Tracy DeBacker is all about local. Local food, local milk, local vendors, local artisans, and even locally made waffle cones for the ice cream her family's dairy makes.
And, it appears,
DeBacker Family Dairy customers are too, as the glass bottles of milk produced on the U.P. farm disappear so fast from grocery store shelves, you have to go on just the right day to get some.
If you've wondered where the old-fashioned creamline, glass-bottled milk is coming from in your local grocery store, it's just a few miles outside of Stephenson, in a little hamlet called Daggett. The DeBackers bought their farm there six years ago with the help of a federal Young Farmers loan, and just started pumping out the milk, ice cream and cheese curds this March.
The milk is sold in stores as far north in the U.P. as Houghton and as far south as Menominee, and has made a pretty sizeable dent in Marquette County stores as well. The DeBackers also make cheese curds and premium (as in, 10 percent cream versus the typical 8 percent) ice cream, but right now they aren't made in enough quantity to sell on the scale of the milk; they're just available from the farm itself.
The milk, with its layer of cream floating on top, does come in skim, 1 percent, 2 percent and whole varieties, along with an irresistible chocolate milk. While the older folks among us might remember milk like this from their childhood, Tracy says there's a learning curve for many would-be customers, who often need just a little more information before downing a glass.
"One of the biggest things is education," she says.
Sometimes that means explaining their milk-bottling process, which includes pasteurization, as required by law, but not homogenization, which many customers have come to expect from the milk in the grocery store. Homogenization means the cream and milk are mixed together at high speeds until the fat in the cream is broken down into the milk and distributed evenly, rather than floating in a layer on top. It's also vat-pasteurized rather than ultra-pasteurized; ultra-pasteurization heats milk to a much higher temperature before it's packaged, which gives milk a much longer shelf life, but kills "good" bacteria along with the bad.
Sometimes, it means mentioning a fact highly prized by some.
"Lactose-intolerant people can usually drink our milk," says Tracy. "One lady who hadn't had milk or ice cream in years came in and just ate the biggest bowl of ice cream. She was so happy."
Sometimes, it's reaching the right audience; some former Jilbert's Dairy customers have switched in order to buy their milk locally, since the once-family-owned Marquette dairy was bought by national conglomerate Dean Foods in 2006.
Tracy, originally from Gwinn, and Terry DeBacker, originally from Watson (where he grew up on a dairy farm) are raising six daughters, ages 16 to two, along with building their dairy business.
"We decided to try to do something with what we already had," says Tracy. "We had about 200 cows here, and more land available."
Build it, they certainly have; what was a dirt-floored machine shed last year, is now a new concrete-floored dairy facility with sparkling-clean, food-grade equipment. Tracy and Terry do much of the work of dairying themselves, with help from their oldest daughters, who man the cash register and ice cream counter when needed.
If you visit the farm store, that's when the DeBackers' commitment to local shows through. In the freezer are locally processed and packed meats, chicken and pizzas. On the shelves are locally made soaps--medicinal, felted, cosmetic and laundry--from Daggett, handmade knit socks, and handmade bath products, all from U.P. crafters.
When you get an ice cream cone from the farm, it's even in a homemade waffle cone, ingeniously double-wrapped at the bottom to prevent drippage, which is made right over in Menominee.
The energy and drive behind the success of the dairy farm is evident when Tracy talks about how the business has grown from unsure beginnings. Even though the DeBackers are only months into milk production, they're looking toward the future.
"We'd like to add more cheeses," says Tracy, but the goals don't stop there. She's also looking into making drinkable yogurts with fruit puree added, looking at expanding the dairy's distribution into Wisconsin (a whole new set of regulations to get through), and, of course, supporting other local businesses all along the way.
Kim Hoyum is a freelance writer based in the Upper Peninsula. She is a regular writer for several weekly and monthly publications and recently started her own travel blog. Hoyum is a graduate of Northern Michigan University where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts in writing.All photos by managing photographer Shawn Malone. She can be reached via email.