When I get up every Monday morning, the first thing I do is go on the porch and grab my milk and eggs from my Yoder Dairies box. This morning, there was another piece of paper in there, announcing the end of an era.
Dear Valued Customer
It is with heartfelt sorrow to inform you that this will be your last delivery with Yoder Dairies Home Delivery Service. We have held on to this business to serve your needs as long as we possibly could. The owners and staff at Yoder Dairies want to thank you for your long time dedication to this company and it deeply saddens us to have to bring this to a sudden end. We have been very fortunate to have a wonderful plant crew, office staff and delivery drivers. These drivers have delivered five nights a week in rain or snow, good or bad weather for you to have you milk waiting on your front portch on your designated day.
The letter goes on to say that they will pick up empty bottles next week, on our regular delivery day.
It’s not as if we didn’t know this day would come. After all, in September, Yoder began offering the unthinkable: milk in plastic, 1 gallon containers. A couple of months ago, we switched to the plastic. For some reason, the milk just wasn’t the same so just last Friday, we discussed switching back to the glass bottles and had on the agenda to call today to do so.
Over the years, we occasionally ran out of Yoder milk and had to buy it from the store. It just wasn’t the same. For one, there was no cream on the top of the milk.
I don’t know how I’m going to make eggnog with store-bought milk. (At least I have made one bactch this season with the good stuff.) My best to all of the people at Yoder Dairies.
I’m going to miss you.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Setting aside how this can be used to look at the current economic situation, it is always sad when a positive community tradition comes to an end. Hopefully the employees and owners of Yoder Dairies can quickly find employment with a company that provides a positive contribution to the community.
It’s better for the environment that you pick up your milk along with the rest of the groceries. Less global warming.
My Daddy (deceased) at one time made his living on door to door bread deliveries. He too was forced out of business due to increased competition that benefited from economies of scale.
I’m surprised Yoder held out this long.
This milk was locally produced by cows who did not receive bovine growth hormone. I always thought it was important to support food producers within the radius of 100 miles from our home even if we had to pay more. Read any of Michael Pollan’s work and you will become a believer in how we need to change our food production: http://www.michaelpollan.com/write.php
We will miss Yoder.
Does this mean the end of the dairy, or just the end of home delivery? They still have a store in Va. Beach, right?
JeffConn – at the time I wrote this, I was only aware of the end of home delivery. According to the story on PilotOnline, it appears the entire operation is shutting down.