Dailey Farms - Goatmilk Dairy

Today I'm talking with John at Dailey Farms. You can follow on Facebook as well.

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00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with John at Dailey Farms. Good morning, John. How are you? Morning, Mary. I'm doing well. Thanks for having me on today.

00:21
You're welcome. I'm sorry we had some technical difficulties. I don't know what's up with this app, but sometimes it works like a charm and sometimes it fights people. I think it's more about me not figuring out technology fast enough here. Well, that happens too. Yes, yes. All right, so you're in Illinois, right? Correct. We're just on the western side of Illinois here, zone six if you're planting. And yeah, we're a dairy farm.

00:50
Nice and you're a goat dairy farm, right? Mm-hmm, yes. Tell me all about what you do. So about 2015 I decided to have a major career change. I was a desk jockey working in the tech and biotech world and had a career, came to a crossroads and I said I always wanted to be the million dollar question. What would you do if money were no object? I always wanted to be a farmer. And...

01:21
One of the major reasons that came up and so here we are and I was over in Australia and I have lactose issues and they're like, oh, you can't have milk? Yeah, you can. You can just drink goat milk up until that point. I've been drinking almond water and coconut water and oat milk and all the different alternatives and was not a big fan of that. So...

01:51
I said, why isn't anybody doing this in the States? And so I said, maybe I should be the one doing it in the States. So here we are. Yeah. Did I miss it? Did you grow up in Australia or were you just over there? Oh, no. I was, so when I was transitioning careers, I took a little sabbatical and spent a couple weeks over there visiting a friend. And that's when I came across all the people over in the, down in Australia, sipping on goat milk. Okay.

02:21
Now I understand. I apologize for not clarifying. I'm born and raised in Illinois. My mom was born in Illinois and then she moved to Maine when she was like 19 years old. So wow. That's a big move. Yeah. She met my dad, fell in love with him and was like, I go where you go forever. So all right. That's pretty neat. Yeah. I have one of my old roommates moved to Maine and they are now a chicken. They're doing chicken farming.

02:51
Which is funny because we're both in the tech world. We both decided to become farmers. It happens. I, my husband loves, loves, loves gardening and loves having chickens. I do not. So I do a podcast and he raises, takes care of chickens. It works out great. Um, that's a good deal there. And my dad actually was a, a, uh, electrical engineer.

03:18
by trade and then became a bio med tech. Oh, wow. And now he's 81 years old, living on 14 acres in Maine and raising chickens and has a border collie. So there's something about that thing. I think so. Or maybe the romantic idea of being the gentleman farmer as well. I don't know. He's my dad has always been a gentleman. And I mean that with all due sincerity. He is the nicest man you will ever meet.

03:49
So he would have been a gentleman either way. Fantastic. Mm-hmm, best man I know. Well, I don't know if I'd qualify for the gentleman part, but I definitely am farming out here. Hehehehe.

04:03
No. Okay. So I saw that you have goat milk soap and it's made with lard. Sorry, tallow and lye and goat's milk. And I also saw that you sell goat's milk that is pasteurized at your local store. So my question is, do you use the just the raw goat's milk for your soap or do you use? Yes, for the soap we can luckily use the

04:31
It does not need to be pasteurized. But with the process of saponification, which is what makes soap, soap, the temperatures do get up there. So it's slightly pasteurized. Pasteurization is just something the French figured out to make white to make wine and have a longer shelf life back in the 1800s.

04:57
It was a beautiful thing for farmers at the time as well, because it also extended the shelf life of the dairy products they would take to market. Long-winded answer, but during that saponification process, while I'm making my soap, the temperature on that milk does get up at now the same temperature range as traditional pasteurization. The milk you see at the store.

05:25
that doesn't need to be refrigerated. That's been ultra high temperature, pasteurization method, which is several hundred degrees, full other can of worms. Yeah, we make soap here too, and we actually burned our table at one point, because the saponification process gets super freaking hot.

05:51
And if you don't put a towel down between the bottom of your soap box or whatever your mold is and your table, it will, it will leave a mark. It all scorched. Yes. And when you're working with that lye, it's remarkable how, you know, fast, if you're not ready for that chemical, it's like, it's not ready for the, you know, the lye to do its thing, that temperature shoots up very fast.

06:19
Mm-hmm. Yes, it's not I always tell people they're always like I'd love to learn how to make you know raw soap Or whatever they want to call it and I'm like, it's not hard. You just have to be careful that's When I have people over and they see me making myself that like it looks like the guy from Breaking Bad with the glasses and Your gloves and your apron. I'm like, well, we're we're dealing with some science and some chemistry that's

06:49
You know, pretty serious stuff, but you know, under under control scenarios, it's doable by the average person, no doubt. But like you said, you just need to be careful and cross your T's and out your eyes. Yeah, it can hurt you. But if you're careful, it can make some wonderful things for your skin, as I know. And as you know, and as all your customers know. Oh, yes, it's.

07:17
And once they start using it, they find it hard to switch back to regular stuff. It's interesting. Mm hmm. Yup. We were out of hours for about a month and I basically begged my husband to make a new batch because I was like, I can't use the store bought soap with all the things I can't pronounce because it makes my skin itch, please make some new soap. And he did. Yes. What a gentleman. What a nice guy.

07:44
Yes, yes, he is a wonderful man and I showed him what it was doing to my skin on my arm and he was like, oh my god, you have like dry skin on your arm. I said, I have dry skin all over me. I need our soap back. He was like, okay, I'm on.

08:03
Thanks. And if you have all your supplies ready, you know, it's just time and curing. And that's the other thing is the patients, at least on my part, it's just the patient. I give them a pretty extended cure time. I don't have any instant cure with just the three ingredients. So I have a one month, at least a one month wait on mine, depending on how fast and all that fun stuff, you know, how fast it's curing.

08:30
Yeah, we give ours four to six weeks. If I can wait the six weeks, I will. But if I want it in four weeks, it's going to get used in four weeks. So Yeah, I think that's the that was even at first speaking of the learning curve. I was always nervous, like, you know, all my instructions and everything I had studied on it says, you know, you have to allow it this minimum amount of time. And I was like, if you touch that, it's gonna hurt you. And I was very careful. But I learned that yes, it's not gonna

08:58
be the end of me if I do it right at that cutoff point. Yeah, and what most people don't know about Lysol is that the reason you let it cure is because it has to get rid of some of the moisture. If you don't let it cure, then the bar gets all soft and squishy in the shower or the bathtub and it goes away faster. That's why you let it cure. Ah, yes. Well, hey, I'm learning new stuff every day. I thought it was all the

09:26
All the stuff mixing together, I had to do its magic and harden more. No.

09:35
Oh, please go ahead. No, it will not hurt you. We cut our bars 24 hours after they've been poured. And then that starts the drying process. But really what it is, is the soap bar will last longer, more uses, if it's dried for at least four weeks. Ah, I gotcha. Fantastic. Yeah, you can touch lye soap 24 hours after it's done its job,

10:05
Good to know. And it won't burn. The fun thing is I enjoy cup logo.

10:13
Okay. Good to know. Yeah, I have a couple of clients that have all, it's a wonderful thing because I enjoy always learning new stuff like this. And then I have a couple of clients who are very, very knowledgeable. One even worked at a dial factory for 20 years. There's been a wealth of knowledge and teaching me some of the other things. Just, it's a whole world of you can.

10:43
You can do the basics and make yourself soap or you like you said, you can really. Um, get down into the, the, the chemical processes and you know, like, it's like a science experiment, basically. Yeah. And we make our soap differently than you do. We don't use milk or goat's milk or anything. We use essential oils in ours and we use coconut oil and olive oil and all those wonderful things.

11:11
Olive oil that's why when I first started I was using olive oil as one of my bases and I still have the one of my Batches I made I still have two bars left and that was from like seven years ago They're still good. I don't know. I don't know what I had some sort of magic and I didn't write it down. I wish I didn't know Yeah, there's all kinds of recipes on the internet that will will give you new ways to make so

11:40
Yes. Okay, so enough about soap. Tell me about your goats. I've talked to a lot of people about goats on the podcast, but tell me about your goats. Our goats, I ended up coming back here during the career change, working, I spent a year on a dairy farm, goat dairy farm, who was producing milk for Mount Cheve, which was a, at the time they've been bought out since they large cheese producer. So they would, you know,

12:08
have tankers come and get all their milk. So I kind of learned my, earned my stars there. And I have alpine goats. And they're known for their high protein content and the high milk production. I figured if that was, if I was gonna be bottling and selling milk, I'd like to have the goats that make the most milk naturally. And yeah, so from there, I,

12:36
Got approved. Got a facility built. Found my own space. Got to Milken, got approved to be grade A and here we are, Easy Peasy. Okay, Easy Peasy sounds really nice but I bet it wasn't as Easy Peasy as you're making it sound like it was.

12:57
It did happen to take 18 months. It took a year and a half to get approved to be grade A with visits from the USDA and the inspectors and, you know, rebuild like changing outdoors and adding, you know, the room had to have an office, it had to have restrooms, it had to have extra sinks. So there was quite a bit of construction on top of what I initially thought would make the cut and getting the equipment.

13:26
just as so to get it to where I'm comfortable operating it. So there was a few wrenches thrown in the mill before I got her up and running just the way I like it. But at the end of the day, you're just getting milk in the bottle, but you gotta get approved to be testing it and all these fun things. Yeah, how many goats do you have, John?

13:54
Right now I am, where did I, well we just had babies. So there's 32 new babies at the moment. There's still a couple coming. And that's on top of my 61 goats. So that would put me in 93, I believe was my count last night. Nice, that is a goat herd. It's a full house right at the moment. So.

14:19
During kidding season, we can each go, essentially have triplets and I could have, you know, 180 goats in there.

14:28
but only a few twins and a few singles. Okay. So I'm guessing you're not milking by hand. You are machine milking. I have, yes. I have an individual pump that does the same thing that those giant, you know, rotating turrets do, you see on YouTube. And one at a time. And I think it allows for, you know, good inspection of the animal. And

14:59
and still make things somewhat timely. I've tried doing two at a time and I end up spending the same amount of time just fighting back and forth with the two of them. Okay. Anyone who's listened to my podcast up till right now knows that I love baby goats. So the idea of over 20 baby goats in one season just makes me giggle. I love it. They are in full 100% cute.

15:28
cute mode at the moment. They're, you know, cleaned up and fluffy and exploring and bouncing and twisting and doing all the fun baby goat stuff that first these first couple weeks. And that's kind of how I differentiate myself from the pack. A lot of, um, yeah, let's say my friends from my, I'm my Amish buddy. They'd pull the kids and bottle feed them and get milk in the goats right away. I keep the kids on the nannies on their mothers.

15:56
to have mother's milk for several weeks before they wean. So it's kind of a different way of doing things, but it's how I get it done.

16:07
So is it like with dairy cows where they do the calf share, where the calf can nurse and then you can also milk? Is that the same thing? Yes, I can do that. Towards the end of it, at the beginning, I'm kind of letting them have free rein and just keeping an eye on the mom to make sure she's okay with it. But yes, they can be milked twice.

16:37
as personal preference at that point. Uh-huh. And I guess if it's goats, it's a kid's share, not a calf's share. But you know what I'm saying. Correct. There are a lot of interchangeable words there. We can't have no offense taken. We'll just call it baby animal share. And that'll cover the whole thing. OK. So I had a question. Oh. Can you sell raw?

17:07
goat's milk in Illinois or does it have to be pasteurized? Now, once if you plan to sell in stores or at the farmers market, it has to be pasteurized. Now, there's people who have a license to sell raw, off-farm, direct, but that's all they can sell. They can't make additional products to sell in stores, so on and so forth.

17:32
If someone wanted raw milk from you, can they come to your farm and get it from you? Or is that not allowed? No, all the inspectors frown upon it and it's not allowed because I am running the grade A and they don't want those crow mingling. They don't want the dangerous raw milk to be near my good pasteurized milk. But that's just, I like that I'm a proponent of the raw milk movement.

18:02
I believe on a lot of its attributes. But I think I found the happy medium where I pasteurize at the lowest legally allowed temperature, at the lowest temperature for the shortest amount of time to do its minimal interference with that, with the enzymes and the things like that advocates are looking for. Okay.

18:28
It's so weird because so many states have so many different laws regarding raw milk, whether it's goat or sheep or cow. Oh yeah.

18:39
And even until I got into it, I had no idea how much went into that. But it is, there's, there's quite a bit of, uh, regulatory things and just differences state to state, which is why I'm right on the border of Iowa. And Iowa is a great market and everybody, you know, a lot of my customers come from Iowa into Illinois. You know, like, why don't you just sell in Illinois and Iowa? Well, I'm licensed in Illinois.

19:09
So I cannot cross state lines and I can't just say, well, I wanna sell in Iowa too and get licensed. I have to become an international seller at that point and be licensed in every state. So I looked into that, you know, I know the rules for Alaska, Hawaii, Delaware, Puerto Rico, Florida. You have to be able to, you can do one state or all states. Okay, I see.

19:39
In Minnesota, the farmers can sell goat milk, cow milk, whatever, as long as people come to their farm with their own container. Yes. And that's what, that's some, and some states where they do let you do raw milk, you have to bring your own, some states say bring your own bottle. Some states say, yeah, there's a myriad of.

20:06
Very interesting things like that like if you have your own bottle, that's gonna make all the difference Yep, okay. So we've talked about goats. We've talked about soap. We've talked about rules Did I see that you just became engaged? Yes, I am recently engaged. I am Pretty longtime girlfriend here, Kayla. We're excited. We haven't set a date. We kind of have to work around the milking schedule Yep

20:35
That's exciting. Well, congratulations. Thank you very much. I love love. I love, I especially love new love. I've been married for over 20 years and that new love becomes, I don't want to call it old love, but it becomes, it becomes a, it becomes a deep love, if that makes sense, like a deeper, more everyday, more, less insanity.

21:05
It evolves a bit. Yeah, yeah. My husband and I have been married for over 20 years. And now when he goes to work in the morning, it's like, I love you, drive safe, have a good day and a quick peck on the lips and out he goes to work. And then when he gets home, the way I express my affection is that dinner is ready when he walks in the door or at least 10 minutes after he walks in the door. Always. It's not that I missed you all day. It's the dinner is ready. You must be hungry. Would you like to eat?

21:35
Yes, so for sure. Yes, we get to enjoy that honeymoon phase love as I said, yeah and enjoy it Fall. Yep. Enjoy it because it lasts about five years and then life life becomes life, you know As a dairy farmer I look forward to having a nice schedule Yeah, that's

22:06
Go ahead. We like having that structure and that reliable schedule, at least the milking schedule. It kind of spills over into life. Yeah, routine is good. Did I also see that you lost a farm dog and that you now have a new farm dog? Yeah. Well, we had lost one farm dog and then another had become injured.

22:34
his replacement had become injured. So I got another dog to team up with him. So now I have Paw Paw and Jack Straw. Oh, I didn't know about Jack Straw. He is 11 months old and he's a little hot with me at the moment and he just got snips. Yeah, good job. Good plan. We're still making friends again. Yeah, they don't appreciate that very much. And they're Pyrenees, right?

23:04
Pyranids, great pyranids, yes. Excellent livestock, gardening dog, known for their, you know, guarding the herd, late night prowling, watching the farm. Just a classic livestock. They're bred for this. They're in their elements. Yes, they're wonderful dogs. Our friends have two right now. And they are big dogs, but they are big loves. So it's always nice to be around them.

23:34
They definitely um, by me for my attention, but um, they're learning to get along as brothers as well, which is fun and challenging. And are they, are they good about the goats? Are they good with herding them? They do a nice wide herd is their style. So it's a pretty good size circle watching the goats.

24:04
But yes, when I leave, I know that they're in good hands. Never had any coyote issues out here yet. Knock on wood. Very nice. Okay. So I have another question about the goats that just popped into my head. If you have 30 something new babies already, and you have a few more do, do you keep, do you keep all of those or do you sell them? A lot of them get to find new farms.

24:34
Either have them just for maintaining their farm and the fences and like him having them as livestock pets and others that are full scale milk operations, one few. And yes, so that's who's getting the. You know, but I will keep some of the girls from the moms who are, you know, high producers and my facility can handle about 75 full grown goats.

25:04
So that's where I like to keep it. Yeah, I mean you could have hundreds of goats, but you would run out of time and energy. And you know, space is an issue. They can start getting some illnesses and things of that sort. If they're too compact, I strive to keep the goats living as close to as they would in nature on my farm.

25:32
you know, obviously with the human hand intervening, but as close as I possibly can get them to, as they would be in nature here on the farm. Okay. And how many male, how many bucks do you have? One man does all the work out here. Wow. Elvis is his name and he's a second year buck, son of a Bojangles and he's...

26:00
He's the lucky dog who has a lot of work on his plate in the fall.

26:08
He's a busy boy, yes. And that was the other question I had. Do you just have one season of babies or do you do a second round of them? I do one breeding. So he's withheld all year and then when they go into their fall heat is when I expose them to the buck. Okay, cool. Yeah, cause some people do have two sets of babies a year, but it's a lot. It's a lot to try to handle all that. And it's...

26:37
And it's something I would like to do, because I've been a seasonal producer, I have to reintroduce my, a lot of my customers have to be reintroduced every year to the product. Whereas somebody going year round, it's just their year round and they continue purchasing and so on and so forth. But breeding year round would allow me that opportunity to have the year round milk. But my facility.

27:05
is set up just for the seasonal production. We would need quite a bit of build out for, to be able to.

27:16
have it have it done that way to be year-round, excuse me. Uh-huh, okay. All right, I meant to mention this before we started recording and I didn't when we're done recording, don't leave because I need your file to upload from your side too. I will edit that out. And John, I try to keep these to half an hour but I really feel like we've gotten what I needed out of this. I'm so thankful that you had the time to talk with me because this has been really interesting. I found out new things today.

27:47
Well, I appreciate you having me on and taking time to give us the invite. And this is the first time I've ever been on a podcast. So I'm very excited. Was it fun? Did you enjoy it? I had a great time. Thank you so much. Good. And you got to get out to Illinois to come out and have some chocolate goat milk or some plain goat milk and some soaps and see how I stack up. Yeah. Chocolate goat milk sounds really good. Oh yeah. You can give that a quick plug. I did.

28:12
I scored a top 10 finish in the World Chocolate Milk Championships. So how did that work? How did you even get into that? Through some of the dairy letters that I get through the USDA, I saw that they had milk tasting competitions and butter tasting competitions every year. And I said, hey, there's one for milk and chocolate milk. So I was interested to see how my chocolate milk stacked up against the competition. And um...

28:41
So I signed up and did all the paperwork and mailed off the first set of samples. And it was all these, I was mailing bottles of milk for like two weeks, two months, making sure they have, everybody had a chance to taste it and got her going and, uh, scored really high, which I was very impressed with. So that, that leads me to the last question. What kind of chocolate are you using the flavor? Your chocolate milk? Oh, the top secret I use.

29:10
I spare no expense. I use a very high quality. I worked with a local chocolatier who's been making custom chocolates for 25 years. And I tasted chocolates from all over the world. And the one I locked down is pretty good stuff, I believe. And maybe that's what does it, but it's real, it's a real 100% cacao. And it gives it a very unique flavor in that. So maybe that's what I can just.

29:38
divulge is it's a hundred percent cacao and it's a um real cane sugar not too much magic but um Where you source your chocolate from I feel has a difference I would I would imagine it probably does so top 10 percent. Is that what you said? Oh, no, it's a top 10 out of everybody top down out of everybody. That is amazing. There's a few hundred in there So I felt really um Really honored for that one

30:07
Well, congratulations twice in the same podcast. That's pretty cool. Appreciate that. All right, John, you have a fantastic day and thank you again. Thank you, Mary. You have a great day.