Gallatin Valley residents can expect to see a new locally-produced item on the dairy aisle shelves in the coming months.
Amaltheia Organic Dairy, an organic vegetable and dairy farm outside Bozeman, recently received a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture that will allow them to purchase equipment to bottle and sell goal milk throughout Montana.
The grant Amaltheia received is called the Organic Market Development Grant, put out last year by the USDA to help organic farmers expand. The program committed up to $75 million for organic farmers and has thus far awarded funding to 70 projects across 29 states.
In an Instagram post, the farm thanked Ali Moxley for helping them write the grant and navigate the process.
Moxley runs a consulting company and describes her work as helping people throughout the food chain supply — producers and processors, for example — find, write and apply for funding opportunities.
Moxley said roughly 75% of the funding from the program has been released already. Moxley has been working at Amaltheia for several years and knows the farm is very well known for its cheeses and wanted to see what other products they might be interested in adding.
“There’s so many other kinds of delicious milk products they could making,” she said.
She said they discussed what type of project would best fit the criteria of the grant and landed on goat milk. Moxley said that locally produced goat milk is not something currently available in Gallatin Valley.
Sue Brown, one of the owners and founders of Amaltheia, said they have been making goat cheese for about 20 years and in that time have been getting calls once or twice a week asking for goat milk.
Producing and selling goat milk is “something they’ve always wanted,” said Brown.
Some people want or prefer goat milk because it is easier on a lactose sensitive or intolerant system.
Once aware of the grant, Brown said they checked it out and decided to apply.
“We wrote the grant, and we were very excited to get it,” she said. “We’re, we just are going to start very small with local stores and see how that goes.”
The timeline between now and when the goat milk appears on shelves is not set in stone, but Brown said it will not be immediate.
“It’s going to take us a while to do the build out and get the right equipment to do bottling,” she said.
Moxley said with these USDA grants it is never as easy as simply being chosen for the funding and getting the greenlight. However, since Amaltheia is just purchasing and installing new equipment at an already built facility, she thinks their timeline will be much quicker than some other projects.
Though, because the USDA is understaffed Moxley said sometimes they will put out a tight deadline to apply for the grant but review processes, or new policy developments might take longer than expected and push the awarding of the funding back months and months.
Brown also said they are still finishing up the paperwork and have not received the money yet. She estimates it will be about six months before the necessary equipment is built out. The state will also need to conduct inspections to ensure everything is “just right.”
Amaltheia also decided to keep a bunch of their goat kids after hearing they received the grant, so they will have a sufficient quantity of goat milk.
Metrics are tied to this grant as well so the USDA will monitor the project’s sales for the first six months to year, said Moxley.
“That’s how the USDA determines if the project has been quote, unquote, successful,” she said.
Since the milk will be directly consumed by people, thus considered “Grade A” but the USDA, Brown also said they will be continuously inspected even after the initial approvals.
Brown said the goat milk will be a high quality, healthy and delicious product.
“It’ll be mostly for health-conscious people or people who have small children who are intolerant to cow’s milk,” she said.
Once all the logistics are settled, the milk will be available in quart and half gallon sizes starting with the Community Food Co-op and Town & Country Foods stores.