Our milk
We believe wholeheartedly in the quality and freshness of our milk, so much so that since the herd was founded at Church Farm, all of the Norton family members have drunk their milk unpasteurised and straight from the tank. 
Now, as well as having unpasteurised milk available for sale direct from the farm, we pasteurise our milk for sale through local shops and businesses throughout the Broadland area.
Pasteurised milk
Our processing system seeks to maintain the structure and composition of the milk as close as possible to its natural state, because this means you get the best tasting product possible. From the milking parlour, milk is carefully filtered and collected into a chill tank, allowing it to be cooled straight away to 3°C. Milk to be pasteurised is carried just 20 yards across the farmyard in a movable mini-bulk tank to our specially built hygienic pasteurising unit. The milk is then fed into the pasteurising machine using a gravity feed system, minimising disruption to the composition of the milk and the energy required to process our dairy products.
We do not "homogenise" our milk (where the cream is taken out, broken down into little fat globules and put back in to distribute through the milk consistently). This process helps mass-produced milk stay on supermarket shelves for longer, 
but we believe in fresh milk and preserving the natural structure and taste of our milk as much as possible. Just like the old days, shake the bottle to mix in the creamy top, or pour it straight from the bottle for a richer breakfast milk or cooking ingredient.
The new dairy building at Church Farm
To make skimmed and semi-skimmed milk, during the pasteurisation process we separate out the cream from the whole milk. Whole milk contains just 4% fat anyway, but this is reduced to 2% for semi-skimmed milk and a tiny 0.5% for skimmed milk. Most of this delicious spare cream is available for purchase straight up as luxury double cream and a small amount we will be making into butter. Both are truly delicious!
