Cow cuddles and farm-churned ice cream are helping Midwest dairies thrive despite low milk prices

From Harvest Public Media:

Quinci Schmidt is co-owner of a dairy farm in the town of Corcoran, Minnesota, which her grandfather bought in 1958.

“He hopped in his pickup one day and bought the farm with 20 cows and a horse,” Schmidt said. “We kind of have grown our farm from there.”

When Schmidt was growing up, the family had about 50 cows. The herd expanded as she and her siblings eventually took over the business. They now milk 120 cows.

Schmidt said one doesn’t go into dairy to make money – it’s the lifestyle that one loves. But she and her family still needed to pay the bills, and in recent years, that was getting harder.

“Dairy isn’t always a consistent form of income,” Schmidt said. “The prices are pretty low. They’ve been very low for a while. And it’s not always the same check you see coming in every month. It’s not a consistent check.”

Last year, while reading a dairy newspaper, the family came across a business idea from a New York State farmer. What if they turned their calf nursery into a cow cuddling business?

“I thought the idea was a great way for people to meet the cows and meet us,” Schmidt said.

Thus, Curious Cows and Company was born. For $25, anyone can spend thirty minutes with their calves, brushing their coats and feeding them hay.

Schmidt’s brother, Caleb Scherber, said the calves’ slow-beating hearts are soothing.

“When people get up close to them, it’ll kind of sync your heartbeat, cause it’s so slow,” he said.

It’s a business of joy that was born during a time of duress.

Price pressures

Dairy producers usually want to sell their milk at around $20 per hundred pounds to turn a profit.

But in 2025, dairy prices generally fluctuated between $16 and $18 per hundredweight. “We’ve got record production, as we almost do every year,” said Lucas Sjostrom, executive director of the Minnesota Milk Producers Association.

There’s currently record production of specific dairy components: “the fat and protein – what makes our cheese, what makes our butter, what makes our yogurt,” Sjostrom said.

Christopher Wolf, an agricultural economist at Cornell University, said people tend to consume many of these dairy products when they eat out. But inflation is making Americans eat out less.

“Inflation is still being kind of stubborn, and everything that’s happening right now doesn’t look like it’s going to do much for curbing inflation,” Wolf said.

As a result, dairy supply exceeds demand, which pushes down prices.

“No dairy farm is going to say that hasn’t affected them,” said Lynn Bolin, an Iowa dairy farmer. “Because anytime that you have a fluctuation like that in your income, you have no control over [it].”

Price instability is one reason she and her husband built a guestroom in 2020 at a barn on their farm, New Day Dairy. As a vacation rental, it helps the pair generate extra revenue. Bolin also thought it could help people connect with farm life.

“I did not grow up on the farm, so everything I’ve learned has been since I’ve met my husband and we moved to the farm,” Bolin said. “And I thought, ‘I know there are other people who want to experience what this is like.’”

The guest barn is a small part of the farm’s bottom line, which also includes milk and cheese from 120 dairy cows. But it makes a difference.

Other farms have similarly diversified their bottom line through farm tours, milk products and more to stay competitive in a low-price market. And many share the same passion of helping people understand and appreciate agriculture.

Farm ambassadors

In 1983, Country Dairy built a bottling plant at its farm in New Era, Michigan. It was the farm’s first step toward becoming as independent of the milk market as possible.

Two ice cream cones clink one another inside Country Dairy in New Era, MI. Courtesy of Country Dairy

“The idea was to cut out the middle man and direct market to the stores, to the consumer and be able to keep more profit for the farm,” said Jeff Swanson, the Country Dairy tour manager.

In 2004, the farm opened its first retail store. The stout building has dairy products lining its walls, above checkered floors. It has a cafe that serves hamburgers made from beef from the farm’s cows.

From there, they began giving farm tours and have since become a regular tourist attraction.

“We’ve worked really hard in the last 20 years to be able to brand ourselves,” Swanson said. “So I think more and more people recognize that, and a lot of people have come from outside our area to do the tours, because we’re in a vacation area, close to Lake Michigan.”

Taking advantage of nearby urban areas is a tactic used by Sassy Cow in Columbus, Wisconsin. The farm’s creamery and store are inside a large, bright red building that sits twenty minutes north of Madison.

As a farmstead dairy, it runs its own processing plant that churns ice cream as well as milk.

“Ice cream was important for us to attract enough customers out to our location,” said James Baerwolf, family owner of Sassy Cow. “Of course, ice cream is fairly seasonal, as you could imagine. Three-quarters of our ice cream gets sold in the summer.”

Dairy farmers have basically two choices, Baerwolf said. They can either sell raw milk on the market as many do, or bottle their own products. Each comes with its own risks and rewards.

Customers order food at the cafe inside of the retail store at Country Dairy in New Era, MI. Courtesy of Country Dairy

Baerwolf’s family came up with the name Sassy Cow to show they chose to sell their own products.

“All cows are one herd,” Baerwolf said. “But amongst them, they have their individual personalities, and some are a little bossier, and some are a little more timid, and some are a little more outgoing.”

Sassy Cow’s future lies in retaining the customers they already have and slowly expanding to more, he said. It’s the same strategy Country Dairy is going for.

This summer, they are opening new classes in a program they call “Moo University.” They hope the classes will not only attract more customers, but also give people an idea about what it takes to run a dairy farm.

“It’s exposing people to what it takes to get food from the land, process that food, put it into containers and take it out to the store,” Swanson said.

This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.