I’m excited to announce a collaboration with South Mountain Creamery, a dairy farm in Maryland, which offers locally grown and produced milk, dairy products and meats.

We’ve been customers of South Mountain since early 2015, when my husband and I made a decision to start consuming more of our food locally after watching a documentary on food production and processing. Our garden was great for providing small amounts of vegetables during the summer and fall months, but we wanted something more reliable for our year-round food needs.

We live in a wonderfully diverse area with many local farms offering up a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, meats and dairy products and we felt we should be taking greater advantage of local food. I was already shopping at area farmer’s markets on a regular basis, but we were interested in finding a regular delivery service that offered locally grown and produced food.

I’d noticed other houses in our neighborhood had South Mountain Creamery coolers on their front door step and I spent a little time checking out their website before deciding the sign up. I was impressed with the variety of dairy products, eggs, meat and produce they offer, both from their farm and from their partner farms in the area. Additionally, South Mountain Creamery, based in Middletown, MD, is committed to sustainable and environmentally sound agricultural practices, like humane treatment of animals, growing non-GMO crops and delivering milk in reusable glass bottles.

Shortly after we signed up for our weekly delivery, we attended their spring festival, where they open up the farm to allow visitors to view their milking operations and milk production facilities, shop from their store and, very importantly, sample their ice cream! We got the chance to introduce Oliver to the cows that produce his milk and helped feed the new calves. We had a great time at the festival and can’t wait to visit again!

Since we started delivery with South Mountain, we’ve loved their products (their sour cream is seriously amazing and their whole milk is so good!), so I was really excited when they approached me to seek ideas about a partnership. I’m so pleased to share that I’ll be developing recipes to promote South Mountain Creamery’s products in exchange for free product used for my recipe development.

If you live in their delivery area, which includes much of the Washington D.C. area and Philadelphia, I would highly recommend checking out their website, attending one of their festivals, and signing up for your own delivery. Its really been a great decision for our family and I look forward to this collaboration with South Mountain Creamery!