Cook's Farm Dairy

🐮☕Cows & Coffee! Now serving Abeantogo coffee, lattes, mochas, and more until 4pm Mon-Sun! Guided by a faith, family values, and hard work, the Cook family has been producing Grade A dairy products since 1933. Meet Stella (#64). One of our eldest and highest producing cows. She has been with the farm for quite sometime and like all of our cows is truly the star of the show. We couldn't be more thankful for them as provide the community with high-quality dairy. Want to meet them in-person or taste their delicious dairy? Our products are all authentically fresh from Ortonville, Michigan where we grow corn for our cattle feed, milk the cows, and make our sweet ice cream. Find your place on the farm by applying to join the Cook's Farm family. Stay in Clarkston and work for his father, Ben Miller, at a Ford dealership he owned located on Main Street in the downtown area, or move north to a farm in Brandon Township. He moved north. Over the years Miller added on to the 100-acre farm located at 2950 Seymour Lake Road, which included milk cows. He purchased his first tractor in 1941. In the 1950's an unfortunate turn of events happened and the family dairy barn burned down. It was time to rebuild. In 1977 Clark Cook won Sr. Showmanship in diary. Also winning Top Showman in beef, swine, sheep, and goats. Leading him to become the Overall Showman of the 1977 Fair Awards. As an agricultural student at Michigan State University during the fall of 1979, Clark was given a class assignment to write a comprehensive business plan using the family farm that would, in theory, increase profits. At that time Cook’s Farm was selling their milk to the Michigan Milk Producers Association, a cooperative owned and controlled by dairy farmers throughout the state. Clark’s plan was to halt selling the milk to the MMPA and construct a processing plant for the 300 gallons of milk they produced each day at the farm. The plan also incorporated the idea of putting milk into plastic bags, popular in Canada at the time and creating a drive-up window for local customers to purchase the farm fresh milk. “I received a 92 percent grade on the project—second highest grade in the class,” recalls Clark. “Then I came home and built the plant—breaking ground in 1981,” he said. “In February 1982 we sold our first gallon of milk to area resident George Miller. The idea was to have farm fresh milk with a drive-up window—about 70 percent of our business picked it up that way.” "About a year later milk sales were down—the plastic bags were hard to promote," added Clark. "So in 1983 we started making ice cream with the extra milk—producing about 135 gallons per hour in plastic tubs." A very special day in history of the farm when we had triplets born at the farm. Farming was becoming more obsolete in the 1980's we decided to open the farm to the public to see how our operations worked. We opened the farm for our guests to pet the cows and began giving tours to local schools and organizations. We even booked Santa for visits during the holiday season. "The ice cream will stay the same—the recipe is a family secret—but due to plastic costs the tubs will be replaced with a new multi-color paper container to mark the 30-year anniversary. We have 20 flavors of ice cream that we churn at a slower rate and with double the ingredients for flavor—we’re not cutting back on quality." In the 90's Michigan Governor, John Engler visited the farm along with Michigan state representative Tom Middleton Every now and then the farm is used for various productions including Kid Rock's Born Free music video. Thank you to all of our loyal customers and fans who have made our ice cream the best of the best year after year in The Citizen, Oakland Press and more! In 2020 we installed a Lely milking machine. Since adding the milking machine, not only has milk production increased, we have also seen in increase in our cows health and reproductivity. In 2023 we celebrated our 90 year