Honey & Cheese Helped Family Farm Thrive

Honey & Cheese Helped Family Farm Thrive DAIRY EQUIPMENT & IDEAS Dairy farming is popular in the rolling rural areas of southeast Minnesota but land is at a premium and competition is everywhere The Metz family of Rushford has stretched their farm enterprise in new directions by bringing their children into the operation purchasing a honey processing business and starting their own creamery

    “Some of our milk goes right from our cows through a pipeline to our on-farm creamery where it’s made into cheese that’s sold direct to our customers ” says Jeff Metz “It doesn’t get any fresher than that because the milk never leaves the farm ”

    Mariann Metz who does bookkeeping for the operation says her husband Jeff had the idea for making cheese on their farm for several years “As our 4 kids got older and became more interested in farming we had to find something to expand the operation because they all liked it out here ” Metz says “We went through nearly 7 years of planning Eventually we put up a building next to the barn for the creamery and Jeff spent parts of 3 years attending cheese-making school in Madison and River Falls Wis ”

    The whole idea came to fruition in 2014 when Metz’s Hart-Land Creamery produced its first cheese They started with cheese curds expanded to a variety of Farmstead Cheddar blocks and hope to expand to other types of cheeses and possibly ice cream in the future They expect to use about a quarter of the milk production from their mixed breed herd of 220 cattle the first year for further processing They’ll expand that amount as other products are added

    The Metz children are an integral part of the whole operation Their son Nathan and son-in-law Nick milk in the morning and oversee herd care The Metz’s oldest daughter Alicia is in charge of the livestock record-keeping and herd reproduction

    Mariann Metz says their Metz’s Hart-Land Creamery products are amazingly fresh “We can have cheese products for our customers about 12 hrs after the milk has come from the cows ”

    The honey processing operation which they purchased in 2013 has given them a foot in the door of local stores bakeries and restaurants Mariann Metz says those contacts proved beneficial when they began producing their family brand of cheese curds a year later

    Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Metz’s Hart-Land Creamery 25909 County Road 13 Rushford Minn 55971 ph 507 864-2627; metzcreamery@goacentek net; www metzhartland com

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