Carlow dairy steps up to deliver milk to customers’ door

A multi-award winning dairy on the Laois/Carlow border gladly distributed its milk for free to households rather than see it wasted due to Covid-19.

St Patrick’s weekend should have been one of the busiest weekends of the year for The Village Dairy, which has provided organic and jersey milk to coffee shops, restaurants and hotels around Ireland.

That all ground to a halt due to Covid-19 and businesses closing up so Noel Barcoe, who set up the micro-dairy in 2015, said: “We didn’t want to dump the product so we said ‘let’s drop it into the houses and give it out and let people taste it… and see where it goes from there’.”

And so they dropped one- and two-litre containers of the milk to houses in Killeshin, Carlow town and Graiguecullen.

Noel has been heartened at the response, saying: “We also did it just to let people know there is milk available if you need some because everybody was panic buying in the shop and milk was running out.

“We said instead of dumping it, let’s give everybody a litre or two litres of milk

“We got great feedback, we couldn’t believe the goodwill and sharing of it on Facebook and

Instagram and Twitter.”

One man said on their Facebook page: “Lovely gesture, fair play guys, let’s hope that everyone remembers this and supports the local business in future, love the Jersey milk really creamy.”

One woman tweeted: “Thank you for your lovely gesture of milk to all around the community. Especially as a lot of elderly/disabled people live in our estate I know they will appreciate it. I hope the business doesn’t suffer too much.’

Noel posted on Facebook, “asking if people are interested in getting milk delivered to the door and if so to let us know”.

“Lo and behold we start tomorrow (Saturday) morning, and from

Stepping upina crisis:

Dairy farmer Noel Barcoe of The Village Dairy delivered free milk to people’s doorsteps on St Patrick’s weekend and now he has 70 customers what I can gather there are 70-odd customers signed up and all want milk delivered door to door.”

According to Noel, people have been wishing him all the best.

“It can get a little bit emotional sometimes and we did not do it and expect that to happen. The amount of goodwill that is out there from people is just phenomenal.”

‘We posted on Facebook if anyone wanted milk delivered to their door... we now have 70 customers’