The Sassy Cow

One thing I really like about living in Wisconsin is that they're all about dairy. Lots of little dairy farms with red barns all over the place. Some of them have their own little creameries, where you can buy all sorts of milk, cheese and other dairy products. Even regular grocery stores have a huge cheese selection. They take their cheese very seriously here.

Our current favorite is about 10 minutes up the road, in Columbus, called Sassy Cow Creamery. They have two farms they use for milk, each owned by a brother in the family. One is an organic farm, and the other is traditional. They sell the milk in the local grocery stores.

They were having an ice cream social on Aug 25th, and since the kids and I had been up there for ice cream the week before, we decided to take the whole family and John's parents who were up for something else, and check it out.

It was a big to-do, and we had to park way down the road. They had tours of the diary where they process the milk. Inside the store, they have big windows into the diary so you can watch them making cheese and ice cream. If you're there on the right days, you can watch the guy stretching the string cheese. 

Meghan, John Sr., Sam, and John getting ready to go inside for the tour.

John, of course, knew what all the pipes and machines were for, and he said he had never seen such a small pasteurizer before. We got to watch them make ice cream, though we were in the back and couldn't see well, and really we got to hear them make ice cream. But we had John with us, so we could just ask him questions.

Ruby and I went on the hay ride that went around the field.

On the hayride.

They had a big long row of tractors for kids to climb on. They had signs on the front telling what kind of tractor it was and the year. I didn't note them. Sorry.

Ruby on a tractor.

Meghan playing a cranky old man on a tractor.

John and Sam next to a John Deere. They had been to a church softball game in the morning, which Sam dressed up for.

We had ice cream and chocolate milk (their chocolate milk is super yummy). I had the root beer float flavor on a waffle cone. It was sooo good. They had buses taking people over to the farm for farm tours, but we kept missing them, and then we were really hot and tired and decided to skip the farm tour and head home.

But this is our new favorite little dairy and ice cream shop. Just thinking about it makes me hungry!