Tucked away in Tallassee is Blue Ribbon Dairy, a family-owned dairy farm that provides its customers with not only milk that’s straight from the cow to the jug in 24 hours, but the chance to see and experience the farm where that milk came from firsthand.

Blue Ribbon Dairy was started nearly seven years ago by Michaela Wilson, a fourth-generation farmer, in the barn her great-grandfather built in 1947. As one of only a handful of dairy farms in the state, Wilson said her family was motivated to launch Blue Ribbon Dairy because they felt there was a need for it in Alabama.

“In Alabama, the dairy industry is almost null and void,” Wilson said. “There’s 13 licensed dairies in the state of Alabama. If you’re going to be a commercial dairy farmer, you typically send your milk to a milk co-op or a big processor, and there are none in Alabama, so as a small dairy farmer, we knew that if we wanted to start milking cows again, we would have to bottle our own milk and sell it directly to the consumer.”

Tucked away in Tallassee is Blue Ribbon Dairy, a family-owned dairy farm that provides its customers with milk that’s from the cow to the jug in 24 hours. (Amber Sutton / This is Alabama)

Knowing the dairy’s relationship with its customers would serve as an essential part of its success, Wilson said she decided to create a hands-on experience at Blue Ribbon Dairy by offering visitors the chance to see the grounds and bottle-feed calves during its open farm tours, which are $5 and take place at 3 p.m. daily. In its store, the dairy sells pints and half-pints of ice cream made from milk, which visitors can eat under a picnic pavilion. On certain days, children can get in a pony ride for an additional $5.

“I worked in milk promotion and learned the disconnect was huge between the people and the farm,” Wilson said. “That’s why I wanted to have an open farm, so people could be connected to the farm itself. I wanted to be able to provide a place for people to come and actually have a hands-on experience seeing the cows, seeing the cows being milked, seeing where our milk comes from and bottled and buying their milk at the farm.”

Wilson says that Blue Ribbon is one of only 13 licensed dairies in Alabama. (Amber Sutton / This is Alabama)

The dairy is home to 32 cows, which are milked twice daily, and bottles around 200 gallons of vat-pasteurized, non-homogenized milk a day. In addition to whole milk and chocolate milk, which the dairy makes weekly, Wilson also likes to get creative and add different flavors to the product lineup, occasionally including cookies n’ cream, strawberry, orange dream and mocha-flavored milk.

Blue Ribbon Dairy sells around 1,200 gallons of milk a week in local grocery stores and farm markets throughout the River Region, and Wilson said they’ve been adding locations farther north, including The Market at Pepper Place in Birmingham, to their retailers. With an expansion in the works and plans to add bottled heavy cream as well as butter to the product lineup, Wilson said Blue Ribbon Dairy is hoping its milk supply, and the demand for it, will continue to grow.

“People seem to appreciate being able to have a local dairy farm and a local product that they can consume, and we have people come to the dairy all the time,” she said. “We’re thankful and grateful to have the continued support of our people. We’ve been in business for six years, so it’s still a learning curve for us, but we do the best we can with what we got.”

This story was previously published by This is Alabama. Want to read more good news about Alabama? Sign up for the This is Alabama newsletter here.