A WORKING farm visitor attraction is installing a state-of-the-art vending machine to provide fresh Jersey milk to visitors.

The new Milk Bot - said to be the first of its kind in the Ulverston area - will dispense milk at the entrance to Old Hall Farm, Bouth, from September 20.

The equipment, installed by Charlotte and Alex Sharphouse and Charlotte’s son Joe White, will supply visitors with freshly chilled pasteurised and unpasteurised (raw) milk between 8am and 8pm every day.

Milk Bot complements the farm's handmade Jersey ice cream and is part of a strategy to "move with the times".

Old Hall Farm is farmed using shire horses and vintage tractors and the new Jersey milk offering is a way of allowing modern technology to blend with traditional Victorian farming methods.

The Jersey cows are milked using a 1940s milk cluster with a vintage vacuum airline in the parlour.

The milk will then be transferred into the new Milk Bot machine ready for dispensing to customers.

Charlotte Sharphouse said: “As we already make our own ice cream on the farm, we are able to pasteurise our milk on site, making us one of the first to offer both raw and unpasteurised milk.

“My son Joe milks the cows in the morning before going to his day job as an animal feed consultant and working on his Masters Degree in Animal Science. He then comes home to check on me and his cows.”

Milk serves as one of the best sources for calcium consumption and the new Milk Bot will offer completely natural, extra creamy ‘Gold Top’ Jersey milk, with no preservatives or additives.

One of the benefits of raw, unpasteurised milk is that it contains beneficial bacteria and nutrients both for gut health and for fighting infection, which otherwise get destroyed when the milk undergoes the pasteurisation process.