A Blackwell Dairy Farm Truck. (Photo via Blackwell Dairy Farm)

A Kamloops dairy farm is working around the clock to fill in the gap in the supply of milk in the Southern Interior because of flooding in the Lower Mainland.

Ted Blackwell, the owner of Blackwell Dairy Farm, says they are now processing a week’s worth of milk every day. That includes on days where staff at the farm in Barnhartvale farm are not scheduled to be processing milk.

“On a normal basis, we’ll be putting through our plant 20,000 to 25,000 litres a week. That takes care of our own milk as well as any transfers in that we need to supplement our own products,” he said. “We’ll do that much today and we’re going to do the same tomorrow to try to keep up.”

Blackwell says the farm has been going at that capacity since last week as his operation is not as affected by the floods in the Lower Mainland. That is because unlike many other dairy farms in the Interior, Blackwell Dairy has its own processing plant, which was built in the 1980’s.

“That is what happens with centralization, they’re unable to process it themselves,” he added.

“We believe strongly in local production and we do that ourselves. As well as we bring in milk from other local dairy farms and process the milk, package it, and put it on the store shelves.”

Whether you’re able to find milk on the store shelves though is another challenge altogether.

“They take it out of the cases to put it on the shelves and people are there to gobble it up before it even gets to the shelves, so it doesn’t even sit there,” Blackwell said. “You see all the empty shelves in the stores, that is why. There is a large demand in our area.”

“We have a good customer base throughout the Interior including retail outlets. We have to look after them first but we are doing everything we can.”

Blackwell also adds he also feels for farmers in the Fraser Valley where thousands of animals have died because of flooding.

“We are going through a tough time in the industry,” he said. “Farmers in the province are being told they have to dump their milk because there is nowhere to send it. Many of them are sending it [to us] and we are taking as much as we can.”