A Raw-Milk Raid Leads to a Special Thanksgiving

After a Kentucky raw-milk farmer gets busted in Ohio, his shareholders decide to help run the farm and its distribution business

by David E. Gumpert

Gary Oaks' Ohio Department of Agriculture witness statement

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On Thanksgiving, Kimberly Gelhaus, a 39-year-old mom and student at the University of Cincinnati, will drive over an hour to the Double O Farms in Verona, Ky. Once at the tiny farm, she, her husband, and three children (ages 6, 8, and 18) will spend several hours dispensing milk from a holding tank into dozens of glass bottles, and then affixing lids.

Once the work is done, "We'll just sit and talk," she says.

The story of how Gelhaus and her family came to spend this holiday working and frolicking on a farm isn't about charity, but rather about how a seemingly straightforward business investment turned into a legal crisis—and then evolved into something much bigger, something involving community and caring. Because the legal part wasn't resolved until earlier this month, Gelhaus and others involved in the story didn't want to talk about it until now.

It all began in October, 2004, when Gelhaus went on a health kick. She had spent much of the previous two winters in doctors' offices and emergency rooms with sick kids. "The doctors knew us so well, we were on their Christmas card list," she recalls. A major part of the new regimen included raw milk, which is unpasteurized and unhomogenized, and viewed by increasing numbers of consumers and health experts as healthier than the pasteurized stuff because its enzymes and beneficial bacteria haven't been destroyed by the heat of pasteurization.

Personal Consumption

Because the sale of raw milk is illegal in Ohio and Kentucky (and 23 other states), she joined a herd-share program she had heard about which had just been launched by Gary and Dawn Oaks, owners of the Double O Farms. She joined about 160 other families as shareholders, investing $225 for three shares, which gave her partial ownership of the farm's 15 cows. She also agreed to a maintenance fee of $80 a month. Her shares entitled her to three gallons of milk each week, which Gary delivered to various drop-off points in the Cincinnati area as a convenience to the shareholders.

The idea was that they wouldn't be purchasing milk, but instead obtaining it directly from cows they owned—because even in the states that prohibit raw milk sales, farmers are allowed to consume their cows' milk (see BusinessWeek.com, 10/19/06, "States Target Raw-Milk Farmers").

For Gary, 43 and Dawn, 39, who had chucked conventional careers in inventory management (for him) and health care (for her), the shareholder arrangement served two purposes. It allowed them to fulfill their personal desire to make milk available to consumers in what they believed was a healthier form, and it enabled them to escape the mass-production-commodity cycle that had seen an estimated 1,500 Kentucky dairies bite the dust in the decade between 1993 and 2003 alone, says Gary.

Dairy Raid

For nearly a year-and-a-half, everything went as planned. The milk arrived on schedule and the health of Gelhaus' children improved dramatically. But on Mar. 6 of this year, everything changed. At about 1:15 in the afternoon, Gary Oaks arrived at a Cincinnati parking lot for what he thought would be a routine delivery, distributing milk to his shareholders. He got out of his truck, opened the trailer, and began handing out bottles of milk to a few of the dozen or so shareholders present.

Gelhaus wasn't there, but another shareholder who was, Joanne Miller, of Morrow, Ohio, remembers vividly what happened next. "I was placing empty bottles in carriers when I noticed a Cincinnati police cruiser moving through the parking lot slowly toward the trailer. Another cruiser followed. Officers moved toward the cow-share owners and told them not to pick up the milk that had already been set out, and actually moved in to prevent members from picking up the milk."

Out of several unmarked cars emerged men in plain clothes who "gathered near the tailgate of the trailer," Miller says. Only one would identify himself, an agent of the Ohio Dept. of Agriculture (ODA), she says. Other agents were there from the Kentucky Public Health Dept.