After eight years of scouring the auctions, working 16-hour days, rebuilding equipment and navigating other setbacks, Colorado Cow bottled its first gallon of milk from their new-to-them facility. Just a few days before milking began, some critical pieces were still missing, but no was not an option.
William deGroot, his son, Terry, and daughter-in-law, Julia, were originally from California with strong backgrounds in conventional dairy. In 2008, they decided to see how things would go in Colorado.
“2008 was the exact year nobody should have started,” William deGroot says. “We bought high, and the milk price hit a record low. So we struggled for 11 years to stay above water.”
By 2017, it was time for something different. With a herd of 700 they were feeling disconnected, both from their cows and from their customers.
“We wanted to be a small dairy farm and be connected to the consumer,” deGroot says.
Scaling down the number of cows meant adding value somewhere else. Coincidentally, Julia had been struggling with a dairy allergy brought on by her second pregnancy. And what started as researching a solution for Julia ended up revealing a high-demand niche where the family’s goals would fit right in. Living close to Boulder, the deGroots took note of what local consumers were looking for.
“You look at every milk pitcher in the grocery store, and there’s a calf and a cow standing in a pasture, and it looks nice,” deGroot says. “But when you go to a dairy, you find the opposite.”
The deGroots decided to bring that vision of a dairy to life for their local consumers.
“We leave the calves with the cows, albeit not easy to manage,” deGroot says. “We kind of looked like a 1950’s dairy, and we decided to keep that look.”
Non-homogenized A2/A2 milk from Jerseys and Guernseys, paired with nostalgic and picturesque farming practices started to turn things around.
“In our market, we have never met demand, and that’s always been our encouragement,” deGroot says. “When we started with 14 cows, then with 50 and 200, we’ve never yet met our orders.”
In pursuit of the idea and the image, the deGroots have moved their operations twice — most recently to a facility that had been sitting empty for years in Fort Lupton.
“We stopped by this place and just knew it was going to be our next place,” deGroot recalls. “It was the right size for us; it’s got a processing plant attached. Now, if you were to build a brand new facility, you would not build it like this. There are a lot of quirks, but it’s going to work well.”
Between the logistics of moving a dairy, weather and availability of parts, the startup turned into a scramble.
“If we had started three days earlier, we would not have been up here,” deGroot says. “There were critical parts coming in the day before we needed to milk cows, but we were going to make it work.”
The deGroots have learned to have options B, C, D and E ready in case Plan A fails.
“On several things, we’re still operating on conditions B, C, D and E,” deGroot says. “We’re only running half the equipment right now, and we’re still on a generator.”
No matter what’s been thrown at them, the family always has a way of not only getting through, but also enjoying the journey.
“You have to trust God, because sometimes there’s nobody else to trust,” deGroot says. “We’ve been on the brink of disaster and then suddenly been provided for. Then, sometimes when it’s great, something slaps you in the face and you go to desperation again. It’s kept us balanced as a family, and that’s not easy for everybody to do.
”Although it’s not always easy, the deGroots agree it’s always worth it. “I would not recommend this to every family out there,” deGroot says. “Because there is that sense of risk. This would not have been possible without a lot of family willing to sacrifice a lot, a lot of 16-hour days, no vacations for five years.
“We are not wealthy, but we have been provided for,” he adds. “It’s all about the lifestyle and the growing and being together, meeting challenges together as a family and asking, how do we make this work, and it continues to work.”
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