LITTLE HOCKING, Ohio — For 100 years the Florence family has delivered fresh dairy products to the people of southeast Ohio and western West Virginia.
Florence Creamery started in 1925 at the family farm in Parkersburg, West Virginia. For over 40 years, the family made its money by bottling their milk and delivering it door-to-door. Starting in 1968, the business shifted to a bulk sale model, selling milk to Broughtons for the next 51 years.
By 2019, however, the family was finding it increasingly difficult to make a living selling bulk fluid milk into commodity markets. In response, the Florence family returned to its roots by processing and bottling their dairy products and selling them directly to consumers.
Allison Florence, a family member involved in the day-to-day operations of the creamery, said that it was a risky transition considering the additional expense of on-site processing equipment.
“While it was a big risk, we think it’s paying off,” said Florence, one of four family members who work full-time on the farm and creamery.
Most of the infrastructure for milk production is “not the fanciest,” Florence said, but it’s in keeping with Florence Creamery’s brand of the hard-working and friendly local farmer: Much of the equipment — including a six-stall milking parlor and glass milk lines — came from the original family farm in Parkersburg or retiring dairies.
A typical day at the creamery involves milking a herd of 60 Jersey and Holstein cows twice a day, about 12 hours apart. The cows are milked six at a time in 10 rounds; it takes five to seven minutes to milk each cow, and one to two hours to milk the entire herd.
The raw milk is stored in a 700-gallon tank that keeps the milk cool and moving. As the milk is agitated, it separates into three layers: cream at the top, whole milk in the middle, and 2% milk at the bottom.
The tank is pumped three times a week, with only 200 to 400 gallons taken at a time.
Florence Creamery also makes cheese, including flavored curds and farmer’s cheese. Whey is drained from the milk via pressure and mixed in a cheese tank — also second-hand. (Because the cheese tank is square instead of round, curds have to be scraped out of the corners using a curd paddle, which Florence jokingly referred to as the “curd chopper.”) The cheese is salted, packaged and sold on the day of production.
Florence is proud to carry on her family’s 100-year tradition.
“It’s what my dad did. And what his dad did,” she said. “That dream was already there.”
Lou Helenberger is an AmeriCorps National Service member at Rural Action’s Appalachian Staple Foods Collaborative.
Let us know what's happening in your neck of the woods!
Get in touch and share a story!
