10/28/2026
🐄 Did you know October is National Co-op Month?
One of the questions we get asked most often is, "Where does your milk go after it leaves the farm?"
Usually, the milk from our cows heads to a cheese plant in Luana, Iowa, where it gets turned into delicious dairy products like Swiss cheese and cream cheese.
🚧 But earlier this month, things took a little detour!
The cheese plant where our milk normally goes needed some repairs. And since cows don't take a day off from making milk, it had to go somewhere!
That's where the beauty of being part of a cooperative comes in!
As farmer-owners of Prairie Farms Dairy, we work together with 550+ dairy farmers from across the Midwest to get our milk from the farm to your table. Our cooperative handles the transportation, processing, marketing, and selling of the milk we work hard to produce every day.
So when the cheese plant needed repairs, our co-op's team simply made other arrangements. Instead of becoming cheese, our milk was redirected to be bottled and served to schoolchildren in Dubuque, Iowa!
And the best part? It all happened seamlessly. We kept caring for our cows, the milk truck kept showing up, and our milk continued on its journey to nourish people as milk instead of cheese this time.
That's cooperation in action!
Being part of a cooperative means we can do so much more together than we could on our own. We get to focus on what we do best—caring for our cows and producing quality milk—while working alongside people whose specialties are everything that happens after the milk leaves our farm.
It's also a reminder that behind every gallon of milk, block of cheese, or carton of school milk are a whole lot of people working together!
We're proud to be farmer-owners of Prairie Farms and grateful for all the people who help get our milk from our farm to your family. ❤️
