Featured Breeder
 

EVERYONE SCREAMS FOR ICE CREAM

Milking R builds Sutton Milk brand with direct marketing

By Danielle Nauman

OKEECHOBEE, Fla. – Spurred forward by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Rucks family of Milking R Dairy took the leap into processing and direct marketing of their milk, launching Sutton Milk and Ice Cream.

Milking R is a fifth-generation, family-owned dairy farm operated by Sutton and Kris Rucks and their children Lindsey and Garrett. Well known to the Brown Swiss breed for their RAD-ical Genetics show herd, the Rucks operate their 1,450-cow dairy in south Florida, near Okeechobee.

Promoting agriculture, particularly the dairy industry and their own farm in their increasingly urban area, is something the Rucks family has always placed importance on. They began opening their farm for visitors and tours in the past few years, and creating agritourism events to help share their story. They even built a playground area on the farm, as a draw for families with small children. In a typical year, before COVID, the Rucks would host over 1,500 students for school tours.

“Even before the pandemic, there was an increased interest in consumers who wanted to know where their food was coming from, and how it was being made,” Lindsey Rucks said. “Dad saw the writing on the wall, and decided to run with it. We connected with a local processor to bottle our milk, with our label. That is how Sutton Milk was born. The name comes from my great-grandmother’s maiden name. She is the matriarch of our family, and together with her father, started the family’s farm.”

Fortunately the seed had been planted early enough in Sutton’s mind. The family had managed to purchase a food trailer and secure all the necessary permits to begin their direct-marketing business before COVID affected those areas of local government.

For a couple of years, Sutton had been slowly stepping back from some of his hands-on role in barns, turning over much of the direct herd management to his children. That opened him up for his new role on the farm. Lindsey now calls her father ‘The Milk Man.’

“Dad pretty much delivers milk seven days a week,” Lindsey said.

The Rucks have partnered with about 50 restaurants, coffee shops, small stores and produce stands to market their milk, as well as selling it in their on-farm store, along with their ice cream and ground beef.

While Sutton oversees the milk marketing, Lindsey has largely taken the reins of the ice cream making. With the addition of those two enterprises, Kris oversees the farm, ensuring that everything runs smoothly, while Garrett has taken over many of Lindsey’s duties in the barns.

The hard, hand-mixed and hand-packed ice cream is made on-farm, using a 14% pasteurized mix a local creamery prepares for them, using the milk produced at Milking R. The whole family gets into the creative process, helping to develop recipes for new and unique flavors.

While they are not all in stock at any given time, the Rucks have developed a library of about 45 different flavors they have developed, which they rotate in and out. Each batch of a particular flavor makes about 35 pints, and they typically make 200 pints of a flavor each time, which Lindsey says is generally about a two-week supply.

Quality is a paramount concern on Lindsey’s mind when it comes to her ice cream, and she takes pride in that. “I only use top quality ingredients and I don’t skimp on them,” Lindsey said. “I hate when you get something like cookie dough ice cream and there is hardly any cookie dough. The base of our cookie dough ice cream tastes like cookie dough and it is loaded with cookie dough chunks, all the way through.”

To go along with the top-notch ingredients, the Rucks create unique combinations and creative, memorable names, including Fifty Shades of Chocolate and Natural Blonde.

One of their most popular flavors is Garrett’s concoction of Banana Puddin’ ice cream. “I have to give credit where credit is due, Garrett really perfected that one,” Lindsey said. “It has real bananas and vanilla wafers and is really so good.”

Lindsey has developed a few flavors of what she calls adult ice cream, for the over-21 crowd. “Just the other day I created a new one called Cat 5 Hurricane,” Lindsey said. “It has passion fruit, orange juice, and both light and dark rum. We have another one called Watermelon Crawl made with tequila.”

The one thing missing from their current repertoire is a simple vanilla ice cream, but due to customer requests, Lindsey said she is working to create the perfect version of the time-honored classic.

“Our mission is that no one walks away unsatisfied,” Lindsey said. “You’ll never find just three pecans in your butter pecan ice cream if it has our label on it.”

The Rucks began selling the ice cream taking orders online, with on-farm pick up. “It was crazy. We could sell 500 pints in three minutes,” Lindsey said. “At first we couldn’t build inventory, we were making ice cream almost 24 hours a day to keep up with those orders.”

In the early days of the ice cream business, the Rucks benefited from family and friends who were off of work due to the pandemic, to help keep up with demand. They eventually caught up and were able to start building an inventory, allowing customers to simply visit the store and make their purchases.

“We have seen such a shift in people wanting to buy locally produced food and support local farmers since the beginning of the pandemic,” Lindsey said. “We really hope that will maintain. We believe it will. We give them a great product, and in return they want to support us.