Minerva Dairy
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Jodi:
Welcome to the Successful Farming Podcast, I’m Jodi Henke.
Jodi:
Joining me today is Venae Watts. She and her brother, Adam Mueller, run the oldest family owned creamery in the United States. Minerva Dairy is in Minerva, Ohio. So, Venae, your family's legacy started in 1894. Tell us, how did that get started.
Venae:
It's 1894 and my great- great grandpa, I think I got enough greats in there, we had a lot of family farms and everybody was doing their own thing on each family farm. They made butter and cheese on the farm. And he got everyone together and said, "Let's bring this to one location on one farm and all bring our milk and pull it together to create our family making one product in one location for the area farms.
Venae:
Back then, everyone made their own cheese and butter on their own farms. And so, he kind of got us together and said, "Hey, if we come together as a group, we can make more in one location, we can hone our butter making and cheese making." And that's how he brought the family together.
Jodi:
What has been the secret to staying in business for all these years and keeping it in the family?
Venae:
I don't know if we have a secret that's any more different than anyone else's. The same family dynamics everyone has. But I guess one of our secrets is we start young. We start with the children as soon as they're old enough to help, they're helping. We talk about it around the kitchen table. It's part of our lives. It's not something that we go and do. The kids learn about it from the time they're little enough just to listen to hear. And then we involve them early on in maybe not being the decision maker when they're in high school, but being part of hearing how the decision process is going, what we're doing, learning about it, butter making.
Venae:
My nephew is 17 and he already knows how to make butter. He was learning that in summers, and holidays, and stuff. So, that's something that we try and teach all the kids.
Jodi:
So, you really, really immerse them in it. That's good.
Venae:
Yeah. So, I mean, my brother was there while he made butter, but he was making his own batch, was supervised.
Jodi:
A lot of kids leave the farm and they don't want the family business, they want to do something else.
Venae:
Yes.
Jodi:
So, when did you know you would be taking it over, along with your brother?
Venae:
Well, I was just like every other kid. I was in high school, worked with the family business with the dairy creamery. And then, I was going to college and I was going to make my way in the world like everyone else does. I want to get out, spread my wings, and do my own thing. Well, I got a lot of education, got a little bit older, decided I'm ready to settle down, have a family. And then, it's like, "Wait, that's where my family is. That's where I want to be. That's where my values are. And that's where my heart is.” So, if I want to do something that is really meaningful in life, how more meaningful can it be then to work alongside your family together? So, that kind of clicked with me, but I had to get to my early 20s before I realized it.
Jodi:
A lot of kids have to "find themselves" before they understand what they enjoy in life.
Jodi:
So, how many of your family members have been brought back into the family to help with your business?
Venae:
Well, right now, my dad in the fourth generation, he's 72, but he's there every day for a couple hours to give some advice and some mentorship whether we want it or not, we get it. And then, me and my brother, there was just the two of us running and operating at this time. And then, our children are helping out. But, as of right now, they're all still considered kids as youngest is 5 and the oldest is 23, just finishing college.
Jodi:
How are you setting up the sixth generation for success to carry this forward?
Venae:
Well, we started out by involving them as a group. We would prepare them for different departments in the business. They got a feel of what the whole thing looks like. We talked to them about decisions and what we are planning for the future that helps them get a sense of what's going on here. Usually they go to college, or they go to a trade school in an interest that they like, but there is opportunity for all of them if they would like to come back and work. So, I'm hoping that they do. We gave them the opportunity to seize their own part of the business or area that they're interested in and seeing how that will unfold over the years.
Jodi:
What is your role right now? What do you do for the business?
Venae:
I focus on probably everything that's not directly in production. My brother is the butter maker, cheese maker. He runs the production side. And I run the sales, marketing, accounting, HR, all the areas that are on the production floor. I work in the butter room from time to time but that's not my main dailies.
Jodi:
Venae, what are some of the challenges and rewards you had being a woman and running a business in the male dominated agriculture business world? What are some of the things you've discovered?
Venae:
Well, I discovered it's male dominated now that everyone's telling me that. I guess I didn't really think about it, if it was male dominated or not. I wanted to learn more and listen and see what was going on in the industry. It is male dominated now that I look at it, but I would say don't really pay attention to that. I just pull up myself as an equal to the table, and listen to see what's going on. So, I think the first challenge is not focusing on the challenge of being male dominant, and just look at it as people and equals at the table.
Venae:
Another thing I think is still recognizing that we do have different roles in society and people do look for that. So, as a female in the dairy industry, when you work as an extension of the family farm lifestyle, they come together more and recognize that, and talk to each other, and support each other that we are equals. We should listen at the table, and hear what's going on, and have a voice, and support us together as a voice. Also, we're holding up a family unit, we're probably holding up a family business. And we also go out in the community and help with outreach there and agricultural areas and other areas of the community.
Venae:
So, sometimes we get our head down and we just keep going forward, and we don't look around, and see what we're all doing, and come together in a positive manner, and touch base with each other, I think would be something that would be helpful. And is a challenge, especially now that we're more remote than ever is to rely on technology, to reach out to each other and keep in contact.
Jodi:
The community has been very supportive of you running it and your peers in the dairy industry must, obviously, have the respect for your family business.
Venae:
Yeah, I mean, I do know there are struggles and things do come up for being a female running a business, but I just try and not really give the attention that situation is looking for and just kind of go, "Oh okay, now let's focus on what we want to get done together." And I think that's the best advice I can give anyone that is a female running an organization, a business, or even a family is when you reach out, and you find those obstacles, and we just don't give them the attention they deserve their life kind of fades out.
Jodi:
So, speaking of challenges, how has the dairy kept up with the ever-changing food climate? Especially there was a time when, back in the seventies when margarine was king.
Venae:
Yeah, definitely. So, there was a long time that margarine was king and that I can just remember when the articles started coming out. Later, the importance of butterfat is important in your products rather than shying away from it, because that is what we do. So, it was a great turn in the industry when consumers started paying more attention to their products in the dairy category, and that they're promoting that the butterfat is good. So, I was excited to see that the attention came back to simple ingredients, just cream and sea salt is all that's in our butter. And that is neat to see that the consumer's now paying attention to those simple ingredients, the importance of them, and who makes their product.
Jodi:
What do you think of any changes coming up? Do you see anything that you guys are having to adjust for?
Venae:
I see adjusting for growth in the dairy section for expansion. This last year with COVID kind of escalated that growth, which is good for all of us in the dairy industry.
Jodi:
Where do you guys get your milk from? Do you source it locally? And do you have your own cows?
Venae:
Oh, that is a misconception. We do not have our own cows. We make butter really well, but we also cannot do everything. So, that's why we have a great partnership with family farms in Northeast Ohio. So, that's where we source our milk from. They are all pasture raised, meaning that the cows can go out on grass in the pasture when they want to. If it's raining or storming, they can say, "Hey, you know what? Not for me today. I'm gonna go back in the barn."
Venae:
We also make sure that they have the correct nutrition because just eating nothing but grass all day long is not as nutritious as a full balanced diet, just like you and I can't live on just lettuce all day. You don't want to live on just iceberg lettuce and nothing else. So, it's something that we have for our cows. When you have a family farm, that's generationally owned along with a creamery, what we are is generationally owned, those tight bonds that go back generations. So we have, like my grandpa talked to their grandpa. My dad knows them. I know the current generation that's running the farm and their children. And we all kind of work together to make sure that we have the best situation for the cows, the farmer, and for the creamery together. We need each other. We rely on each other.
Jodi:
That's great, especially for dairy producers in the past few years, it's not exactly been a robust market.
Venae:
No it has not.
Jodi:
Working close together is very important right now.
Venae:
This is something that we've been doing for generations, but it wasn't something that was in the radar for consumers looking for those products. So, it was neat when butter kind of made that comeback. Consumers also took more interest in the depth of their food, where it comes from, and the chain of how it all works because we were here doing that all along. And I'm really excited to see that what we've been doing, and the farmers' hard work it's really come to light and people are saying, "Yes, we want the farmer to make a good living. We want the butter maker and the cheese maker to be sustainable because having sustainable food is essential." And I think we started looking at that right away. But when the pandemic happened, it really brought light to the importance of the jobs.
Jodi:
Minerva Dairy has some very interesting products. And most of us would think of butter coming in a block, or several blocks, but theirs this a little bit different. Venae, you make several flavors of butter and they're all hand rolled. What does that mean?
Venae:
Well, we have a two- pound hand rolled, which is kind of our flagship item we've been making since World War II. When we had to start rationing butter, my grandma started rolling it to hit the requirements for the ration. Before then, all our butter was sold in bulk. You would just cut off what you wanted for any orders or individual use. And then, the hand rolling started. So, that's just a tradition that we've kept.
Venae:
We also have products that come in the eight ounce carton that has two, four ounce sticks inside, which is more what you are used to today when you have your butter that's measured out for cooking or baking, so the right increments. But we still keep that old-fashioned Minerva Dairy rolled product that we've been making for a long time. I guess, I should add up how many years.
Jodi:
So, when I think of rolled butter, I think of throwing dough out on the countertop and rolling it out with a rolling pin. Is that what you guys do in the hand rolling?
Venae:
So, we don't roll it out with a rolling pin and make it flat. The butter's in the churn and then we take the butter from the churn, and it is more labor intensive, it's hands-on. And we take it in wax paper and we roll it to two pounds form. It takes a little bit of training to eyeball that two pounds and make sure it's correct. And then, we make sure that we're at least two pounds or a little bit over because it is a handcrafted product. It has to hit the two- pound mark for sale, but it is rolled, it is sitting on the paper, and then it's hand rolled up, and then put in the box for sale.
Jodi:
Venae, did you really get rolls of butter in your Christmas stocking as a kid?
Venae:
I did, but maybe not the same way. It wasn't like I woke up Christmas morning and there was rolled butter sitting there. It's more of a tradition.
Venae:
Our family has a tradition that on Christmas Eve we work, then we will roll butter. So, what we'll do is on Christmas Eve whatever employees are here at the creamery, so they're not scheduled on Christmas Eve. And it's become a family tradition that we go down and we roll the butter and we finish it up. And then, we come back and have Christmas Eve together. So, it's kind of funny because, especially the littler ones, when I was little, we'd be like, "Oh, I rolled this one. I want to take it home. It's mine. I did it." You feel good when you're young that like I participated in the family business, I helped, I rolled. It does take a little bit longer, but it's a great tradition to make sure the family is involved and we can talk about it. So yes, I did bring home a two- pound rolled butter at Christmas time.
Jodi:
That's excellent. Some kids get oranges, some kids get coal. Butter! That's great. So, you also have some cheeses, is this a recent addition to your product line?
Venae:
No, we've been making cheese as long as we've been making butter, so they go hand in hand in the creamery. You don't see our cheese, our name out, Minerva Dairy because we do make it as an ingredient. So, our primary cheese is for ingredients. So, we do make like Parmesan, Romano, Asiago, cheddar, Monterey Jack, all of them, which then can be made to how the end user would like to make them into a product that you would then find in a retail store. So, we can make cheese that goes into items that are frozen so they can perform correctly when reheated. Or we can make cheese that's on top of a pizza that you might get, or baked into a cracker. So, there's a lot of different avenues our cheese goes into.
Venae:
So, that's why you don't see our name out there in the store. But if you look around there's many items that are in the store that you don't know the ingredients who makes those. But we're one of them, we're making the cheese.
Jodi:
What’s your favorite way to eat butter?
Venae:
Well, do I really want to tell you that?
Jodi:
Do you just like take a bite off the end or...?
Venae:
Well, no, I haven't done that. I have seen family members do that, but I haven't gone quite that crazy. But I guess my favorite way to do it is just on saltine crackers. It's a snack. I mention that to other people that are outside of my little dairy world here, and they're like, "What you eat, butter own saltine crackers?" But as a kid growing up that was snack. It's still my favorite way, just to put it on some crackers.
Jodi:
You know what? I did that as a kid too.
Venae:
See?
Jodi:
Yes, and I still do it.
Venae:
We don't tell as many people about it. So, if you're going to have butter as a snack, you want to have the best butter there is.
Jodi:
Oh, it's a wonderful snack. It is.
Jodi:
Well Venae, any other information you'd like to tell us about your dairy, about the family farm, and any advice for people looking to continue the generational business?
Venae:
My best advice I could give anyone, and I hope to keep doing it myself, I remind myself of it is even though it takes a little bit more time, and sometimes a little bit more patience when you feel hurried up and rushed to accomplish all these things that you need to do is to take the time and make sure you involve the next generation.
Venae:
I think the involvement, even if it's on a small scale, that's like they're part of it, they're a part of the family. And when you feel that love, I guess, to bring everybody in that you are a part of the family and even your opinion just on the matter is good. I guess, inclusion, include everyone.
Jodi:
Excellent.
Jodi:
Well, thank you so much, Venae. I appreciate your time.
Venae:
Sure. Thank you.