We are a small family dairy farm (Michael and Kristen Keim and their 6 children David, Levi, Abel, Sarah, Jared, and Caleb.) who believe in doing things the old-fashioned way, that works best for both our animals and land. We believe in working with the land and have learned by trial and error, books, and advice from old farmers to name a few.
It all got started when we moved to Missouri in 2013 bought a small piece of land and for better or worse started a small family homestead with hopes it would grow into something more. We didn’t know just what that “something more” would be. Turns out, we would become a small Jersey dairy farm. We started with just one family milk cow (that was as crazy as a loon) a batch of 100 meat birds, 10 laying hens, 5 sheep, and 4 goats. We were “official” farmers then, but boy did we have a lot to learn and quick. With every extra dollar we had we would buy another animal to add to the farm. We quickly learned that we needed to start a rotation of first the sheep then cow, goats, and chickens. We really liked all of our animals and I really enjoyed our fresh goat milk, but we decided we really liked cow milk better than goat milk, and the goats had a tendency to get out of the fences and get into everything they were not supposed to. So we decided to sell the goats and buy a cow in milk.
We bought a very sweet family cow that we named Buttercup. She was an Ayrshire and loved attention and getting her head scratched. Buttercup was great at coming into the milk barn and Colby was very happy to have a cow friend. About a month after we got her Colby had her first calf and we had to train her to come in the barn and stand to be milked. This was no easy task. Thankfully we had some neighbors that were nice retired dairy farmers who gave us some tips on training a fresh heifer. Buttercup was awesome, but did not like grazing as much, nor did she have the drive to graze like our Colby. However, we loved the milk and began to make butter and ice cream and we fell in love with our cows. We kept up with the chickens and learned how to effectively raise them and process them. We also enjoyed learning how to raise the sheep and goats…but we absolutely loved our precious cows Buttercup and Colby. So… we bought another cow a Brown Swiss named Stormy and that turned our heard into three.
We loved milking cows so much that we wondered if we could make a living milking cows. As time went on, we had an opportunity and took it. We bought a small dairy farm and a retiring dairy farmers herd of cows. Now we had 50 cows … that’s right 50 cows. The older couple that raised this herd loved and named all their cows and hated to see them sold at auction, but they really wanted to retire, and we bought a farm of 100 acres and started milking. We never grew up milking and had only the expertise from our small herd of family milk cows. We quickly learned their names and started learning how to milk 50 cows. I didn’t want our farm to be a big commercial dairy, but rather a farm that worked with the land and not against it. I wanted our cows to graze and walk around freely. So, we began to train our cows to poly braid (an easy to move electric line) so that our cows would get fresh grass and open fields every day in-order to produce rich creamy milk. We found that the Jersey cow was by far the best at converting grass to cream and with their sweet personalities we gravitated to an almost all Jersey heard. Our goal is to produce cheese and bath and body products with our milk. We also learned the value of A2A2 milk and how to grow different types of grasses to best keep up with our heard. We learned that not all cows are equal some do much better on a grass based diet than others and some produce more cream than others so we started selectively breeding for Jerseys that produce high cream on a grass based diet. We also have started breeding to A2A2 bulls and now over half of our heard are A2A2 Jerseys. We have raised very tame and gentle Jerseys with great genetics for grazing and producing butterfat. Most of our cows are also registered with the American Jersey Cattle Association.
When Covid-19 hit in 2020 we were also hit financially and thought me would be forced into selling our now great herd of Jerseys. We absolutely hated the idea of seeing our cows who have become a part of our family go to an auction. So we started a new journey of selling some of our cows as family milk cows where they would go to good homes where people would love and appreciate them as much as we do. We found that we truly enjoy seeing people begin a homestead and milk their own cow just as we did when we got started. So, we have begun specializing in selling family milk cows when we have excess cows in our herd. We know exactly what its like to start milking with no experience with cows. We also know how satisfying it is to bond with a cow that not only becomes a pet but contributes to the family.
