Family dairy tour during Dairy Month
June is Dairy Month and American Dairy Association Indiana invites you to learn all about a modern dairy farm Saturday with a visit to Willemsen Dairy near Frankton in Madison County. Jenni Browning with ADA Indiana says the free family outing from 11 AM to 3 PM might surprise or even shock those who haven’t seen a dairy farm recently.
“Absolutely, we get requests all the time and actually just had one today from a TV station that wanted to milk a cow by hand because they thought that’s how it happens,” she told HAT. “I told them no, that’s not how we milk any more. There’s a lot of technology and it only takes ten minutes or so to milk a cow, so I think a lot of people will be amazed by the technology, by the time that a cow is milked. Some people don’t realize it is such a quick process, and then all that goes into it tracking the care of a cow. So, Tejo has about a thousand cows on his farm. How do you keep up with all that? I think they will be really amazed by how much goes into the care of each one of those cows.”
There are over 1100 Indiana dairy farm families, and this event to celebrate and educate offers dairy treats for everyone to enjoy.
“Domino’s Pizza has donated pizza for everyone while supplies last, but we will also have dairy snacks, milk, cheese and yogurt. We’ll have some games there for kids, but we’ve gotten some questions about is this a family event, and absolutely! Bring your kids because we really want know starting early where food comes from, and for people who are now adults and still haven’t been to a dairy farm, we want to make sure they know where their milk comes from and how milk gets to their table every day.”
Willemsen Dairy is located at 6615 West 500 North in Frankton, Indiana.
Hear more from Browning, including the nutritional value of milk and her reaction to the big gulp of milk by Indy 500 winner Takuma Sato:Jenni Browning-ADAI