Kilgus Farmstead:
Got Local Milk?
By Terra Brockman

The morning is dark and cold and the beds still cozy and warm when 3:30 a.m. rolls around at the Kilgus Farmstead, the only on-farm milk processor in Illinois.

But out there in the peaceful pre-dawn, 80 graceful Jersey cows wait fine-boned and fawn-brown – their udders tight with rich, warm milk.

And so the Kilguses, three generations of them, roll out of bed and get to work – 365 days a year.

Milk is our first food, and most of us go on to have a lifelong relationship with it – poured onto cereal, or into coffee, or alongside cookies.

But before that milk got into our bowl or cup or glass, before it came to our tables, before it was packaged in a carton and transported to a store shelf, before it was pasteurized, homogenized, and mostly defatted… before all that, it came out of a living, breathing, lactating cow.

What kind of a cow was she? Fed what? Treated how? By whom?

Where? And what are the particular qualities of her milk?

With most milk coming from mega-dairies with thousands, even tens of thousands of cows crammed into penned lots, these questions are nearly impossible to answer.

But now there is one dairy farm in Illinois where the family who works intimately with the cows can answer all your questions. As Matt Kilgus proudly states, “Anyone can come out and see the cows, see the whole process, start to finish. Right here.”

“Here” is a mile south of Fairbury, Illinois, which is about 100miles south of Chicago. It is where Matt Kilgus, 28, and his uncle, Paul Kilgus, 41, and their families work their farm and produce and process Kilgus Farmstead milk.

The first time I me tMatt was about five years ago at the spring ramp dig at Spence Farm, just a few miles down the road from the Kilgus farm.  He had (and still has) a full boyish face, open and calm, honest and direct. At first glance, I thought he was still a teenager. But as I listened to him talk about researching on-farm processing and direct-marketed milk businesses in Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio, I heard a serious tone in his voice, and saw something in his eyes that revealed a maturity far beyond his years.

When I mentioned that I had never heard of an uncle-nephew farm business partnership, Matt explained, “My dad and Paul bought the farm from their dad, my grandpa Duane. Then my dad passed away from cancer when I was a junior in high school – that was 12 years ago.”

After his father’s death, Matt went on to finish high school and then commuted to Joliet Junior College to get a degree in production agriculture. At the same time, he and his uncle Paul worked together closely on the farm each day – bound not only by their common loss, but also by a shared desire to ensure the farm’s continuation and allow the next generation to join a viable farm business.

In his college agriculture classes, Matt learned that according to conventional wisdom they needed to expand the family’s herd from their 100 cows to roughly 1,000.at way, the few pennies they made per gallon selling their milk as a bulk commodity might translate into the dollars needed to keep them in business.

But the Kilguses knew that the “conventional wisdom” applied only if you accepted the current commodity system. And that system is “really a monopoly, with only one option to sell our milk to,” said Matt.  As the buyers consolidated and increased their control over the market, the farmers were forced to accept the increasingly miserly prices.

The milk business was not always like this. Matt’s grandparents, Arlene and Duane Kilgus, began milking a dozen cows back in the 1950’s, selling that milk to a local buyer at a time when competition ensured that fair prices were paid.

But, a lot has changed in the past half-century. Where there used to be many dairies and many local buyers, now there are a handful of mega dairy corporations. As a result, nearly all of the family-owned dairies in Illinois have gone out of business.

One of these mega-dairies, Dean Foods, now “bottles 33% of U.S.  fluid milk,” according to a 2008 report from the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS).According to another ERS report, the number of milk processing facilities in the U.S. plunged from a high of 2,507 in 1972 to 524 in 2002 – an 80% reduction in just three decades.

This consolidation shuttered dairy plants that once served small diversified farms and tied them to their nearby communities of consumers. According to spokespersons for the milk industry, consolidation is good because it means cheaper prices. But cheaper prices come at a high cost. As mega dairies move in, farmers are forced out of business, rural economies are devastated, water and air pollution increases and consumers and chefs, trying to find a high-quality milk from a known source, are out of luck.

For the Kilgus family, consolidation meant they never knew if their 365-days-a-year animal husbandry and twice-daily milking would produce any income at all. Price swings in the commodity milk market could bring historic highs, but usually it brought below-break-even lows.  The Kilguses were under constant pressure to either dramatically increase the size of their herd and their operations or quit the dairy business altogether. Instead, they decided to do something completely different.

“We knew that increasing cow numbers wasn’t the right way to be more profitable,” said Matt. “It wouldn’t be good to try to raise 1,000 head one mile from Fairbury,” Paul adds.

Paul knew raising a herd that size produces millions of gallons of manure, which releases ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, methane and other noxious gases into the air. It also pollutes the ground and surface water used by surrounding communities.

Paul’s sentiments and concerns for the environment and the surrounding communities don’t seem to be shared by mega-dairy operators. These corporations don’t appear to be concerned about how such a large concentration of animals will affect the quality of life for both the cows and the community.

On the other hand, “quality” is what informs every decision the Kilguses make – from choosing which breed of cow to raise, to practicing rotational grazing, to using on-farm bottling, to choosing not to homogenize the milk, to cultivating their direct relationships with customers.  This passion is what drives Paul and his son Trent out of bed at 3:30 every morning. It’s what keeps them milking steadily from4:30 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. (they finish the milking before most city alarm clocks ring).  By 8:00 a.m. they have cleaned the milking parlor and are busy with the outside chores – looking after the heifers and dry cows, breeding, birthing, shuffling young stock around, spreading manure, and doing equipment maintenance.

And then, they tend to the field work. The Kilguses farm 800 acres of grain and hay, so there is planting, cultivating, and harvesting of grains to do, as well as mowing, raking and baling hay. They also make hay silage and corn silage for the cows to eat in the winter months. Plus, there is the herd of meat goats that Paul’s teenage sons Justin, 19, and Trent, 16, take care of, many of which are destined for tables at Chicago’s finest restaurants.

Watching the Kilgus family work reminded me of what the writer William Vaughan said about growing up on a farm: “There’s something about getting up at 5:00 a.m., feeding the stock and chickens, and milking a couple of cows before breakfast that gives you a lifelong respect for the price of butter and eggs.”

“At first we thought that maybe people wouldn’t pay that extra dollar for quality, but that’s not been the case,” says Matt. “We just got out there and told our story. That’s only our milk, from our Jersey cows, in those jugs. And it comes to you fresh, from only 100 miles away.”

“It’s been great to hand it out to consumers and say, we have full control of this product – from the food the cow ate to how she was milked to the quality and timing of the bottling and distribution. We have it all under our own control – start to finish – and so we can assure you what was done every step of the way.”

But bucking the commodity system and striking out on their own was, and is, a risky decision for Kilgus Farmstead. Paul and Matt Kilgus and their families have bet the farm, quite literally, on the consumer’s desire for quality, transparency, and accountability.

Matt laughs a little nervously as he admits, “We’ve prettymuch put along with our hearts and souls – all our finances into this, too. If this were to fail, we wouldn’t have a dairy here anymore.”

And so when 3:30 a.m. rolls around, each and every day, Paul and Trent Kilgus bring 80 patient Jersey cows in from one of the paddocks of their 50 acres of pasture.e milking takes place with the calmness of a morning meditation as the sky brightens from gray to lavender to pink to blue. Tension relieved and function achieved, the cows go back out to pasture until it’s time for their evening milking.

Meanwhile, Matt and other members of the extended Kilgus family work until the sky passes from blue to lavender to dusky gray. With passion, perseverance and plain old-fashioned hard work, they produce high quality milk that nourishes their family and their community.

Terra Brockman, a recent James Beard Award finalist, combines her passion of writing and farming, telling stories of hard-working farmers who bring their best to Chicago land markets. When she’s not writing, she’s usually helping on the Brockman family farms and can frequently be seen at Henry’s Farm stand at the Evanston Farmers market.