Adding Value to the Dairy with Ice Cream
EPHRATA, Pa. — July was officially declared Ice-Cream Month and the third Sunday in July National Ice-Cream Day, according to a 1984 proclamation by then-President Ronald Reagan. The heat waves of July coincide perfectly with one of America’s favorite family pastimes — the pursuit of the best ice-cream cone. To celebrate ice-cream day, we looked at four dairy farms involved in the ice-cream or gelato business, and some of the challenges and operations on each farm.
Kilby Cream
In Maryland’s Cecil County, the Kilby family runs a retail ice-cream operation, called Kilby Cream, that started in 2005. Just a small fraction of the milk produced by their 500 cows goes into their ice-cream operation, but the extra income has helped pay bills.
The Kilbys have been dairying for generations, and of the 50,000 pounds of milk they get every four milkings, most is sold to the Maryland-Virginia Milk Producers Cooperative. But about eight years ago, when milk prices were very low, it was a family decision to get into direct marketing by opening an ice-cream store — to add value to their milk, said Lisa Kilby, and “to take control of our product.” Located near major highway 95, they felt an on-farm store could easily draw customers.
Several members of the family are involved in the on-farm ice-cream business. Besides her husband, Brian, Lisa’s mother-in-law, Phyllis, takes care of marketing and bookkeeping; and sister-in-law, Megan, handles the retail employees and the website. Lisa is in charge of the ice-cream manufacturing and processing at the farm.
Kilby Cream store is located at their second, smaller 188-acre property two miles down the road from the main farm, “because it is quieter,” said Lisa. “On a busy Sunday, we can get 400 customers,” she added.
Making ice-cream at the store itself soon became too cramped and too inconveniently located for their more recent venture into milk-bottling. So about two years ago, they upgraded and built a larger production facility at their main 280-acre farm closer to where the cows are milked.
This past April, the Kilbys switched from a 15-gallon to a 200-gallon pasteurizing capacity and began bottling their own milk for direct sale. While the ice-cream is made from mostly Holstein milk, the bottled milk comes from their smaller herd of Jerseys.
With the new facility, Lisa is also busy working on new products like butter, and especially cultured foods like drinkable yogurts, buttermilk and cheeses. “If you could do something with dairy, we want to do it,” she said.
With their huge volume of milk production, the Kilbys have a lot of room for potential expansion. Last year Megan attended a conference in Rhode Island on home dairy delivery. This fall, the Kilbys will begin home deliveries of their bottled milk, ice-cream and other dairy products. Utilizing the two trucks they already own, the Kilbys are planning a delivery route through Philadelphia and Baltimore, both located 45 minutes away. They’ll charge retail milk price plus a delivery fee.
Hopkins Farm Creamery
Four generations of the Hopkins family have farmed at Green Acres Farm in Delaware’s Sussex County, not far from the popular beach town of Lewes, Del. The farm is also the site of Hopkins Farm Creamery, the family’s ice-cream store which opened in 2007.
Affable 31-year-old Walter “Burli” Hopkins, Jr., his father and 91-year-old grandfather work together closely on the farm’s operation, which milks 550 cows three times a day for sales of hormone-free milk to Land O’Lakes, and includes nearly 1,000 acres (some of it rented). Although young Burli started the ice-cream operation, it was his dad’s idea to open the on-farm creamery a few years ago when they were going over their budget and discussing the farm’s 5- and 10-year plans.
The family was facing intense development pressure because of the high-demand real estate and encroaching development in their area. They discussed the option of selling everything and moving out West, possibly to Wisconsin, to start a new dairy, or the possibility of downsizing and doing something in agritourism to try to work with the large volume of nearby tourists.
They decided to stay, and Burli spent the next five years doing research and making a business plan for an ice-cream parlor. Now in their third year of retailing ice cream, Burli said he never imagined the ice-cream parlor would “get so big so fast,” but it did. Situated along Route 9, a main road to the shore destination only 20 minutes away, the ice-cream parlor has a ready and willing stream of customers, the vast majority being tourists. Originally, Burli budgeted for two fulltime employees and bought two registers. Within a short time, three more registers were purchased, so that each of five walk-up customer windows was active, and now the creamery is up to 18 employees.
“I don’t sleep much,” said Burli, about closing up the parlor after it closes at 11 p.m. each night. Since serving ice-cream generally attracts a teenaged work force, Burli said coordinating their work schedules with staff’s busy activities “is a logistical nightmare.” His fiancee manages the creamery staff and scheduling, and he works on the dairy farm during the day.
Besides 26 flavors of ice-cream cones, the creamery sells milkshakes, banana splits, sundaes, Italian ices, and root beer floats throughout the season, which runs from April to mid-December. Rather than building a new store, to keep the business economical, Burli refinished an old milkhouse, putting in walk-in windows rather than a walk-in store. Having a facility that would have allowed the public inside would have created a whole new level of permitting, zoning and building that the family wasn’t interested in, he said.
A big concern at the farm was the potential odor and flies emanating from such a large dairy herd just 40 feet from the ice-cream parlor. “I do everything I can to prevent these problems from developing,” said Burli. “It’s mostly a manure management issue.”
On the creamery website, Burli’s concern about creating a positive customer experience comes through in an online letter he writes to customers: “Sometimes the air smells just enough The cheap mlb jerseys created by this brand are very popular.to give visitors a pleasant sense of authentic cow farming environment. Other times, depending on wind direction, it may seem like too much for some. We do our utmost to keep it to a minimum.”
“While we appreciate that farm odors may not always be the choice for a place to eat an ice-cream treat or dessert, we urge you nonetheless to try us. Almost everyone who comes here once, returns.”
But getting close-up to the cows is all part of the visitors’ positive experience too. “You have to have good fences for cows,” Burli laughed, “but you need really good fences for people.” If customers are at the farm during the evening, he said they’ll watch him herd the springing heifers across the road between the pasture and the barn. Customers have told him they were delighted to watch a calf being born, or to see a newborn calf with the herd.
The Gelato Niche
At Wholesome Dairy Farms in Berks County, Pa., the grass and spring water flowing through the farm helps produce the 500 gallons of milk each week purchased by Capogiro Gelato Artisans to make “gelato,” a creamy Italian ice-cream novelty.
Two years ago, veterinarian Mark Lopez, and his wife, Elizabeth, also a veterinarian, seized an opportunity to move back from Texas to Lopez’s uncle’s property to start Wholesome Dairy Farms with 40 Ayrshire cows, along with a ton of hard work, and the idea of direct-marketing raw milk to local consumers. The milk that goes to Capogiro, a Philadelphia gelato company, is just a small percentage of the milk sold at the farm.
Last fall, with his on-farm store already selling bottled milk under Pennsylvania’s raw milk permit system, Lopez was approached by Stephanie and John Reitano, owners of Capogiro. They had heard about his farm through the Fair Food Foundation in Philadelphia, and when they visited were pleased by Lopez’s grassfed herd and the quality of his milk.
Since then, to supply their four Philadelphia gelato retail stores and wholesale customers with enough product, Capogiro drives two bulk tanks with chillers loaded onto a box van to the farm once a week to get the milk. They’d like to buy more, Lopez said, but at present time are limited by the capacity of the two tanks which fit on their truck.
With gelato flavors like Fall’s Black Walnut, Mascarpone and Fig, Nocciola, and Lemon Opal Basil Sorbetto, the owners of Capogiro make sure that their gelato utilizes in-season produce grown by local farmers, making small batches each day in true artisan fashion.
Lopez is continually looking to grow his direct-market business. What milk he doesn’t sell The hottest selling saints jerseys changes frequently over time. When one player has a great month or a great year, he’s likely to vaufor gelato or direct-marketing goes to Land O’Lakes, and he’d like to increase the direct-sale percentage. Initially he had imagined that if he provided a top-notch quality milk, it would sell itself.
“I didn’t realize I would have to do this much marketing,” he said.
But last year, as Lopez struggled with low milk prices, he decided to “double-down” and work harder at direct-marketing as well as get more diversity into the farm’s products. And it has paid off.
This year has been a boost. Lopez has developed new relationships with a growing number of stores, markets and customers who are now buying Wholesome Dairy Farm milk. He already sells some meats, eggs and vegetables at the on-farm store, but Lopez’s next diversifying project, which he plans to begin this fall, is making cheeses from his Ayrshire herd.
Lapp Valley Farm
A veteran ice-cream making family, Benuel and Lena Lapp started hand-cranking homemade ice-cream around 1975 as a ministry. In the beginning, their small ice-cream operation was located on the top floor of a barn at their 60-acre farm in New Holland, Pa. As the years passed, and the facilities improved, their reputation for making delicious ice cream grew.
In 1996 the Lapps switched from Holsteins to Jersey cows to get a higher protein and fat content. In 2002, they built a new barn-sized ice-cream store on their farm with an expanded processing plant and a drive-up customer window. One of their sons, 36-year-old Dave Lapp, now manages the ice-cream manufacturing and retail store.
The farm’s spotless facilities and well-kept lawns are open for visitors to wander year-round to view the 75 or so Jerseys that provide all the milk used in the dairy store. Besides hand-dipped cones and tubs of ice-cream, on-farm sales include pasteurized bottled milk and butter from the Lapp farm, as well as eggs and cheese from another local farm. Most of their bottled milk sales are via the drive-up window, said Dave. They also have four popular ice-cream stands at two local market venues.
Retail sales are good, and steadily growing each year, but the Lapps want to stay a small family business. “We’ve put a lot of emphasis on keeping a high-quality product,” said Dave, “with our own cows and our own farm. In today’s world you need to look for a niche market.” The Lapps turn down many requests to sell wholesale and to ship their products, said Dave, preferring to direct-market and remain within the capacity of the farm’s production.
Their 700-pound-capacity butter churn was custom-made by a local man two years ago, but much of their processing equipment comes from Agri-Service in Hagerstown, Md.
Because they insist on keeping a fresh product rather than storing ice-cream for long periods, one of Dave’s weekly challenges is balancing processing of the 350-400 gallons of milk produced daily so as not to run out of any particular item. The Lapps process on Mondays,cheap nfl jerseys can not only make you look more beautiful but Save your money. Wednesdays and Fridays with the milk coming straight into cooling tanks in the facility from the barn. “Keeping up with demand doesn’t happen without effort,” said Dave.
Learning the Business
Penn State’s ice-cream course came with high recommendations from the Lapp family and the Kilbys. “It’s definitely worth taking the Penn State course,” said Lisa Kilby. “Making ice-cream is a lot of chemistry.”
According to Lisa, “When we started making our recipe, I thought I could just take my grandmother’s ice-cream recipe and multiply it by 10.” However, she said that didn’t work because the result had too much cream and not enough solids. The emulsifiers are so important, said Kilby. Dave Lapp agreed: “Ice-cream is complex. The course gives you more of an understanding of the different components.”
Burli Hopkins attended Carpigiani’s ice-cream manufacturer course, which includes learning the use of their equipment.
Other farmers frequently ask Hopkin’s advice. He suggests keeping start-up costs as low as possible, and making sure to get the necessary paperwork together for the inspectors and officials who must sign off on it. Ironically, some of the same investors who turned Burli away initially with his ice-cream parlor business, are now coming back and calling him, he said.
Dave Lapp gets inquiries from other dairy farmers as well. He stressed that it can be a struggle to get a creamery started, There are plenty of R4 ds games available on the internet that could be downloaded and installed directly on to these cards.and that it takes a significant investment of time and money.
Several creameries said the ice-cream business helps pay the bills, but it isn’t easy. Several farmers expressed hopes for added income in the future as a result of their ice-cream ventures.
Marketing, Freshness
All the on-farm creameries agree that homemade freshness and good taste are their best marketing tools. For other marketing, Hopkins Family Creamery chose to advertise only with coupons and a website. Coupons provide instant advertising feedback when they are turned in at the ice-cream parlor, said Burli Hopkins.
Lapp Valley Farm is in a rural area, off the beaten path, but Dave Lapp said, “People like the idea of coming out to the farm,” and the steady flow of drive-up window traffic attests to that. Lapps also make their own fancy waffle cones inside the store daily, and the pleasing aroma is irresistible.
Being able to use fresh ingredients for flavorings, such as incorporating real strawberries and blueberries in season, is another way several of the creameries create a demand for their homemade ice-cream. The Kilbys give fun names to their ice-cream flavors, like Tractor Tracks, Cow Dough, Holstein Cream and Cowconut.
Each creamery mentioned the need to make visitors feel welcome by adding agritourism in varying degrees to provide what Lisa Kilby calls “a family destination.”
Most of these creameries allow customers to observe the cows, and even the milking parlor, up close, which requires keeping the facilities very clean and inviting. At Hopkins Farm Creamery, a lifesize wooden tractor and haywagon makes a unique kids’ jungle gym.
At Kilby Cream, a playground, animal area, ladybug garden and newly converted milkhouse/ceramic studio give kids activities. Kilby Cream also hosts special activities throughout the year, each connected to an ice-cream product, such as a fall corn maze, an Easter egg hunt, a Sundaes with Santa (in December), and ice-cream pies at Thanksgiving.
Comments(0) | Tagged nfl football jerseys 
