PLAINFIELD, Iowa — What looks like an enclosed trailer sitting next to the farmhouse at White Gold Dairy, does not provide housing for workers or a family member. Instead, it is a shipping container intended to be the home of milk processing for Natalie Paino’s value-added business.
Paino is making her living through her home-delivery ice cream business, Hightail, and working on the farm of her parents, Terry and Kelly Eick. Recently, she signed a deal to provide her ice cream to a bookstore that is opening a coffee shop in nearby Cedar Falls.
The 24-year-old started Hightail while in college, using commercial ice cream mix to create and package ice cream in a kitchen at her grandmother’s assisted living facility. As a recipient of one of five Choose Iowa Dairy Innovation Grants awarded last spring for on-farm processing, she is in the first phase of moving the business back to the farm.
“It’s very scary — a big step,” Paino said. “It’s always been my dream to do this. Ice cream was a stepping stone … there was minimal risk.”
She chose the shipping container model for processing after attending a cheese course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also took an ice cream course at Pennsylvania State University. A 15-gallon pasteurizer, a lab, a drying rack, a refrigerator and storage are housed in the container, items for which she used her Iowa grant of nearly $19,500.
The program is a cost-share to help dairies with less than 50 employees and matches up to $100,000 per project.
Before being awarded the Iowa grant, Paino was the recipient of $50,000 from the Dairy Business Innovation Alliance, a partnership between the Center for Dairy Research at UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association.
It will not be the cows 100 yards away that will supply her plant. Instead, Paino will have a second shipping container in which she plans to store milk from two cows. It will have a 60-gallon bulk tank. That container is now on order and due to arrive this fall.
“I will have a totally separate facility (from the family),” she said. “It’s a way to navigate the state regulatory issues.”
In addition, the separate facility eliminates any issues with the farm’s current processor, Wapsie Valley Creamery Inc., and solves the problem of knowing how much milk she can process.
“There is no way I would be able to process milk from 53 cows,” she said. “I’d rather do our (unique) thing than create a giant creamery.”
With the family’s herd having bred for A2/A2 milk over recent years, Paino expects to use that additional marketing niche going forward. She also hopes to build on the market she currently enjoys with her ice cream, where she has a customer base of about 300,000 people. She is counting on the nostalgia of home delivery to continue growing the market.
Her first batch of curds was made in August and consumed at home. She hopes to ramp up cheesemaking next. Fluid milk processing will take more planning.
Paino said her steps toward completion have been slow, as she adjusts to being a new mom to her daughter, Stella, and spending time with her husband, Marquise. But, she is still enthusiastic and said she feels fortunate.
“A lot of dairy farmers would like to do this,” Paino said. “The dairy business is evolving.”
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