Texas Agriculture Daily

By Jennifer Whitlock
Field Editor

For the Volleman family, dairy farming is a way of life. As far back as 1890, Vollemans have been raising dairy cattle and selling milk.

The family traces its history from Holland to Luxembourg to the U.S., where Frank and Annette moved with their two young sons in 1993.

They put down roots in Gustine and now provide Texans with what they call “a taste of home” through their dairy and new bottling facility, where they process and bottle their own milk in returnable glass bottles.

“When we moved here, Annette and I started milking 50 cows in partnership with my brother, Marcel. Then a couple of years down the road, he started his own dairy, and we continued to expand our facilities to the size we are today. Now, we milk about 5,000 cows and bottle and sell our own milk,” he said. “Our family has expanded, too, and we now have four sons: Benjamin, David, Andrew and Daniel.”

New roots run deep
This unique family operation involves two generations, eight family members and a whole lot of love. Love for the land, the farm and, most importantly, for each other.

Each son is responsible for a certain aspect of the operation.

Benjamin grows most of the dairy’s forages, and David manages the day-to-day operations at the dairy. Andrew oversees the bottling plant, and Daniel raises replacement heifers and helps on his uncle’s dairy.

David’s wife, Anna, manages the business office, and Andrew’s wife, Shelby, is the marketing director for the dairy.

Together, the Farm Bureau members are proud to bring Volleman’s glass bottled milk to stores acrossCentral and North Texas, with more stores carrying the products every week.

They hope to continue to grow their family legacy here in Texas, one bottle of milk at a time.

Farming
At the farm, Benjamin grows corn, sorghum and three varieties of Bermudagrass.

“I’ve been doing this for my family for the last 10 years or so. Before I graduated college, we had grown a little bit of corn, but around the time I graduated, we started focusing on growing our own crops for the dairy,” he said. “We started trying to improve our Bermudagrass and find better varieties to produce better quality feed for our cows, and things just took off from there.”

About 60-70% of the farm’s forages are grown by Benjamin, and the grains are purchased from other farmers and feed mills.

Benjamin loves farming, and he loves being able to work with his family every day.

“It’s a lot of fun working together in the family business. My brothers and I work together in the fields or on the farm or in an office together all the time,” he said. “We each have our own roles, but we can always help each other out if we need help on a certain task. Sometimes it’s a little challenging to get along with everybody, but that’s the fun part about it. We try to figure out how we can work together and get the job done.”

The dairy
Down the road from Benjamin’s corn fields, David oversees the day-to-day operations at the dairy.

Twice a day, the cows travel from their cross-ventilated barns to the 72-stall fully automated milking carousel.

Looking after 5,000 Holstein cows and confirming they get milked twice a day is a big job. But it’s a challenge David is always up for.

“Even though we are a larger farm, we’re still a family farm, and we absolutely care for our cows every day. Our main focus is our cows and the people we work with, ensuring a great quality of life for both,” he said. “The barns and all these things we’ve invested in here on this farm are to really make their life better so that they stay healthy and produce a lot of milk. They take care of us. We take care of them. It’s a very symbiotic relationship, and we’re always looking to improve.”

The milk is collected in tanks where it is instantly chilled to about 35 degrees. It is continually stirred so the cream doesn’t rise to the top. After the milk has been tested repeatedly, it is loaded onto tankers for transport to processing facilities.

Anna, David’s wife, manages the business office and handles the flow of tankers and customers. He said it’s a blessing to be able to work together and alongside the rest of his family.

“I absolutely love raising our family on the farm. Anna was working in town, and I was really happy when she was able to join us out here. Now, when we get done with our main work, we can do things like hop in the truck and drive the kids around while we check on the cattle and do a last round before heading home,” he said. “I just really enjoy spending that time with my family on the farm, and it brings some flexibility to our situation. There’s an amazing quality of life here we couldn’t get anywhere else.”

Volleman’s bottling facility
About nine months ago, some big dreams finally came true when the family was able to begin bottling and selling milk under the Volleman’s brand.

The dream was fully realized with the opening of their own creamery, located just outside the Gustine city limits. The Vollemans currently produce heavy cream and whole, 2%, chocolate and strawberry milk, along with one seasonal milk flavor that changes throughout the year.

When they opened the creamery, Frank said the timing was right to reintroduce an old concept: returnable glass bottles.

On top of the purchase price of the milk, customers pay a deposit for the bottle. The deposit is returned when the bottle is received back at a retailer, or the customer may choose to have the retailer keep the deposit so they can buy more milk.

“In the beginning, we weren’t sure we liked the idea. But the more we dug into it and traveled across the country and saw different operations, we decided there was something there,” Frank said. “People love the sustainability aspect of this. They feel good about it, that they’re doing something for the environment. And the response has really just been overwhelming.”

At the bottling plant, Andrew is responsible for processing, pasteurization and bottling the milk, as well as overseeing sales and distribution. His wife, Shelby, also works at the bottling plant where she oversees marketing and branding.

Andrew’s background in distribution with the Coca-Cola Company and a dairy products technology program from Cal Poly prepared him for his latest role in the family business.

The family broke ground on the new plant in March 2020 and began producing bottles through a co-packer in June. The plant came online this January, and Volleman’s is steadily gaining recognition as they work to increase distribution throughout Texas.

When Andrew began struggling with the amount of work involved in running the bottling facility and handling sales, Daniel stepped in to help.

“I was kind of drowning, trying to do everything at once, and Daniel stepped up to help on the sales side,” he said. “He does a lot with talking to stores, maintaining relationships that we built and continues to find new stores, and we work closely together to keep growing into new areas.”

He said it’s a surreal feeling to have all their hard work pay off.

“I don’t know what the right word is, but you get a lot of pride seeing your bottle with your name on it on a shelf in a grocery store. The best feeling is when you walk into a store and there’s a line out the door and you can’t even get it off the truck, because they’re just grabbing it out of the crates,” Andrew, who used to do all the deliveries himself, said. “It’s just people standing in line for the milk, people you’ve never met that have no clue who you are, and I get to say ‘Yes, that’s my milk from my family, from cows we raised and a place we built.’ It’s just a really cool feeling to have it all come full circle.”

Paving the way for the future
Frank is proud of what he and Annette have achieved, and he can’t wait to see what else his sons do.

“The challenges when you come to a new country can be big, but I think when you’ve been instilled with family values, hard work and dedication, it will pay off.

We could not have imagined or even dreamed of where we are today,” he said. “And our sons are our partners in this business now. They know every morning why they wake up and why the hours are long. That’s how we envisioned to build that legacy—for them to be part of it by their labor and by owning a part of it. And we know they’ll make it even more successful by working together.”

As she looks at her sons and their families, Annette can’t help but feel they’ve achieved their own version of the American dream.

“It was not easy coming over here with two little kids and having no babysitter, trying to milk the cows ourselves. We did not speak the language well when the oldest two first went to school,” she said. “But just being here at the dairy with all the kids and them growing up close to the cows and doing their chores and helping Frank…it was a very, very good feeling.”

Now the next generation of Vollemans are learning life lessons in the family venture.

“It is very rewarding to see the boys now become part of our operation, all four working together. And now two of our sons have their little ones and bring them along, too,” Annette said. “I think it’s awesome to see us all growing as a huge, big family and running a business together. All in little different departments, maybe one with the cows, the other one with the feed, the other one with the milk, and the other one with the heifers and all of that. But still, all growing together.”

Watch a video with the Volleman family.