Mayfield Dairy Farms Inc.

Interesting factory tour of a Mayfield plant that packages milk and ice cream (no cows, no cheese), that is highly affordable <$5 for adults, with the price including a bowl (or cone) of their freshly made ice cream.

As my friends know I’m not one for early mornings, in fact I tend to live in my own little time zone which if I’m lucky is only three hours behind of everyone else (my normal bedtime is about 3am or 4am and I need a good 8 hours to function well). Sometimes I get so out of synch that I just find it easier to move my body clock forward an hour or so every day till it is in local time. IF I have a job where I am forced to yank myself out of bed at a set time it’s less likely to happen, but during periods like now, where my time is my own… well let’s just say getting to things that are far away and that shut down by 5pm can be a struggle. In addition, I don’t do mornings well… I tend to stagger around and grunt for the first half hour, and I’ve found my driving during the first two hours of wakefulness tends to be ‘unsafe’ meaning if I need to leave the house by 8am to be at work on time I have to be up by 6am, at least if I need to drive to get there.

So, You do the math: recently I’ve been waking up at around 11:40am, and this place is about 1.20 hours away from where I was staying, and the dairy’s last tour is at 4pm and I was assured that by that hour most of the machines have already been shut down, so it would be best to come before that. NOT the easiest thing for me to pull off. I had intended to go on yesterday, but by the time I got up, dealt with a couple of pieces of business that had popped up in my emails, etc., it was already nearing 3pm. So today I tried again, and managed to get there by about 2:48pm, and found during the tour that they were already starting to discontinue production on a few of the machines. So, I strongly suggest you go there earlier rather than later… and they don’t do tours on Wednesdays.

The tours are every hour on the hour, and begin with a documentary about the company (which seems to serve the secondary purpose of adding on a few stragglers to the group). Then everyone is given a hair net (whose purpose seemed legal rather than actual, we were almost never anywhere near a machine when there wasn’t glass between us and it).

Unfortunately they do not allow any photos taken while inside the factory area, so I can’t show that, but its the usual processing machines, either molding the plastic jugs for the milk, or filling them, etc. I did learn one interesting fact… apparently its a huge mistake to keep your milk in those nice spaced on refrigerator doors. According to the woman we’re supposed to keep the milk as far to the back of the fridge as possible, if you want to keep it fresh.

During my visit there was male toddler type who at first was completely disinterested, with parents who clearly didn’t grok the concept of teaching … I think they just thought taking the kid to things like this would be enough. Sorry but no. The tour guide was talking to fast and delivery her script in too monotone of a voice to grab the kids attention, so I picked up an example of the snapped off extra plastic from the milk jugs that they had examples of sitting on a side table (well above child reach) and wiggled it in the kids view, talking about what it was and then redirecting his attention to the machine chopping them out at a fast pace… from then on he was enamored.

At the end your let out in a shop area with a lot of appealing chatchkees and amusing T-shirts that advertised the company in one way or another — I was sorely tempted to get something but my life style requires a strict limitation of stuff (my car can only hold so much). There is also an ice cream parlor where you can redeem your one scoop of ice cream. I opted for a flavor called Extreme Moose Tracks  “Rich chocolate ice cream with Moose Tracks^Ⓡ Fudge-filled cups and famous Moose Tracks^Ⓡ Fudge” … whatever that means