Mount Desert Island Dairies

Mount Desert Island Dairies was a Corporation set up by a group of Bar Harbor Farmers. Notably; Percy Kief, Henry C.Sweet, Frank Andrews, Herbert L.Salisbury, Fredrick Sawyer Jr, Fred W.Sawyer, John H.Kief, W.H. DeLaittre, George P.Fogg and Clarance A.Alley. See the “incorporation papers” below. It was a co-operative owned and run by small dairy owners. The days of the small farms had come to an end, the customers wanted milk that was pasteurized because it was safer to drink at the time than raw milk. TB, Undulant Fever were a threat to consumers. And the pasteurized milk kept longer before it soured. MDID was formed in 1932, the plant was on the South end of Main Street across from the ball field. The stockholders/farmers supplied the raw milk, it was processed, bottled and delivered in their flashy bottles with an Indian in full headdress in the slug-plate to customers all over MDI. After a few years the farmers in the co-op began to tire of the bickering and disagreements amongst the members and sold to Grants Dairy. I wish I could tell you more about the reasons for such a prominent dairy's downfall, I know one of the people involved told me that the price paid to farmers was based on butterfat content in the milk. That made farmers like Shirley Sweet happy since he had cows with high butterfat. Others, ones with Holsteins perhaps (they apparently gave a lot of milk but less butterfat) would have been unhappy with that pricing. Other farmers that sold milk to MDID outside of the membership of the corporation were E.E. Bradley and H.B. Gilbert of Salisbury Cove and Dan McKenzie of Hulls Cove. Shirley Sweet did a route for MDID which included Tremont, Hoyt Sweet did Northeast Harbor, Somesville and Southwest Harbor. Jerome Sweet worked at MDID after the war, he said to me that the owners were sick of the dairy business at that point. See the terribly high bacteria count MDID got in the section under “Dairy Advertising” - look for “bacteria count”.