Carl's and Dave's parents came to Canada as refugees in 1938 and began working on various farms. Several years later they married and bought a farm with 100 acres and 16 cows. Now, the family has 500 milking cows and around 900 acres either owned or rented. All the crops grown are for feeding the herd of close to 1000. They hire out to various businesses to manage the plowing, planting and harvesting of the various fodder crops.
Just over a year ago, they opened Summit Station Dairy, named after the TH&B station that existed across the road from the dairy. Carl's son Ben now runs the farm and Ben's wife Jen runs the store.
The plan for the farm and dairy has been and continues to be to grow the business by 10-15% each year. It is working. The farm produces about 20 000 litres a day of milk and around 7000L a week is processed at Summit Station into chocolate and strawberry milk, cheese curd and various percentages of butter fat milk. Besides being sold to about 1500 customers a week at the store, there are around 150 area folks who receive home delivery of milk, and 25 or 30 wholesale outlets that purchase product. As well, there is a meeting room that hosts small gatherings and a Saturday tour of the operation costing $15 pp.
Carl spoke about Canada's supply management system and the Ontario Dairy Council. It was interesting to note that he cannot just deliver raw milk from the farm to the store without going through the marketing board. Everything is part of the quota registered to the farm.
Check out this link http://summitstationdairy.com/about/