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Cliff Buchan
News Editor
Each morning before the sun peaks above the trees that helped name Autumnwood Farm, the Pat Daninger family is busy milking cows. It’s a morning and evening tradition for dairy farmers everywhere.
During the past two months, the tradition has expanded for the Forest Lake farm family. Every Monday and Tuesday, the Daningers and a team of volunteers bottle some 300-400 gallons of milk that comes direct from the farm’s herd of Holstein cows.
As of March 6, the Autumnwood Farm operation entered the creamery business, producing milk in glass bottles that is now being sold in a half dozen area stores.
Come next month, the new creamery hopes to have its retail store open at 19435 Granada Ave., just east of US-61 and north of 190th St. N.
That will be a major step for the family and its entry into a new venue for the 106-year-old farm that is now being worked by its third and fourth generation of Daningers.
Slow steps
“We’ve been working on getting this right,” Daninger said from the new creamery building that was constructed late last summer and put into operation in March.
The Daningers have moved slowly, making sure the operation is ready to perform and the product produced is just right. It hasn’t happened overnight, Pat Daninger said.
“It’s been three years in the making since we first started researching it,” Daninger said. He said the move to a creamery business was made as a venture to help a family farm remain competitive and better utilize the land and the animals.
“We knew we had to do something other than selling milk,” he said. “We were looking for something different.”
The family’s research led them to a farm-based creamery operation in Missouri near Kansas City. A dairy farmer there started with 60 cows five years ago and has expanded his business to 200 milking cows as the glass-bottled milk business has taken off.
“That told us it could work,” he said. The Daningers have formed a business plan much like the one used by the dairy farm in Missouri.
In deciding on the creamery, Daninger and his wife Sharlene concluded that the investment and risk was worth the taking.
There was a strong need to boost revenues for the 250-acres farm, he said, at a time when costs to run the farm continue to climb. “The price of milk didn’t move a whole lot,” he said.
 A big move
It was a major decision to proceed last summer, both from a work commitment and a financial investment in creamery equipment.
Creamery manager Butch Bergmann, left, inspects filled bottles of skim milk as they slide through the bottler on Monday.
(Photo By Cliff Buchan)
With the help of a dairy consultant from Arkansas, Autumnwood Farm was able to assemble all the needed equipment. It came from far and wide.
A milk separator was found in California. A pasteurizing unit came from Arkansas. The homogenizer came from Houston.
A central washing unit for system cleaning was secured in the New England area. A bottle washer was found in a creamery near New Orleans that had been shuttered by Hurricane Katrina.
In searching for glass bottles, the Daningers found they were no longer made in the United States. A company in Toronto provided 16,000 at $1.50 each. The bottle filling unit was found in Pittsburgh.
A piping system that covers 200 feet carries the milk from the dairy barn to the creamery where it enters a 1000-gallon storage tank. On a bottling day, cow’s milk taken in the morning can be in bottles before the end of the day and ready for shipping to area stores.
Once ready to operate, the creamery received all final approvals from the state Department of Agriculture and was approved for a Grade A bottling license.
When all was said and done, the family has invested $500,000 in the venture, an investment made possible by Mainstreet Bank in Forest Lake.
The timing
Daninger understands that the milk in glass bottles is hitting store shelves at a time when food prices are rising. The locally bottled milk is also coming at a time when many in the public are demanding better food products for their families, he adds.
Consumers buying Autumnwood Farm milk receive a natural product from cows that have not received any kind of chemical hormone stimulants to push production, such as BST. That is not an option, he says..
“We’ve never used it,” he said. “I don’t think it’s good for the animals.
“People really do want to know where their foods are coming from, particularly meat and milk. They want their meat pure and their milk pure.”
In doing research, the results of consumer surveys revealed that 56 percent actually favored receiving milk in glass bottles, easing some fears for the family. “That has been less than we expected,” he says.
Daninger believes wise consumers are looking at more than price. “It just makes sense,” he said. “It stays colder longer (in glass bottles). It just tastes better and it is environmentally friendly. It’s a premium price for a premium product.”
After two months of production, the dairy is seeing marked growth in its production. The farm’s first outlet was MarketPlace Foods in Forest Lake and it remains its best retail outlet.
The milk is also being sold at Festival Foods stores in Hugo, White Bear Lake and Vadnais Heights, plus the Tsoro Convenience Store at CR-17 and I-35 in Lent Township, Grundhofer’s Old-Fashion Meats in Hugo, plus a grocery store in St. Michael. The goal is to build a network of 20 regional stores.
So far, Daninger says, the farm’s herd is only being utilized for 10-15 percent of its daily milk production for the creamery, leaving much room for expansion.
The production now centers on half-gallon bottles of whole, skim and 1 percent milk, plus non-homogenized whole milk, which has the cream at the top. The dairy’s chocolate whole milk is the farm’s most popular product.
In May, the creamery plans to expand its product lines to include 2 percent milk, cream in pint glass bottles and farm-made butter. That will likely come when the retail center opens.
One of the keys to the early success, Daninger says, is the decision to use a low-temperature pasteurization process which requires more time but helps maintain the natural goodness of the product.
The farm’s motto remains from “grass to the glass.”
Farm history
Pat Daninger is the third generation of Daningers to work the farm. He took over the dairy business in 1982 and began farming full-time in 1985 after graduating from the University of Minnesota with a degree in animal science.
His grandparents, Frank and Stephanie Daninger, began working the land in 1902. One of their sons, Mike Daninger, who was born in 1916 and passed away in 2006, was involved in the operation until the fall of 2005.
Pat Daninger and his mother, Florence, believe Mike Daninger would be proud of the new venture.
“He would say ‘go for it,’” Florence Daninger said of her late husband. “He was the eternal optimist.”
And go for it the Daningers are, thanks to some loyal friends and neighbors who are pitching in to help with no pay in the early going, just a desire to see the venture go.
Butch Bergmann and Jim Riter are creamery managers. Riter’s wife Jane, Florence Daninger and farm hand Jim Banta have worked with product demonstrations and promotions. Ron Schoreder and Bob Kellgren are also helping out with the driving and other dairy duties. Peg Umger is helping with the creamery books.
Daninger says he is humbled by the willingness of neighbors and friends to help the business pay down debt and get on a solid financial foundation.
He is also thankful for the efforts of his wife, Sharlene and their four kids, Luke, Erin, Nathan and Mariah who work in all aspects of the farm and the creamery while remaining good ambassadors for the creamery with their friends from school.
In the end, Daninger believes the product is selling itself. “It’s been fun,” he says. “It has just kind of exploded.”
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