Farm Life
To most people family is everything, and to us the farm is our family. This farm has been here in Powers since 1946 is when Kenneth Benson started the Benson farm. He started the farm with Jerseys he purchased from his dad from the Benson farm in Carney. In 1978 Charles Benson bought the farm from his dad. In 2023 Allen and Krystal purchased the farm from his parents. In 2025 we made the hard decision to stop shipping milk commercially to Jilbert’s in Marquette MI. Initially the decision was made because of the mounting repairs and lack of money to fix much of anything without also going behind on paying the monthly bills.
I weighed the options of starting a herd share or not milking cows at all and just selling heifers once they had their calves. In October I decided to do the herd share and got my first customers coming to the farm to get milk. This decision allowed me and my husband to continue working our off the farm jobs while also allowing us to spend more time with the kids.
Why Raw milk? Many people search for raw milk for the health benefits. But To us raw milk has always been about family. Milking cows has been done on this farm since the and has built multiple generations of hard working kids. It took a lot of time and research to figure out how to shift our commercial dairy into safe and clean raw milk production. At first I thought it was going to be so easy to do, but I learned quickly that it wasn’t. Keeping the cows clean takes more work, cleaning their udders to get every bit of debris off them is harder, taking apart equipment on a regular basis for cleaning is essential, but even more importantly is the testing. Testing milk for quality was a process, testing for diseases and mastitis was expensive but worth every penny. Sure commercial dairy does these things to a degree, but Raw producers are doing all of this monthly or more. Where commercial might only do it yearly. of semi annually.
My kids saw a whole new side of dairy farming. They watched their parents learn valuable skills of evaluation, problem solving, and dedication. Every challenge I have faced my kids have watched me work through. Now that we have gotten into a routine and process, they are helping more with moving the cows, feeding, and cleaning. They were so use to the way we did things before they were unsure of how to do things in the barn a new way.
Now we are able to share our farm with our community too. This journey is still new to us, but I know that we will only keep growing. Our love for our kids and our connection to our community is stronger than ever.
