MIDDLETOWN -- Randy Sowers and his family are turning back the pages of history in an attempt to save their 200-acre dairy farm a few miles outside this Frederick County town.
In a throwback to what some would call the good old days, a time when country folk never locked their doors, the Sowers family offers farm-fresh milk delivered to the doorsteps of about 1,600 homes in six Maryland counties, Washington and parts of Virginia and West Virginia.
According to Ted Elkin, chief of the division of milk control at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Sowerses' South Mountain Creamery is the only licensed dairy operation in the state providing home delivery of milk.
"It's a service that completely disappeared about 30 years ago," he said.
"I can remember when milk was delivered to your home, but I think it ended in about 1975," said Randy Sowers, 50.
Now he's seeing a new generation that seems willing to pay a premium price for fresh, high-quality and locally produced milk and other farm products.
A quart of South Mountain whole milk in a glass bottle, with cream on the top, costs $1.75. A quart of milk in a paper container at the Safeway in town was $1.39 last week.
A half-gallon bottle of the creamery milk costs $2.29, compared with $1.99 at Safeway.
"We offer a different product," Sowers said. "Our milk comes from the cow, is processed and can be on a customer's front porch in 12 hours. It's not normally more than 24 hours. At the grocery store, the milk might be a week-and-a-half old."
Says his wife, Karen, "We have about 1,600 customers, and we're adding seven a day."
She said they deliver milk in Baltimore, Frederick, Howard, Montgomery, Carroll and Prince George's counties. Trucks also serve customers in Arlington and Leesburg, Va.; Martinsburg and Harpers Ferry, W.Va.; and Washington.
A new route is scheduled for Reisterstown next month.
South Mountain also brings its products to the farmers' market in the Waverly section of Baltimore.
`Old-fashioned way'
The Sowerses say there is a touch of nostalgia to their business.
Their philosophy is stated in an advertising flier: "With all the hustle and bustle of today's world, we believe it's important to slow down and appreciate our families, our neighbors, our community. Sometimes the old-fashioned way is still the best way. Bringing back the milk man, glass bottles, and home delivery is our way of reminding folks of Maryland's rich agricultural heritage."
State Agriculture Secretary Lewis R. Riley has followed the Sowerses' venture since it opened four years ago. "It's unique," he said of the milk processing plant on the farm.
"They are a hardworking family, and I respect what they are trying to do," Riley said. "I think they are going to be successful."
The operation has been watched by the Agriculture Department and other state farm organizations that have been encouraging farmers -- especially dairy farmers -- to add value to their milking operations by turning their milk into other dairy products.
The Sowerses moved into home delivery of milk and opened their store in 2001 as part of a plan to avoid the growing list of Maryland dairy farms that had struggled with low milk prices and gone out of business. The state was losing about 35 dairy farms a year when the Sowerses stopped wholesaling their milk to a cooperative in favor of selling directly to the public.
The family invested $790,000 in their processing plant and store to help break the economic cycle that had done in so many of their colleagues.
It started small.
"We only had 14 customers when we started," said Ben Sowers, Randy's son. "We made deliveries in our Ford Explorer. We put a cooler in the back. Most of the customers were in Frederick, 10 miles away."
Today, the creamery has nine trucks on the road.
Many products
The business carries a lot more than milk. Other items offered by South Mountain include butter, yogurt, yogurt drinks, eggs and cheeses. The trucks also deliver pork and beef products processed by a USDA-inspected butchery in Hagerstown. Equipment to make ice cream is sold at a store on the farm.
The Sowerses' return to the ways of an earlier era hasn't been easy.
Randy Sowers said he had to run up high credit card debt for the cash flow needed to keep the business going. He also says there are creditors he is not paying back as fast as he would like.
"Nobody thought this was going to work," he said. He thinks he is about to prove the doubters wrong.
Asked whether the business was profitable, he responded: "We should be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel by the end of the year. It looks like this is going to work."
