Category Archives: Learning

Workshop

Make Great Milk: Milk Quality Workshop with Gary Anderson

Posted on by

Monday, April 25th
9:00am to 5:00pm
Governor’s Restaurant Capitol Room
Waterville, Maine
Fee: (includes all materials and a buffet lunch)
$50 for 2016 Guild Members
$75 for non-members (includes 2016 Guild membership)

The Maine Cheese Guild will sponsor a workshop focused on helping small dairies create the best possible milk for their own use, and/or for sale to the growing number of Maine cheese makers. Gary Anderson, Maine’s long-time dairy agent at Cooperative Extension, will cover these topics:

  • What do we mean when we say “milk quality”
  • Maine resources
  • Milk components and characteristics
  • Milk quality of different dairy animals and breeds
  • Quality variation dependent on the end use of milk (fluid, cheese, yogurt, etc.)
  • Animal health
  • Good decisions during the milking process
  • Comparison of milking systems, the challenges and benefits of each
  • Sanitation process and tools
  • The challenges of the organic dairy
  • Proper milk storage, affects on quality
  • Proper milk transport
  • On-farm testing options for dairies
  • Questions, individual troubleshooting

To sign up please send the full workshop fee with your name, phone number, and email address to:

Maine Cheese Guild
c/o Mary Belding, Treasurer
250 Walker Mills Rd.
Harrison, Maine 04040

The Maine Cheese Guild needs to finalize the lunch count ahead of the workshop so we must receive your payment at least 1 week ahead of time to guarantee access to the buffet lunch.

Workshop

Estate Planning & Generational Transfer Seminar

Posted on by

Thursday, February 4, 2016
9:00 AM – 3:30 PM
Augusta, Maine

This workshop will help farm and forest product families minimize business succession risk and make informed decisions about intergenerational transfer of farmland and farm businesses. The workshop will address details on transition planning, retirement and estate planning, legal approaches to protect assets from taxes, tools you can use to transfer farm assets, and determining your goals to address transfer planning and business transition.

Cost: $15 (includes handouts)

Location: Maine Forest Products Council Bldg (lower level), 535 Civic Center Drive, Augusta, Maine 04330

Click here for more information and to register.

New Sales Tax Takeaway

Posted on by

As many of you already know Maine has substantially changed its sales tax rules regarding food. It’s no longer as straight-forward as groceries (non-taxable) and prepared food (always taxable). The legislature, in its infinite wisdom, now regards some groceries as taxable. The new name for non-taxable food is “grocery staples.”

At our meeting on January 12th one of the members asked how this affects cheese makers because she had heard different things from different people. I promised to look into the question and try to digest the information available.

Attached are two PDFs. One contains the five pages that apply to groceries among the entire revised Sales Tax Reference Guide (linked in its entirety here).

The other document is the revised Instructional Bulletin Number 12 (linked here) for Retailers of Food Products.

There is also a shorter FAQ type document (“Supplemental Information“) based on questions already submitted to the State about the changes.

I recommend reading the Instructional Bulletin and the Supplemental Information because they are more detailed and easier to digest. Be aware that there is now a taxation distinction between “grocery staples” that are altered by the retailer themselves. For example a dairy that mixes chocolate syrup into a bottle of milk to make chocolate milk is considered the SAME as a coffee shop that squirts coffee syrup into a cup of milk they poured from a carton.

There is a PowerPoint presentation meant to summarize the changes in Taxable Food Products (linked here — be warned that it is HUGE and may take a while to download).

Finally, because there is STILL some ambiguity in the Instructional Bulletin, I called the Maine Revenue Service (MRS) Sales Tax Division (207-624-9693). I spoke to Laura Larrabee who then consulted with her boss, Ed Lowell, to clarify the items below.

FYI: Sale Tax (where applicable) on grocery items are 5.5%; sales tax on Prepared Foods is now 8%. This review is meant to cover “Grocery Staples” that would be sold by a cheese maker. If you also sell Prepared Foods there is another Instructional Bulletin (27) that covers Prepared Food.
Continue reading→