Keeping milk on the menu

Trinity Catholic School partners with WW Homestead Dairy

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PROTIVIN, Iowa — Overlapping Chickasaw and Howard counties sits a private school in a small community that faced issues getting milk to students.

The school’s cook, Bonnie Malven, said Trinity Catholic School, with just 53 students, in Protivin, with just 300 residents, seemed unworthy of a milk delivery route. Malven has been the staff cook for 12 years.

“After COVID, we started having issues getting cartons,” Malven said. “We’re such a small school, no one wanted to deliver here. So we had to find ways around it.”

Along with her duties at the school, Malven and her husband milked 40 Holstein cows near Protivin for 30 years until July 2024. Going without milk at school was unthinkable she said.

“Dairy is so important for kids, especially at this age,” Malven said. “The calcium for their bones, the vitamins for their growing bodies, it’s all very important to their development.”

Trinity Catholic School had been working with a local convenience store nearby to bring in cartons. Malven placed the school’s order in conjunction with the store’s order and then brought the product to school.

“Delivery to the convenience store worked for a while, but after COVID, we were consistently getting shorted,” Malven said. “We’d have weeks where we wouldn’t get our white milk order, or weeks we wouldn’t get chocolate, or weeks we wouldn’t get anything.”

To supplement the weeks that Malven was not receiving her order, she purchased gallons of milk to ensure that the kids were getting those nutrients. She then noticed a social media post from a cook from a neighboring school in Waukon who had a similar issue and moved to milk in bulk.

“At first, I didn’t even know where to start,” Malven said. “I called my colleague at St. Patrick (Catholic) School in Waukon and she talked to me about WW Homestead Dairy.”

WW Homestead Dairy was created in 2011. Two northeast Iowa families originated the local food market with products made from milk produced on the farms owned by Tom and Paul Weighner and Tom Walleser. WW Homestead Dairy was the main milk supplier for St. Patrick Catholic School, so Malven made a call.

“I told them right away that we’re a small school, but that wasn’t a problem to them at all,” Malven said. “I asked if they could deliver to the school, and as it turned out, we were right along their delivery route already. I was so excited I was finally going to get bulk milk.”

Fortune was with them because WW Homestead Dairy had a milk dispenser returned that was immediately available for Trinity Catholic School.

WW Homestead Dairy brought the machine to the school and set it up. They showed Malven how to place the milk, clean the machine and got her up to speed in running the machine.

“When we first went with the dispenser in the spring of 2023, we had some doubters with the switch from cartons,” Malven said. “We shared a principal with St. Patrick’s in Waukon and she was all for the switch, and after using it the first few weeks, everyone came around.”

Malven said she is thankful for WW Homestead Dairy assisted her in getting milk back into her lunchroom on a consistent basis.

“It means so much to me that they’ve helped us out like they have,” Malven said.

With the dispenser, Malven has seen more milk consumption and less waste.

“There’s so much less trash now,” Malven said. “We used to have a bag of garbage every day, but now we can go a couple of days without it filling up. It wasn’t a driving force behind bringing in the dispenser, but it’s certainly been an added benefit.”

Along with cutting down on paper waste, milk waste is also down.

“We’d get shipments of cartons and run into spoiled milk,” Malven said. “Or we’d have one child say they thought their milk tasted funny, and of course that set off a chain reaction in the cafeteria. Now the product is more consistent, better tasting and colder.”

Before the lunch bell rings each day, Malven empties the dispenser into pitchers to use first when the kids arrive. She replaces the empty bulk milk bags with fresh bags in preparation for the lunchtime rush.

“With a school our size, it’s important that we have everything ready to go when the students get here,” Malven said. “We don’t have time to replace a bag in the middle of lunch, and I always want to make sure that our kids have the chance to have milk with their lunch. It’s so important for them, and with my background in dairy, it means a lot to me to see how happy they are when they are enjoying their lunch with a nice glass of milk on the side.”

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