Jenny Butcher and Wes Kuntz milk, process and sell all their dairy on site
By Jackie Clark
Staff Writer
Farms.com
Recently, Jenny Butcher and Wes Kuntz of Little Brown Cow Dairy Farm and Store were named Ontario’s Outstanding Young Farmers for 2021.
They were surprised and grateful to receive the honour, Butcher told Farms.com.
“It’s such a neat competition because the (entrants) are from such diversified backgrounds,” she explained. “It’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, to compare one set of circumstances to another.”
While watching the other competitors’ presentations, “I said an audible ‘wow’ several times,” she added. “We’re very fortunate that we were the ones that were chosen.”
Little Brown Cow is in Brantford.
“We have a dairy farm, and we milk cows with a cheese plant and creamery beside our dairy farm, where all of our milk is processed,” Butcher explained. “What makes us extremely unique in the dairy processing world is that 100 per cent of what we process is sold out of our farm gate store.”
Butcher and Kuntz started the farm in 2008 “in a rented barn and a rented house trailer, without any assets to our name,” she said.
They worked to start generating a positive cash flow, and then tightening margins and improving efficiency, until their operation was able to expand to the farm, processing centre, and store they run today.
“When people come to our farm, they’re able to eat food that was made on the ground that they stand on,” Butcher said. “We provide a connection to people, to agriculture, to life, to real. We feel that that’s one of the things that’s missing in this world is that connection to real life. So, what we’re most proud of on our farm is that we offer that connection to nature, life, agriculture, all in one package, to our customer base.”
A new barn is the next major project on the list for Ontario’s 2021 Outstanding Young Farmers.
“We’ve known that we need a new barn for a long time, it’s been on the horizon for a while,” Butcher said. “we’re currently working hard to try to understand how to incorporate that barn into our existing customer base, how to make the new barn a gift to our community, and to continue that connection that we’ve developed with our people.”