A new era for Swain’s Legacy Farm
The words “I’m starting a dairy farm” are rare for current times, but Joe and Laura Garcia are doing just that.
In Sanborton, NH, the 24-year-old couple has revitalized the family dairy farm into Swain’s Legacy Farm. Between bottling their own milk, opening a farm store and raising additional commodities, the family has committed to providing Granite State consumers with local food and preserving the state’s farmland.
The farm paints a picture of a quintessential New England dairy farm. Built in 1954, an old tie-stall barn is perched at the top of a hill just outside of the lakes region. The farm sits on 55 acres of rolling hills, with pastures separated out by the farm’s sugarbushes. The land has served as a farm for eight generations, with four of the generations being run by the Swain family (Laura’s family).
The farm is currently owned by Laura’s grandmother, and up until 2014, milked Holstein cows with milk shipped to HP Hood.
After the cows were sold in 2014, the barn sat empty – until Joe and Laura came along.
The two met as teenagers through 4-H and FFA and began dating in 2020. They were married in 2022 and decided to return home to the farm in 2024. By May 2025, they opened the farm store, all while raising two children under age 2. The couple have now entered a long-term lease on the farm, and the rest of the Swain family is happy to see it coming back to its original light and becoming a home to dairy cows again.
In November 2025, Joe and Laura had the opportunity to purchase small herd of A2A2 Jersey cows, which established their milking herd. Joe worked to convert the tie-stall barn into a free-stall barn. A partial row of stalls was converted into a feed bunk area, and the remainders of the rows, and the previous alleyway, leave ample space for the Jerseys to move around and relax in between milkings.
Prior to Joe and Laura running the farm, a four-stall step-up parlor was put into the barn in 2006. Joe can now laugh about it, but when they began milking cows, milking the herd took almost triple the amount of time it should have to train the cows to their new parlor set up.
“Some of the cows only liked certain stalls, and some only wanted to step into the parlor with their buddy,” he said.
The cows average 35 lbs. of milk a day, which fits the needs of their current milk market. During milking, the milk can either be routed to a bulk tank or directly into the vat pasteurizer to begin the bottling process. The farm is able to bottle almost 30 gallons of milk daily. The milk plant is right below the milk room, and in the span of 5.5 hours, the milk has traveled from the cow and into bottles ready for sale.
At the farm they can bottle half and whole gallons of whole milk, and half gallons of maple milk (with maple syrup produced on the farm).
The milk from Swain’s Legacy Farm is unique for multiple reasons. It is pasteurized, but the couple decided to opt out of homogenizing the milk. Homogenization removes the butterfat from the milk, then adds it back in incrementally to create whole, 2%, 1% or skim milk. What they are left with is milk with a cream top layer, which is not found in grocery stores. Jerseys are additionally known for producing milk with high concentrations of butterfat, and the Garcias showcase this in their “cream-line” milk.
All the cows on the farm are certified A2A2. Beta-casein is one of the primary milk proteins, formed with the A1 and A2 genes. Research and consumer feedback have shown that milk produced with only the A2 genes lead to fewer issues for people who typically have difficulty digesting dairy products. This has led to the popularization of A2 milk.
Genomic testing is used to deduce if cows have the A1A1, A1A2 or A2A2 gene combination, so then farmers can use selective breeding to create a herd that is exclusively A2A2. Jerseys, Guernseys and Brown Swiss are found to more often carry the A2A2 gene combination compared to Holsteins, Milking Shorthorns and Ayrshires.
Finding A2 milk in the grocery store is possible, but most milk plants do not seek out exclusively A2A2 milk. Joe and Laura were able to take advantage of this niche market with their herd to provide another option for New Hampshire consumers.
Swain’s Legacy Farm milk can be found in numerous farm stands and stores across central New Hampshire and the Bow Blue Seal store, in addition to their farm store and self-serve refrigerator outside of their milk room. Customers have said their cream-line milk is reminiscent of the times milk was delivered directly to houses.
Inside the farm store customers find a variety of products made on and off the farm, but all from New Hampshire, with the majority coming from the lakes region. All the milk, beef and maple products are produced and raised on the farm.
Outside of food products, the farm also produces all its own hay, with plenty of extra to sell to support neighboring farms. In 2025, the family put up 6,500 square bales and 680 round bales on 230 acres of land owned and leased by the farm.
The family has big goals for their farm and is excited to raise a new generation on the land the Swain family has called home for so long. The Garcias welcome everyone to visit the farm, check out the farm store and even enjoy a horse-drawn sleigh ride around the property.
Anyone interested in supporting the farm and learning more about where they can purchase A2A2 cream-line milk can follow Swain’s Legacy Farm on Facebook to see their complete list of retail stores – or in the words of Joe, “drink milk and drink local milk.”
by Hannah Majewski
