OLD ORCHARD BEACH, Me. -- THE first time the Food and Drug Administration sent an inspector to check out the dairy operation at Kate’s Homemade Butter, things did not go well.
“The guy wouldn’t even get out of his car,” said Daniel Patry, the company’s good-humored founder. “He refused to believe it was a real operation.”
Mr. Patry, who had worked in commercial dairies for decades, started making butter here in 1981, in his garage. He had no cows and little capital, but a lofty goal: to reproduce the fresh-tasting butter, made from high-quality cream, that he remembered from growing up on a dairy farm in nearby Minot, Me.
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