the work of farming—have so many suggestions for what else we could be doing! We’re wise if we don’t take the bait. Growing slowly, if at all, along the path you’ve chosen is necessary for success.

Every farm family varies in their interests and resources so it’s logical that there’s a wide variety of farm-sale models. After just warning you not incorporate every suggestion you’re given, here’s a suggestion I can’t resist sharing! When displaying your farm’s produce, consider increasing your customer-base by enabling other small farmers to sell their home-produced items at your farm. You might agree on receiving ten percent of their profits for displaying their beeswax products, jams and jellies. At the same time, the increase in your inventory brings you more customers. It feels like a “win-win” if we can effortlessly increase our profit-margin while helping neighbors.

A final part of keeping sane when selling produce directly from the farm is getting a fair profit. It’s obvious that we can’t compete with the corporate food system on prices; it’s that system that is bankrupting small dairy farmers. Perhaps the wisdom of my herd-share mentors applies here: let well-informed customers come to you. They will appreciate the improved nutrition and flavor of your products as well as your humane treatment of the animals that provide their meat and eggs. There’s no need to apologize that a fair price, which includes your labor, is higher than the supermarket’s.



The survival of many small farms may depend on our ability to keep both safe and sane when selling produce directly to the consumer. Small farmers today have the knowledge, ingenuity and work ethic to succeed. Their success in a world of corporate food allows consumers the choice of healthy food. Their success also preserves the land, knowledge and genetics that will make small farms possible in the future.