A high-tech La Conner organic dairy has entered into an old-fashioned agreement to supply fresh milk to Samish Bay Cheese. Both are members of Genuine Skagit Valley, the marketing organization that supports growers and producers in the county.

Mesman Farm, just east of town, has signed a three-year deal to haul milk six days a week to the Bow cheese maker, a 200-acre operation intent on growing its business.

Samish Bay Cheese has a mixed herd of mostly milking shorthorns and has been making its own cheese for more than two decades. Mesman Farm milk has supplemented that supply since the end of November due to an increase in market demand.

Down the road, SBC products will be carried at the Mesman Farm retail store at the intersection of Chilberg and Dodge Valley roads.

"We started talking about this a year or year-and-a-half ago," said Alan Mesman. "We've had contact with Roger and Suzanne (Wechsler) of Skagit Bay Cheese through our organic dairy meetings."

Mesman Farm seemed a natural source for the Wechslers to tap for a supplemental milk supply. Less than a decade ago it became the first dairy north of Seattle to install a robotic system that made milking a "24/7" process and thereby increased production.

With robotic milking stations, Mesman cows choose to be milked on their own schedule. They walk into a stall and the robot adjusts its milking apparatus to fit each cow. The human touch is optional.

Each cow has a microchip that tracks everything it does. That includes how much and when it eats and milks and when it enters and leaves certain gates to pasture.

"It's been fairly common in Canada and Europe for quite some time," Mesman said. "But when we did it, it was pretty much a novelty in this area."

The system produces enough additional milk for the Mesmans to fill orders from buyers such as Samish Bay Cheese. Some days the La Conner dairy delivers to Bow a full load of just over two tons of milk. Other days the Mesmans haul a half-load. Five hundred gallons make up a full load.

"But in the dairy world," Mesman pointed out, "we talk in terms of pounds rather than gallons."

Because it's fresh milk that's involved, the Mesmans adhere to a strict delivery schedule. They arrive at Samish Bay Cheese around 11:30 a.m. each and every delivery day – every day except Sunday and holidays.

"Alan loads the milk onto a trailer that he made," noted Sarah Walls, a Weekly News contributing photographer and the wholesale marketing coordinator for Genuine Skagit Valley. "After that, it's about a 30-minute delivery run to Samish Bay Cheese."

Samish Bay Cheese has been curdling milk to make farmstead cheese since 1999. Now, in response to a growing market, it has added Mesman Farm milk to the mix.

That arrangement, linking two Genuine Skagit Valley entities, seems as natural a fit as bread and butter.

Born through a multi-stakeholder collaboration, Genuine Skagit Valley's goal is to help increase consumer awareness and consumption of Skagit Valley agricultural related products.

With over 80 crops harvested here, and the region's farm goods in demand around the world, the Genuine Skagit Valley mission is to make sure local agriculture is a cream that always rises to the top.

On the dairy side, the collaboration between Mesman Farm and Samish Bay Cheese is yet another component piece assuring that happens well into the future.

Mesman's father, Francis, and Fred Mesman were brothers. Fred Mesman died in December.