PEOPlE MOVING PRODUCT

Building from the ground up

Zimmerman launches Farmer Boy Creamery

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DORCHESTER, Wis. — Two years ago, Leland Zimmerman began to think about creating a small-scale, specialty milk processing business. In April, those plans came to fruition as he launched Farmer Boy Creamery near Dorchester.

“I spent a while thinking about it, talking about it and looking at other small creameries,” Zimmerman said. “I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to do it. It was such a huge capital investment, but everything just kind of came together.”

Zimmerman developed a plan to purchase milk from a nearby dairy farmer by working through a milk broker, which allows him to purchase only the milk he needs. All the cows on the farm are certified A2A2, and Zimmerman is forgoing homogenization, bottling the milk as creamline.

Every Wednesday morning, Zimmerman picks up a small tank load of milk to meet his processing needs for the week.

Zimmerman converted an existing building that had previously been used as a wood shop to house his new creamery.

“We were able to renovate it to fit our needs,” Zimmerman said. “The office was already here, but everything else, we built. It saved us a lot of time and money.”

It took a year from the time he decided to forge ahead with his idea until the first milk was processed.

The biggest obstacle Zimmerman said he faced in creating the infrastructure for his new venture was ordering equipment. Zimmerman chose to work with an Israeli company that specializes in working with small processors.

“We were limited on space, and they would design the equipment to fit the space we had,” Zimmerman said. “It’s custom-designed; it is fairly compact.”

Everything except for the bottler was ordered from Israel.

“We ordered the bottler from a company in Pennsylvania,” Zimmerman said. “The Israeli company wanted to sell me two bottlers. I wanted one that could do four sizes, and the company in Pennsylvania provided that.”

When Zimmerman placed the initial equipment order in April 2023, he was told it would be ready for shipment in 3-4 months. Instead, it took nearly eight months for the equipment to be completed and shipped.

The original plan in place was for the 3-A Sanitary Standards Inc. inspection of the equipment to take place in Israel.

“About the time they were getting it done, the war broke out,” Zimmerman said.

The Hamas attack on Israel in early October 2023 made it unsafe for the inspector to travel to the region originally planned, delaying the immediate inspection and the shipment of the equipment.

“The equipment finally shipped in early November,” Zimmerman said. “It was two weeks on a cargo ship. It came into the port of New York and then took six weeks to get through customs.”

Zimmerman had purchased the container carrying his equipment, simplifying the trucking arrangements from New York to Wisconsin.

“They were able to just move the entire container rather than unpackaging the equipment to load onto the truck,” Zimmerman said. “It worked out well, as I am able to use the container for additional storage.”

The equipment arrived in central Wisconsin in January. An Israeli team followed to oversee the installation.

“The whole setup had been assembled in Israel,” Zimmerman said. “They knew all the pieces worked together. Everything was numbered for easy assembly. It took them about a day to set it up and then we just needed to get the boilers running and starting testing. The team from Israel was here about a week.”

Once the equipment was installed, another 3-A SSI inspection was required.

“We had to run a batch of milk while the 3-A inspector was here, to make sure it wasn’t foaming too much,” Zimmerman said. “We did a batch of chocolate milk for that, it’s more likely to be too foamy than white is.”

Zimmerman had already completed his two- day course at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls to become certified to commercially pasteurize milk in October in anticipation of the arrival of his equipment. He spent a day in Eau Claire becoming certified to test for antibiotics, as well as obtaining the necessary licensure for hauling milk and milk intake. Additional Grade A licensing from the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection ensued, following the installation of the equipment.

“It took five or six different licenses to cover everything,” Zimmerman said. “There is so much regulation.”

With the licensure complete, Zimmerman was ready to launch.

“I take orders on Tuesday, process on Wednesday and deliver on Thursday,” Zimmerman said.

Zimmerman has a 300-gallon pasteurizer and can bottle 250 gallons of milk an hour.

“It takes about two hours (to) pasteurize a batch,” Zimmerman said. “It heats up to 145 degrees and holds it there for 30 minutes. Then the milk is transferred through a chiller and cooled down to 45 degrees before going into a holding vat to be bottled. I can bottle the first batch while the second is being pasteurized.”

Zimmerman is processing about 300 gallons of white milk and 135 gallons of chocolate milk each week. He bottles in gallon, half-gallon, pint and half-pint sizes.

“White milk is my biggest seller, by far,” Zimmerman said. “Everyone drinks white milk. Chocolate is more like a treat.”

Zimmerman started small, unsure of how his market would develop.

“It’s hard to plan for something like this,” Zimmerman said. “That’s why we’re starting out small. We don’t have much overhead. So far it is floating itself.”

Zimmerman sells most of his products within a 30-mile radius of his creamery, retailing in seven area grocery stores along with a few other smaller retailers. He is uncertain how fast or to what size his creamery will grow.

“We have quite a bit of room for growth, but we’ll wait and see how it goes for a year or two,” Zimmerman said. “It’s still too early to tell. Like any start-up, it’s going to take time to build a name. We started from scratch. Everything, from our name to our logo, started from the ground up.

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