LORETTO, Pa. — White and black spotted vans line the parking lot of Vale Wood Farms after another successful morning delivery run. The dairy cow trucks are like a gateway into the past, when milk trucks would make daily deliveries, dropping off pint-sized glass bottles on doorsteps.
While this might be uncommon today, Vale Wood Farms has kept this tradition alive along with many others, including producing every aspect of the dairy business, from growing their own forages to processing the milk themselves.
“We say we do it all ‘From Moo to You!’ because we grow the crops to feed the cows, we milk the cows, and then we deliver it directly to our customers. That’s really what makes our dairy unique,” said Carissa Itle Westrick, fourth-generation farmer and director of business development at Vale Wood Farms. “We’re really touching all the way from moo to you. We’re touching all parts of the dairy industry.”
Vale Wood Farms is one of more than 4,000 dairy farmers participating in Pennsylvania’s eighth annual Scooped: An Ice Cream Trail, a digital passport that encourages people to visit creameries via earned prizes.
Multi-generational
Jan Itle, known as Aunt Jan to Westrick, remembers the days when she and her seven brothers were the labor force on the farm. From a young age, Jan fell in love with the cows and, through the generations, she’s continued to share this love with other family members.
“I got a chance to visit with all my nieces and nephews because they pretty much started out feeding calves and milking cows,” Jan said.
“She was all of our first bosses” Westrick chimed in. “No matter where we ended up in the family business, we all started out feeding calves.”
Today, the farm spans 500 acres and they milk 250 cows, primarily Holsteins with a few Jerseys, Guernseys and one Brown Swiss. The Itles also grow their own forage, made up of corn silage and hay.
The farm, however, wasn’t always this way; it had humble beginnings as a homestead and pottery shed.
In 1816, Westrick’s great-great-great-grandfather John and his brother Joseph Itle immigrated from Switzerland to America. The brothers, who were potters by trade, discovered an ideal place to settle, rich with clay below the ground: Loretto, Pennsylvania.
John was deeded a plot of land by Prince Gallittzin, a Russian prince-priest who founded Loretto in 1799, and built a log cabin, which is still on the property today, and started the Itle Family Farm. John’s son Francis continued the farming tradition after coming home from serving in the Civil War.
Francis eventually passed down the farm to his son Charles, Westrick’s great-grandfather, known as C.A., who began expanding the acreage on the farm. Charles began selling milk in the local town of Cressen in 1933 and named his dairy delivery business Vale Wood Farms after the wooded valley that surrounded the farm.
Today, the farm sells a full line of dairy products at their farm store, including different flavors and types of milk, butter, yogurt, ice cream, sour cream and cottage cheese. Some of Vale Wood Farms’ products can also be found in stores across the local area.
Growing up
Like Jan, every day was a different adventure for Westrick growing up on the farm. At the time, Westrick’s dad, Bill Itle; six uncles, and aunt Jan were running things on the farm, and her cousins were, and still are, her best friends.
The kids spent their days making ice cream and sour cream, or going on a milk delivery run with grandpa, Russell “Bud” Itle. Learning the ropes came in handy, because now Westrick and the not-so-little cousins are running things on the dairy farm.
“We’re definitely a multi-generational business. It’s not the case where one generation hands it to the other. We’re definitely all here working together. It’s a team effort every single day,” Westrick said.
Vale Wood Farms is also home to multi-generational employees — 50 full-time employees total — and multi-generational customers, including this reporter’s family.
“It’s so interesting to meet our customers and to hear them say, ‘Your grandpa used to be my milkman.’ What an honor,” Westrick said. “Sometimes you milk cows and you feel that you’re doing it in a vacuum. But it’s so rewarding to meet those customers who are benefiting from that food that you’re producing.”
Events
Vale Wood Farms hosts a plethora of events throughout the year, from a customer appreciation party in June to cookies with Santa in December. Most recently, it hosted a Pasture Party on June 27 where it had live music, food trucks, wine and ice cream.
More than anything, though, the farm is all about educating the local schools through tours in May. Students go through different stations to see each process of the dairy industry. They will start at the barn and go through a calving station, feed station and milking parlor station.
Eventually, they’ll move on to the dairy processing plant and do a hands-on workshop making some type of dairy product. This past year, students made ice cream in a bag. Vale Woods Farms also sells its milk to local schools, restaurants and businesses.
“Believe it or not, there’s a very small portion of the world that sees that,” Jan said. “So we’re trying to educate them, that this is actually a product that’s produced in your backyard.”
Dairy deliveries
While other dairies have stopped home delivery, Vale Wood Farms has grown its reach, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and what Westrick calls the local food awareness movement in recent years.
“We just kind of forgot to quit doing home delivery, and now here we are in an era when it’s popular again,” Westrick said. “And we have generations of experience doing what we’re doing. I’m not just the milkman’s daughter. I’m the milk man’s granddaughter.”
How they make milk deliveries, though, has evolved since her great-grandfather started the practice. Back in the day, Westrick’s great-grandfather would deliver glass bottles of milk on the back of a horse-drawn wagon to the local town.
Nowadays, the farm has refrigerated trucks, which allows them to travel farther distances for milk deliveries. Vale Wood Farms will travel as far as Bellfonte and Ligonier, up to an hour away.
Westrick says, in particular, a lot of elderly people use the milk delivery service. Sometimes, the farm will even deliver products they don’t sell like eggs and cheese to customers.
“If we can deliver something else to them that’s helpful, then of course we want to be able to do that,” Westrick said.
PA Scooped Trail
Once again, Vale Wood Farms is participating in Pennsylvania’s eighth annual Scooped: An Ice Cream Trail, taking place from May 29 to Sept. 7. The months-long event is a digital passport where participants earn points by visiting Pennsylvania creameries. Each creamery visit is worth 100 points.
If participants earn 600 points before September, they can earn a free traveler mug, and, if they earn 1,000 points, they can enter for a chance to win an overnight stay. This includes a two-day stay for a family of four at Rocky Acre Farm Bed and Breakfast and a tour of Fox Meadows Creamery, where attendees will get to make a batch of ice cream, among other things.
Vale Wood Farms has participated in the event since it kicked off eight years ago. Westrick says it’s a great excuse to get out in the sunshine, enjoy some ice cream and support Pennsylvania dairies.
“It’s a great opportunity to, first of all, see more of our region, and then eat some delicious ice cream while you’re doing so. It’s really a win, win,” Westrick said.
For more information on Vale Wood Farms, visit www.valewoodfarms.com.
(Liz Partsch can be reached at epartsch@farmanddairy.com or 330-337-3419.)
