PORTLAND, Maine — The dairy farmer who bought cows from a Turner farm damaged by fire in 2013 has filed for bankruptcy about a year after moving those cows to 180 acres at the former Union Fair Farm.
Harris Hills Organic Dairy and its owner, Caleb Harris, on Thursday filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which would sell off business and personal assets to settle a portion of an estimated $352,091 in company debt and $676,716 in personal debt.
Harris planned to take over the dairy herd of Caldwell Family Farm in Turner in 2013 and, according to a report at that time, was on his way to Maine at the time of the fire.
Harris arranged to sell milk to the New Hampshire-based processor Stonyfield before the fire.
Iroquois Valley Farms, an Illinois-based food and farmland company, said in a news release in August that it reached an agreement with Harris and Stonyfield in early 2014 to move the herd to the Union farm as part of a “new project to directly source milk from the farmers.”
Iroquois Valley wrote in an email newsletter that it bought the 180-acre Union Fair Farm on April 2, 2014. Harris incorporated Harris Hills Organic Dairy in Maine in March of that year.
The farm was not a part of the cooperative Maine’s Own Organic Milk Co., which shut down in May 2014. David Bright, a founding member of MOO Milk who worked with the Maine Farm Bureau to find new contracts for those dairy farmers, said Harris’ farm did share a delivery route on the milk run from Maine to Stonyfield’s yogurt processing plant in Londonderry, New Hampshire, after MOO Milk’s shutdown.
Harris’ personal bankruptcy declaration states he will end the lease with Iroquois Valley and the milk contract with Stonyfield.
In the bankruptcy filings, the company reported $48,063 in net income at the end of 2014 and $9,953 in gross income for the period it operated in 2015.
The company lists $150,683 in debt to creditors, including other vendors and businesses and $523,233 in secured debt, the bulk of which is to Caldwell Inc. for the herd of 92 cows, 24 heifers, 17 yearlings and 28 calves. The company lists $392,178 in assets.
In his personal bankruptcy, Harris listed an estimated $352,091 in debt, $318,000 of which is in secured claims connected with bank loans and farm equipment. The personal filing includes debts from various other states, including Michigan, where Harris lived before coming to Maine. The personal filing lists $146,500 in assets.
Robert Girvan III, a Hampden attorney handling Harris’ bankruptcy, did not return a request for comment Friday.