From Field to Fridge at Muchgrange Farm in north Louth

This story appeared in the Louth Life magazine earlier this year

Opening a bottle of milk with the cream still on top is no longer a memory from the past for many in north Louth, thanks to Muchgrange Farm, a family run dairy farm in Cooley that began bottling and selling its own pastuerised, unhomogenised, dairy milk in 2021.

The endeavour, along with the farm's expansion more recently to produce its own handcrafted gelato, Muchgrange Gelato, was the brainchild of Michael John Hanlon, the son of Ciarán Hanlon who for many years has run the family dairy farm, to add value to the milk being produced on the farm.

Explaining the process with the milk, Michael says, “all we do is pastuerise it, we just heat it up to 72 degrees and cool it back down to five degrees, that's the only thing we do. It's just to kill the bacteria. The fat or nothing is being harmed.

“After two or three days the cream settles to the top. You don't get that in milk now due to homogenisation.”

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The bottles bring back fond memories for some. “They can't get over it”, Michael reveals. “because they remember it coming to their door and the crows picking at the cream off the top of the milk bottle.”

The milk is sold directly from the farm to returning customers from the area, as well as in shops like Barry's and McCrystal's in Cooley; Custom Coffee and Tony Kieran's in Dundalk and is supplied to coffee shops and restaurants in the region, and even as far as Dublin.

A big focus for the farm at the minute though is in gelato production, as well as the farm's 'On the Moove' Muchgrange Gelato Trailer.

Michael explains, “it goes to all the different shows, we're hoping to have it out every weekend in the summer, all the local shows in Louth, Meath, in Down.”

The trailer is seen as an ideal addition to weddings, communions, private parties and corporate events, with plenty of bookings already made for 2026, as well as this year.

Similar to them bringing the milk straight from the field to the fridge, Michael says that it is also “field to the freezer with our gelato. That's our main goal. Just bringing it straight to the consumer more so than sending it off.”

Michael adds, “with the world we're living in now, the reduced road miles on anything is good for the environment.”

For more information, see https://muchgrangefarm.ie/