When the Cows Come Home

The drive to Ocheesee Creamery takes nearly two hours. I passed the time daydreaming that I arrived the night before, slept in my car, then joined farm manager Pierre Wesselhoeft for the 4 a.m. milking. Instead, I started my day with a cup of black coffee at 6 a.m.

Between Grand Ridge and Blountstown, Ocheesee Creamery falls just outside of North Florida’s Red Hills region. There, the sandy-clay earth over deep limestone makes good soil for growing grazing grass: Bermuda, Bahia, or thick and juicy crabgrass.

Wesselhoeft, well into his day, meets me midmorning. Above average height with a wind- and sun-tanned face only farmers know, Wesselhoeft appears contained at first.

“My grandfather was Mennonite,” he said with a pause. “But who cares about denominations? I’m Christian. Anyway, my grandfather left Germany and came to Canada to escape the Nazis and married an Ohio girl he met in college. He started this place back in the ’50s. My parents, Paul and Mary Lou, took over the farm from their parents after they did a 10-year stint in Somalia as missionaries.”

Offering a lubberly reply, I remarked that the dairy farm tied him to the herd as much as the herd was tied to him.

Farm manager Wesselhoeft works in the pit between two milking runways. There he washes teats and applies cups which imitate a calf, pumping milk intoa cooling system. Photo by Alicia Osborne

Ocheesee remains a family business three generations in. Wesselhoeft oversees the cows and various farm chores while his sister and brother-in-law run the Ocheesee Creamery shop which sells fresh-made ice cream, milk, butter and other sundries.

“See those woods over there?” Wesselhoeft points at the wood line half a mile off. “Sometimes we go camping over there — set up tents, shoot a rabbit and roast it over the fire. That’s as far as I get from two milkings a day, 365 days a year.” Finally, waving at a collection of buildings on the rise behind the creamery, my host asks, “What would you like to see?”

Wesselhoeft gets easier to talk to, and we gab about the dairy life as we head uphill for the milking pavilion.

The Jersey cow is not a large breed, but as milk producers go, she’s a bovine Dolly Parton. So, milking 110 doe-eyed ruminants twice a day makes some 550 gallons daily. Save four unpredictable Jersey bulls, the extended herd numbers 230 animals including non-milking cows and calves.

Outside the pavilion, two or three hands are loading up a van with crates of gallon milk jugs to haul down to the creamery. Through the back door, one finds a Milky Way constellation of stainless-steel pipes and barrels to cool and filter warm-from-the-cow milk. Around front is an entrance for the light-brown ladies with their white-fringed Jersey muzzles.

There, the long, cobblestoned court has a roof and opens to the pastures stretching out across Ocheesee’s 160-acre spread. Wesselhoeft points to the distant herd.

A Jersey cow has its first calf at age 2. The calf will stay with its mother for two days and then go on the bottle so that its dam can be milked. Pictured above, Wesselhoeft’s daughter feeds a Jersey calf. Photo by Alicia Osborne

“That’s most of the milking herd there.” Then, “See that small bunch right over here?” He points to a group about 100 yards off, “They’re on R&R. After two years of milking, they get a season off to dry out, get another calf and start milking again.” 

Come 4 p.m., the Jersey girls will amble home and willingly step onto the milking runways, then shuffle to a stop by the milking apparatuses. In the pit between the two runways, the “milk-meister” washes teats and applies the four teat cups that, imitating a calf, pump milk into the cooling system out back.

“Okay, so to keep horn flies from breeding in the manure,” Wesselhoeft tells me, “watch this.” With the cows cleared, he throws a switch and giant sprinkler heads rise up out of the cobblestones, washing away every trace of cow.

After the curated tour, we grin and shake hands. Wesselhoeft is off to attend a business meeting. I head 200 yards down to the Creamery storefront on the main road. There, Pierre’s sister and brother-in-law, Heather and Mike Falb, home-make ice cream, cheese, butter and kid-endorsed chocolate milk.

The Ocheesee Creamery shop sells some 600 to 800 gallons of raw milk each week. But ice creams prove regular favorites, too. Flavors vary from the traditional strawberry or cookie dough to unique options like pineapple habanero. Photo by Alicia Osborne

At the store, shop marm Lisa Ezell said they sell 600 to 800 gallons a week of raw milk, ice cream and cottage cheese. Another 700 gallons go to Pensacola, with stops in between, and 800 go southeast to the Vero Beach area.

“Come on back to the kitchen,” Lisa tells me.

There, I found another constellation of stainless steel; this time for making or bottling everything dairy, queen of all being ice cream. Everything from chocolate to pumpkin spice and sweet cream … but mostly chocolate.

On the drive home, I stopped off at a chicken and gas place for a cup of Joe. Sitting out in the shadow of a cabbage palm, I decide I’ve waited long enough — no breakfast or lunch. Extracting the chocolate ice cream I’d packed into the beer cooler to save for supper, I end up shoveling down half.

A pig among cows!

Skim Milk Scandal

Photo by Alicia Osborne

In 2017, Ocheesee Creamery made dairy news after winning a years-long labeling battle against the state of Florida.

“The state wanted us to label our skim milk as ‘artificial’ milk,” explained farm manager Pierre Wesselhoeft. “They said, having the cream extracted takes away vitamins A and D and without those being added back in, told us it couldn’t be labeled ‘milk.’”

The Wesselhoeft family solicited help from the Institute for Justice law firm whose mission aims to “end widespread abuses of government power.” Ocheesee’s skim milk made it back to shelves in true form. “Thanks to those guys,” Wesselhoeft said of the law firm, “we’ve never had to adulterate our skim.”