LIBERTY, Ky. – Greg and Joy Goode’s new store on U.S. 127 in Liberty, Ky., is garnering a lot of attention these days. Their decision this year to create a new farm-to-consumer venture called Goode’s Riverside Creamery has turned this once typical dairy farm into a thriving business.

The pair have been involved in the dairy business most of their lives. Joy grew up on a family dairy in LaRue County, while Greg’s family – which once tended to burley tobacco and hogs – began their dairy operation in 1995 to diversify.

“My dad said if my two brothers and I were going to stay on the farm, we had to have a steady paycheck, so with some encouragement from a few neighbors, we started the dairy in 1995,” Greg said. “It’s been going since then.”

Greg’s dad and brothers are still running that dairy operation, while he and Joy started their own dairy operation in 2006.

“Just being around dairy folks, seems like they all have the same interests and all work together,” Greg said. “The whole dairy industry is kind of a close-knit group.”

That kind of camaraderie would be a factor in the formation of their creamery. In much the same way as Greg’s dad saw diversifying their family farm with a dairy operation as a way to keep his children involved, Greg and Joy knew they would have to grow their operation to do the same for their three daughters.

During their 21 years of marriage, the Goodes have watched as both the numbers of dairy farms and dairy cows in Kentucky have decreased by nearly 50 percent. The thought of milking more cows wasn’t the plan for the Goodes. That’s when the idea of the creamery began to develop. The Goodes know of other dairy farmers who had gone the creamery route to grow the farm without expanding to a very large herd.

“We didn’t want to be big and milk 100 cows,” Greg said, “so we visited other small dairy farms in other states that were making a pretty good living staying on the farm milking 50-60 cows. We know a lot of families who want to milk 50-60 cows and stay small, and the idea of a creamery was a way for them to diversify and still focus on their cows. Most of them are kind of like us, they didn’t build the creamery to make a living, they built their creamery to be able to keep their cows.”

To this day, the Goodes sell milk from their cows directly to their friends and neighbors in Casey County. They milk around 50 cows twice every day at their dairy. Each cow produces around 90 pounds (or 10 gallons) of milk. The Goodes use roughly half the milk they get from their cows in the creamery, while the rest goes to milk trucks.

The idea for a creamery has been five years in the making and finally came to fruition in January. That’s when they opened the doors to their new business.

After purchasing land on highly traveled U.S. 127 just south of Liberty, the Goodes sought assistance from the Kentucky Agricultural Finance Corporation, which has helped countless farm families diversify their farming operations.

“The Goode’s project demonstrates an opportunity to establish a value-added processing on the dairy farm as part of a direct-to-consumer marketing business, thanks to grant funds from the ag development funds,” said Brandon Reed, executive director of the Kentucky Office of Agricultural Policy.

Forming a reliable staff was the next step, so the Goodes hired good friend Haley Fisher to oversee the day-to-day operations of the business.

“I grew up on a dairy farm in Glasgow, Ky., and knew the Goode family from the dairy shows we participate in,” Fisher said. “Having been involved in the dairy industry my entire life, this has been a good fit for me.”

The stage was set for the creamery’s operation. The Goodes even opened an ice cream shop to add value to their milk.

“We started processing our own milk in April and began making ice cream,” Greg said. “The creamery has produced 800 to 1,000 gallons of ice cream the past two months. Everything made here is coming from our cows. The goal is to use all the milk from our dairy and help some other dairy farmers in the county use some of theirs.”

The creamery bottles its own whole milk, low fat milk and chocolate milk (400 total gallons of milk per week) along with making up to 16 flavors of homemade ice cream (230 gallons per month) from the milk their cows produce daily. They hope to add butter to their menu this fall.

They offer hand-scooped ice cream and deli sandwiches. The creamery features lunch meat and cheese by the pound. There is also a retail space that includes locally sourced beef, chicken, lamb and pork, along with a variety of baked goods, snacks and Kentucky Proud products to complement their own products.

The Goode’s oldest daughter, Emily, 19, serves as the assistant manager at the creamery. The dairy business is something that has been part of her entire life.

“I’ve grown up on our family’s dairy,” she said. “They actually started milking eight days before I was born. It’s been different than the childhood of all my other friends, but I wouldn’t change it for anything. I’ve learned so many life lessons and just gained so many different values from being on the farm.”

The Goodes even look at their creamery as a tourist destination. A large window in the store’s retail area offers a wide view of the milk processing and bottling operation. Visitors can observe the 800-gallon tank in the creamery that houses the raw milk.

“That’s as transparent as you can get,” Greg said.

Added Joy, “We could not be more pleased, and I think one of the biggest reasons is the community support all the way around. We have regulars already that have come in, sometimes four days a week, and they’re just as excited as we are to have something like this here in the county.”