State Fair: Dairy farmers at staple of Minnesota

Several staples here at the fair for a lot of families. That means maybe grabbing a cup at the all-you-can-drink milk stand or lining up for a malt at the Dairy Goodness Bar. And you don't think about it much, but behind every malt, cheese curd, glass of milk is a Minnesota Dairy Farm family working around the clock every day of the year. Joining us now is one of those, dairy farmer Kevin Korbel. First of all, tell us about your farm and how you contribute to this industry. First of all, Randy and Simone, I really appreciate you guys having me on the show here today. So today, I'm representing Midwest Dairy. I've been volunteering here the last couple days here at the state fair. Last night, I was at the Eco Experience Building, where I was doing dairy trivia to a lot of state fair goers. And this morning, I was also volunteering at the Miracle of Birth Center. But when I'm not there, I actually come from a third-generation dairy farm out of Lawnsill, Minnesota, where I farm, where we raise corn and soybeans and also milk 120, well, we milk 140 dairy cows there. And then we, that's all ran with my folks along with my siblings. And on top of that, I have my own ice cream business. Wow. Oh, I know. We're going to talk about that. Yep. And so I'm a co-owner of ice cream business with my udder buddy, Jameson. And it's called Udder Buddies. Yeah. And we actually make ice cream with the milk from our farm. And it's all made at the University of Minnesota pilot plant. Nice. And as you can tell, the I Love Milk, you've got to tell people, you've got to show people your shirt. Yeah. The I Love Milk shirt that he has right now. Let's talk about the industry a little bit. So the industry has faced some hard times over the last several years or so. So maybe can you talk about just the state of the dairy farming here in Minnesota and also what it's like maybe for the smaller farms? Sure. And I think everybody can agree that there's challenges in a lot of different industries in the state of Minnesota right now. There's a lot of positives to look at in the state of Minnesota. We're still top six for number of total cows that we have in the industry right now and also amount of milk pounds that we produce. From a small farm angle, we do everything we can to make sure that the cow is number one at our farm. So we make sure it has food, shelter, and water every chance we can get. In fact, we tend to take care of them better more than ourselves sometimes out there. Lots of farmers do that, especially dairy farmers. Looking at some photos, too, of you. OK, let's talk about ice cream. Yes. You mentioned it briefly, Utter Buddy's ice cream. How did that come about? Yeah, so it all started in December of 2022. Me and my co-partner, Jameson, just had this bright idea to start making ice cream. And I took milk from my family's dairy farm, which is five minutes away from Jameson's place. And we took milk out of my family's ball tank and we took Jameson's 1940s ice cream maker with the cake on it. I remember. And we made it the first time and we made some of the worst ice cream we ever made in our entire lives. What does the worst ice cream taste like? What does it taste like? It's just very hard frozen. Oh. It just didn't have really gritty texture. But we got a lot better at it. And then eventually, we had something going and we called the University of Minnesota pilot plant to see if they could take us on. And we've been making ice cream there ever since for the last three years. So you set the 1940s ice cream maker aside? Yeah, for now. Yeah, nice. And maybe for people who haven't been out here to the fair yet, what can people find when they visit the dairy building? How would you describe it? Yep, so there's a lot of good options here at the dairy building. More specifically, the Dairy Goodness Bar has been my favorite one here at the fair. A very notable new item here at the fair this year has been the Moose Soda Apple Pie, which from an ice cream lover myself, I had to dabble at that to make sure that that was good. And it passed the test. Did it? I'm a little bit biased, you know, coming from an ice cream business myself. Exactly. But it was almost as good as everybody's. Nice. If not equal, so. Well, Kevin, we appreciate your contributions, not only to the dairy industry, but to the folks around here. And good luck with Utter Buddies and the farm, right? We know it's a lot of work. Yeah, appreciate it. And shout out to everybody in Lawn Sluts watching here today. I know a lot of people said they'd be watching, so I really appreciate it. That was our town ball stop a couple years ago. Well, yeah, thanks so much for being with us. We appreciate it. Thank you for having me on. Appreciate it. All right.