From Farm to Table

Written by: Elizabeth Uthoff

Farm fresh products are important to consumers today. We are proud to control all aspects of our dairy production, from farm to table. But what goes on in that chain? How does the corn in the fields create delicious ice cream you can enjoy in your home?

We grow many kinds of crops to create the food needed for our Holstein cows. Our cows need corn for energy, soybeans for protein, and orchard grass, sorghum-sudangrass, and alfalfa for other nutrient needs. The cultivation of these crops, as well as managing milking times, keeps Dan and Tyler busy on the farm. All the crops we grow on our farm are non-GMO, which allows us to control what goes into our products.

Our cows are milked twice a day, by Dan and Debbie. Right now, that takes a lot of time, around 5 hours daily. But in the future, with the addition of our robotic milking machine, it will take much less manual labor and time to milk our herd. Once our cows are milked, the milk needs to be transported to the creamery for production, a 3-mile drive. Once a week Dan brings about 1,500 gallons of raw milk to the creamery. The creamery doesn’t use all of this milk, we use what we need to produce our products. The rest of the milk is sent to Wapsie Valley, a larger milk company.

We produce our milk, cheese, and ice cream products each at least once a week. In the summer, we tend to make more ice cream to keep up with demand.  Each of these products takes time, our production team works hard to be efficient in creating our products. But handcrafted ice cream and hand-tossed cheese curd flavors require time.  

Bottling milk is the most efficient packaging process that we do since we have a bottling machine. Packaging cheese curds requires greater effort since every bag is hand packaged. Each bag is weighed, sealed, and counted by one of our team members. A process which tends to take around 3 hours. Ice cream processing takes the most amount of time since our machine creates only 6 gallons in one batch. And since all of the ice cream flavorings are measured and added by hand, the amount of time it takes to create one batch is around 10 minutes.

Once our delicious products are created, they get delivered all across eastern Iowa. We deliver our products twice a week to our partners and retailers. Our delivery truck stops in businesses in Cedar Rapids, Marion, Iowa City, and Shueyville. Once our products are stocked in retail stores, customers are able to purchase them and utilize them in their own kitchen creations.

And there you have it! The full process, from farm to table, of how our team creates quality dairy products from our farm and transports it to your table.