The Creambrook Origin Story - Part 1
This is the first of a blog series on how Creambrook began and we started the farm business. We hope you enjoy reading the first installment!
Creambrook Farm began as a dream in our minds as Ben and I were engaged in 2011. At the time, Ben was launching his farm business and I had a job on a nearby farm.
The idea of farming together full-time as young twenty-something newlyweds was thrilling to us. Could we pull it off? Most farmers we knew had multiple jobs or “town jobs.”
Ben and I were married on a beautiful Spring-like day in January 2012. We moved into a little rundown farmhouse with some rented land and bought four Jersey cows from PA three weeks into marriage. We were bright-eyed and had planned a pastured poultry & hog farrowing business and small raw milk herd share to cash flow our endeavors.
That rented farm was a way for us to get started and we were able to make ends meet without a town job. We got familiar with living very frugally, I might add. The name “Creambrook” was chosen for our farm business to signify a strong dairying component and “brook” was inspired from a vintage book on naming farms.
At the end of 2013, it felt like we had reached the capacity of the farm. There were sixty herd share members and flocks of poultry but there wasn’t the ability to rent more land where we were, so we began a three year journey of working on dairy farms in VA and PA to gain experience. We welcomed our first two sons during this three year span.
For context, dairying had won over all other farm enterprises for us in our early marriage. We had dabbled in chickens, turkeys, ducks, pigs, farrowing pigs, and raw milk from Jerseys.
Ben had found dairying in 2008 when he bought a milk cow named Beaulah - before it was “cool” to be a homesteader and hand milk a cow! He loved the experience. I had dairy experience as a teenager, and we honestly didn’t love the poultry business so we decided to expand our knowledge of organic/grass fed/raw milk production from 2014 - 2017. I wish it was as smooth a season as it sounds when you type it up, but it wasn’t (you’ll see a repeating theme here ;). There were a lot of transitions and just seeing the next step in front of you but not knowing where you’re going…