The Goode family expanded their dairy farm in a value-added way.

When people speak about food from the farm, they may mention vegetables, fruits, beef, chicken, or ice cream. Wait, what? Ice Cream?

If you live near southern Casey County, yes, ice cream may be at the top of that list, thanks to the Goode family dairy business and their new farm-to-consumer venture, Goode’s Riverside Creamery. 

Greg and Joy Goode 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 began their dairy operation in 1995 to diversify their hog and tobacco farm.

“My dad said if my two brothers and I were going to stay on the farm, we had to have a weekly or a constant paycheck, so with some encouragement from a couple of our neighbors, we started dairy in '95," Greg said. "The milk check would pay the monthly bills while the tobacco made the farm payment at the end of the year, and it’s been going since then,” Greg said.

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

“We just all enjoy it, and I guess a farmer, especially a dairy farmer, has to be about as optimistic as anybody,” Greg said. “No matter how bad it is, they’ll look and say, ‘Well, tomorrow's going to be better,’ or ‘Next year, it's going to be better.’”

In order to keep that optimistic outlook alive, the Goodes have a unique way of seeing the very cows that support them.

“I guess you get a sense of purpose knowing you had to be there on the farm every day, and the better you took care of the cows, the better they took care of you,” Greg said. “You just form a bond with your cows, just like you do with people in any other job. Our cows are kind of like our co-workers. We want to take care of them, and they take care of us.”

There is also a sense of community when it comes to farm families, especially those in the dairy business.

“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 development of the 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.

But milking more cows wasn't something the Goodes wanted to do, and that’s when the idea of the creamery began to develop. Greg said he knew of other dairy farmers who had gone the creamery route as a way to grow the farm without expanding to a very large herd.   

“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,” Greg said.  “Most of them are kind of like us, they didn't build the creamery to make a living, they built the creamery to be able to keep their cows.”

Having bought land on the busy U.S. 127 corridor just south of Liberty, Kentucky, the first issue of a creamery location was solved. Next came the assistance of the Kentucky Agricultural Finance Corporation, which has helped countless farm families diversify their farming operations.

“This project demonstrates an opportunity to establish a value-added processing on the dairy farm as a part of a direct-to-consumer marketing business thanks to grant funds from the ag development funds and a low market Kentucky Agricultural Finance Corporation participation loan with the Bank of Buffalo,” Kentucky Office of Agricultural Policy Executive Director Brandon Reed said.

With the hiring of Haley Fisher to oversee the day-to-day operations of this new business venture, the stage was set for a successful creamery.

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

Fisher recognizes that for many in the dairy industry, getting bigger or getting out seem to be the two options dairy families are facing. But for the Goodes, deciding to use their milk in a way that provides value-added products to consumers was the route to go.

“The small farmer is kind of struggling to keep up with what some people want to call commercialized dairy farming, but still family-owned,” she said. “The Goode family built a facility here that allows us to have a retail space along with our processing floor to utilize the milk from the farm. We do low-temperature vat pasteurized milk, non-homogenized ice cream, and we were hoping to put butter on our menu by the fall.”

THE SCOOP

Fisher said the plans for the creamery started about five years ago and came to fruition this January. They opened the doors in January of this year. If the first few months are any indication of how successful the business will be, then the Goodes have taken the right route for their dairy operation.

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

For all those involved in the creamery, it has been a learning lesson along the way so far.

“When I started here back in October of 2024, I felt like I hit the ground running with them, and we've kind of all learned together how to do everything we're wanting to do,” Fisher said. “I do think it is a dream come true, and we hope that we can continue to grow in that dream—not only to benefit the county and the community, but even to grow our own operation at the dairy.”

One of the family goals is to use all the milk that comes from their operation for the products sold in the store.

“We still have some of our milk picked up right now, and we are grateful to those people working with us in this endeavor as well,” Fisher said. “But our goal is to eventually be at 100 percent utilization, and we see that happening sooner than we anticipated.”

The Goode’s oldest daughter, Emily, is serving as the assistant manager at the creamery while still helping with the activities on the farm. The dairy business is something that has been a part of her entire life.

“I've grown up on our family's dairy. They actually started milking eight days before I was born,” she said. “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.”

Goode's Riverside Creamery is one of the newest Kentucky Farm Bureau Certified Farm Markets (KFB CFM).

The program's coordinator, Fran McCall, said the Goodes are an example of what makes the CFM program so successful.

"We are so fortunate to have Goode Riverside Creamery in the CFM family, and it has been incredibly exciting to see how successful they have been so far," she said. "Like so many of our markets that have become extensions of family farms across the state, the Goodes have expanded their dairy in ways that not only benefit the family farm but also the community and all those consumers who make the creamery a regular stop."

Goode’s Riverside Creamery is located at 6160 S US 127, in Liberty. Their hours vary seasonally, but open season is here and the hours now will be Monday through Thursday, 10-8; Friday and Saturday, 10-9; and Sunday, 1-5. The creamery bottles its own whole milk, low fat milk, and Chocolate milk; along with making up to 16 flavors of homemade ice cream from the milk their cows produce daily. They offer ice cream hand scooped at the counter and also made to order deli sandwiches behind the food counter. The creamery also features lunch meat and cheese by the pound. In addition to their counter sales, there is a retail space full of ice cream in take home sizes, locally sourced beef, chicken, lamb and pork, along with a variety of baked goods, snacks and Kentucky Proud products to complement their own products.