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CapitalPress.com
Friday, June 3, 2022
Cloverleaf Creamery and Dairy:
Integrated from cows to stores
Schoch Dairy & Creamery:
Surviving by changing directions
milk route 5 days a week, delivering milk to stores
and restaurants as far east as Pocatello. We also go to
Boise and Sun Valley,” he said.
BUHL, Idaho — Bill and Donna Stoltzfus have
They recently expanded to include a location in
been farming near Buhl, Idaho, since 1973 and Twin Falls — also called Cloverleaf Creamery but
started their dairy in 1992. They now have 90 to 100 part of the Second Street South Market. They sell
cows on their 200-acre farm, selling milk products dairy products through that outlet as well as their
to customers through their own store and several local store.
restaurants.
“We sell our milk as local, fresh and natural.
“We farmed in southeastern Pennsylvania before We’re not certified organic but do things as natu-
rally as we can. Our milk is in returnable
moving to Idaho,” Bill said. “Development
glass bottles. Printed on our milk bottles is
was encroaching on farmland in that area.
an invitation to see where the milk comes
I had a good friend in northwest Washing-
ton and decided to move west and have
from. We’ve given many tours through the
cows out on pasture. We looked for places
creamery and farm so people can see the
in Washington and Oregon, but ended up in
cows and feed the calves,” he said.
Idaho,” he said.
Many of the people who come to see
“We raise our own forages. The cows have
the
farm are customers. Families come and
Bill
corn silage and pasture. The only feed pur-
bring
their kids, to show them where milk
Stoltzfus
chased is a grain mix to balance the ration.”
comes from —and ice cream and other
The heifers, dry cows and milking herd are on products they love. Kids enjoy seeing cows grazing.
a rotational grazing program, supplemented with a Many families come to a farm for an outing, espe-
little hay and corn silage, but pasture is their main cially families from the city who don’t get much
chance to see animals.
source of feed.
There weren’t any tours during the COVID pan-
“I like having them on pasture; the cows are
healthier, and improve the pasture by spreading demic but there are several lined up for this spring
manure themselves,” he said. The cows are all reg- and summer.
istered Holsteins.
“One school in Sun Valley brings their high
“My son Eric and son-in-law Eric Butterworth school kids every other year, and we did manage to
are both involved, and my wife Donna works at the get that group here last year. Hopefully, things will
processing plant. She’s also in charge of the girls stay opened up and we can get back into that a bit
who run our store,” said Stoltzfuz.
more,” he said.
For about 10 years the dairy supplied milk to a
“We are part of a program called Idaho Preferred,
small processing plant in town. “We purchased that through the state Department of Agriculture. There
plant in 2007 and now process all our milk. We do is an Idaho Preferred label on much of our packag-
cream top whole milk, skim, 2%, half-and-half, ing, and this tells people it is locally grown,” said
Stoltzfuz.
cream, butter and ice cream.”
His daughter, Olivia Butterworth, is opening a
Some processing equipment had to be upgraded,
including the ice cream equipment, since that’s the store in downtown Twin Falls, selling their milk and
ice cream, plus products from other Idaho producers.
product their customers are most interested in.
“She will be handling some craft beers and
The processing plant, with store front, is Clover-
leaf Creamery.
wines, and is also hooked up with a bakery in
“This location is fantastic because tourists stop Boise that will be furnishing really good pies,” he
by, along with our regular customers. We also do a said.
By BRENNA WIEGAND
For the Capital Press
By HEATHER SMITH THOMAS
For the Capital Press
HELVETIA, Ore. — When the going
got tough, Casey and Dave Schoch of
Schoch’s Dairy and Creamery in Helve-
tia, Ore., were able to stay afloat thanks
to the generosity of their friends, neigh-
bors and lot of people they’ll never meet.
Casey and Dave moved back to the
family farm in 1991, partnering with
his parents at their conventional dairy
where they milked, at their peak, about
200 cows.
“For 20 years we sold all our milk to
Darigold,” Casey Schoch said. “There
were some good times but there were
a lot more really tough times for a
small family farm trying to support two
families.
“When you work that hard every day
you at least want to go to bed at night
knowing you can pay your bills,” she
said. “It was hard on us, and we didn’t
like how hard we had to push the cows,
and we finally reached the point where
we needed to do something different.”
The Schoches sold their milking
herd, thinking they might go organic
in hopes that it would generate more
income. They got busy preparing their
land for certification, but right about
the time their heifers were coming
online, organic creameries in the area
announced they weren’t accepting any
new shippers.
“Our choices were to bail or do some-
thing different with our milk,” Schoch
said. “We came up with creating our
own little creamery where we could pro-
cess all our own milk, put in it glass bot-
tles and sell it ourselves.
“Nobody was really doing that,” she
added.
Schoch Dairy & Creamery
Casey and Dave Schoch of Schoch
Dairy & Creamery in Helvetia, Ore.
Crowd-funding allowed them to
change their operation and stay in
business.
Dave, a mechanical engineer,
drew up the blueprints, reimagining
an existing barn as their new pro-
cessing facility. However, they now
faced a formidable challenge in real-
izing the conversion — how to feed
their cows and pay their bills during
the building process.
They made a budget and tried to
stick to it, but, as with many such
projects, it took much longer than
anticipated and they ran out of
money.
Someone suggested they run a
Kickstarter campaign. The crowd
funding platform let them tell their
story, set a financial goal and, if they
made it, they could keep the funds.
The family exceeded its goal
by nearly $2,000, crowd funding
$50,345 in the 2016 campaign.