Gone are the days when the food we eat and the drinks we drink were grown entirely in our own backyard … or are they?
Sarah Farms is bringing fresh milk and juice back to the tables of El Paso County families. The best part is that it’s all made locally in El Paso’s Lower Valley!
Alex Alvarado, sales manager at Sarah Farms, says the locally operated business was started in 2008. Originally, Sarah Farms was a relatively small company and would sell and deliver milk to local schools, Walmarts and a few other local businesses.
In addition to Arizona, California, Hawaii and Nevada, Sarah Farms now supplies their products to West Texas and New Mexico. Alvarado largely attributes this success and Sarah Farms’ growth to two factors: the quality of their products and their local production in the ever-supportive City of El Paso.
The company continues to support schools beyond supplying them milk products. Through it’s Moo-la program, parents and students can collect the label of any half gallon or gallon milk from Sarah Farms (from its Vitamin D milk to its fat-free and 1% lowfat milks to its chocolate milk) and turn it into their schools’ Moo-la coordinator in bundles of 10. Ten labels means $1 for local schools.
Alvarado says their dairies, where Sarah Farms gets all their milk from, are in Hatch, New Mexico, and Deming, New Mexico. After the milk is collected at the dairies, the raw milk is transported to their El Paso facility, where it is pasteurized and bottled and is then delivered to stores fresh. The milk distributor prides itself on getting milk “from grass to glass” in 24 hours or less.
However, before they can fill any bottles, Sarah Farms employees create the bottles that carry their products. The bottles are made in-house from 20-percent recycled plastic in their facility’s blow-molding area. To make the bottles, they are able to take a basic block mold and some resin and turn it into the different recognizable sizes their customers see in the stores.
Sarah Farms produces and sells white milk, as well as juices, horchata, chocolate milk, heavy cream and half & half. All of Sarah Farms’ drinks are bottled in the same production facility on different days.
If you have yet to try this udder-ly delicious local milk, you’ll have a cow (in the best way) once you do! So next time you are moseying down that grocery store aisle, look for Sarah Farms items, all proudly Made In El Paso.
