The Creamery
Our family farm was being jeopardized with the milk prices coming and going, so we brought on the extension of the family farm, a Creamery. We put on the Creamery in 2010 and started processing and making our own dairy products fresh from our family farm to your family table.
Here at our Creamery we take special pride in our cheese curds which are a favorite to so many people. We have ten different flavors of cheese curds. We also make a special Farmstead cheese that has the same bold taste as our cheese curds but a creamy texture.
At Stoltzfus Family Dairy where our Creamery is located, besides making cheese curd each week and our Farmstead cheese, we also bottle our milk and chocolate milk, make and bottle our award winning lattes as well as our smoothies, and make and cup our ten different flavors of yogurt. Our fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt is made with our own fresh homemade fruit filling.
Here is a peak at what a typical week of production would be like at Stoltzfus Family Dairy: Monday we bottle milk and make cheese curd. Tuesday we cook our fresh fruit to use for our yogurt and make cheese curd. Wednesday we make chocolate milk and cheese curd. Thursday we cup our yogurt. Friday is open for making more of whatever product was an extra big hit that week, bottling smoothies, or whatever else needs done. We only make what’s ordered, so as you see, this may tend to change by the weeks and seasons.
We would love if you would stop by to visit our Creamery or shop in our store! If you stop by on Monday or Tuesday after 2 pm, you can try some delicious fresh and squeaky cheese curd. We love getting to know our customers, so please do stop in.
You can also view our cheese and yogurt making from our observation tower. Give Vern a call at (315) 796-9264 if you would like to take a group tour of our plant. We work in the plant most Mondays through Thursdays.
To learn more about our Creamery and products and for an inside peak, view our video Introduction here.
Our Standards for Milk Preservation and Natural Products
At Stoltzfus Family Dairy, we do not homogenize our milk. Homogenization is a process that blends the cream throughout the milk so that it does not rise to the top. When your body intakes this milk, it cannot separate the fat from the rest of the milk. Lactose intolerant people have a hard time digesting homogenized milk because it is not in its natural state. Instead, we do minimum pasteurization, which is heating the milk to 145 degrees and cooling it back down. Most companies ultra-pasteurize, which means that you take the milk and heat it up to 200 plus degrees, and burn off all the good enzymes in the milk. We do not homogenize or ultra-pasteurize.
We were told that if we make yogurt, we would have to homogenize a milk for this process. Because this is not healthy for your body, we did not want to do this. Therefore, we came up with our own yogurt recipe so that we do not have to homogenize. We have fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt. We also did not want to use preservatives and additives and artificial flavors, so we came up with our own fruit filling. We cook our own fruit in house. It’s fresh and homemade. We care very much at Stoltzfus Family Dairy about doing things naturally and making products that are as healthy and fresh as possible for our customers. If we can’t do it naturally, we don’t do it.