The Marcoot Jersey Creamery in Greenville, Illinois, is a seventh-generation family-owned dairy farm.
Beth Marcoot, the farm’s manager, said the farm dates back to the mid-1800s. In 1840, their ancestors, the “Markut” family, set sail from Switzerland to New Orleans, navigating the Mississippi River and finding their home in the Bond-Madison County region of southern Illinois.
Marcoot said that by the mid-1800s, their forebears were already tending to Jersey cattle, and that letterheads from the “Marcoot Jersey Farm” dating back to the 1850s bear witness to that legacy. In 1954, her grandparents bought the farm, and her dad John Marcoot took over after he graduated from high school.
In 2007, John and Linda Marcoot offered their daughters the choice to continue the dairy or pursue their own educational paths at college.
Amy and Beth Marcoot both went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Amy earned her master’s degree in counseling from Eastern Illinois University while Beth pursued a master’s degree in therapeutic recreation at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.
But their interest still lay with the farm. The girls started researching different options, including whether the farm could sustain multiple families, if they could sell the cows or sell the land. Ultimately, they decided to add value by establishing a creamery.
They opened for business in 2010. They have 20 varieties of cheese ranging from fresh cheddar cheese curds to aged cheeses.
Amy Marcoot oversees the creamery and the sisters’ long-time friend Audie Wall is the vice president of manufacturing. They employ up to 20 people at a time. Linda Marcoot is a certified dietician, so she is the quality assurance coordinator, and John still works every day on the farm.
The Marcoot sisters learned how to make cheese by taking classes, as well as through trial and error.
In 2017, Amy Marcoot worked with Wall to brainstorm what they could do with the whey left over from the cheese-making process. Wall introduced them to Extreme Ice, a frozen treat crafted from crushed fruit, whey and whey isolate that has 20 grams of protein in 5 ounces.
At that time, they also started Dog-O’s Cheesy Chompers, a dried cheese treat made for dogs, and Ice Ice Doggy, an ice cream for dogs.
And to expand their consumer base further, they’ve focused on food sensitivity. Beth Marcoot said some people that are dairy sensitive may not have problems at their creamery. Using genetic testing, they breed the cows to be A2A2.
“People with dairy sensitivity to A1 cow products can often have A2A2 cheese and milk, compared to A1 milk variety which can be found in the cow’s DNA,” she said.
The Marcoots have a store on the creamery property that sells cheese, ice cream and local products along with the Wagyu beef they raise.
Along with value-added products, the Marcoot Jersey Creamery embraced technology to help with day-to-day tasks. In 2017, they started using robots to milk the herd.
Beth Marcoot said that when they built the barn for the robots, they put in viewing windows so people visiting the farm can watch. The calf barn on the property also has viewing windows and they give school tours. They explain how they depend on different crops for feed and straw for a clean environment for their cows.
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