Raw Milk is Helping These Iowa Farmers Grow Their Future

Tanner and Lakaya Tenley, who both grew up on dairy farms, were named winners of Iowa Farm Bureau Federation’s Grow Your Future award. They plan to use their $10,000 prize to expand their direct-to-consumer beef, pork, and milk business.

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Meet Tanner and Lakaya Tenley

Both Tanner and Lakaya Tenley have deep roots in the dairy industry. Lakaya’s family milked around 1,000 Jersey cows and she started her own herd in high school. Tanner grew up on his family’s farm near Mechanicsville, Iowa, milking 70 Holsteins alongside his father and grandfather. He also raises beef cattle and hogs.

Now the Tenleys live on Tanner’s family century farm, raising beef, pork, and milking a small herd of Jerseys. When Iowa legalized selling raw milk in 2023, they began selling it directly to consumers. They recently won the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation’s Grow Your Future award and plan to use the $10,000 prize to establish a market on their farm.

Episode Highlights

• Lakaya Tenley’s grandmother created the famous Butter Cow at the Iowa State Fair for decades. “It’s my claim to fame,” she says. 
• Before starting their business together, Lakaya worked for a creamery and Tanner worked for other dairies and also raised hogs for Neimann Ranch.
• When Lakaya left for college, a neighbor kept her dairy herd for her. The couple pays it forward by keeping cows for neighbors who aren’t able to feed over the winter.
• The Tenleys deliver milk around eastern and central Iowa, meeting customers at centralized locations. They plan to continue delivering once they open their on-farm store.
• Legalizing the sale of raw milk provided small dairy producers with a new. market.
• Marketing is a big part of running their business, including shooting videos and making posts on social media.
• Lakaya encourages other young farmers to attend their state’s Farm Bureau Young Farmers Conference and apply for the Grow Your Future award.

Links and Resources

Transcript

Please note: This transcript has not been edited.

Lisa Foust Prater: Welcome to the 15 Minutes with a Farmer Podcast from Successful Farming, I’m your host, Lisa Foust Prater. My guests today are Tanner and Lakaya Tenley, winners of Iowa Farm Bureau Federation’s Grow Your Future award. They plan to use their $10,000 prize to expand their direct-to-consumer beef, pork, and milk business.

In each episode, I have a quick 15 minute conversation with a farmer to hear their story and share their experience, expertise, and life lessons. 

Lisa Foust Prater: Well, first of all, congratulations. You have just recently been named Iowa Farm Bureau Federation’s Grow Your Future Award first place winners. So that is very exciting. You receive a grant to expand your business and we’ll get to all of that. It’s very exciting, but congratulations. That’s such a fantastic honor.

Lakaya Tenley: Yeah, it’s a great award program that Farm Bureau offers for the young farmers of Iowa. So if that’s you and you want to apply next year, we highly encourage it. And just the Young Farmers Conference in general is a really great opportunity to network yourself in Iowa agriculture.

Lisa Foust Prater: So why don’t you tell me a little bit, each of you, about your own backgrounds growing up in agriculture and your business together.

Lakaya Tenley: Yeah, I can go first. Yeah, I grew up on a dairy farm, commercial dairy farm. My family milked around a thousand head of registered Jersey cows. I would say our Iowa history goes pretty deep. So my grandma actually did the butter cow at the Iowa State Fair for multiple decades. I want to say 50, 60 years. She was out there doing that, so I spent a lot of my childhood running around the state fair and showing cows and doing all that. Was really involved in 4H growing up as well. So we sold the cows in 2008, but I always stayed really active showing Jersey cattle and always fell in love with them. And I went to college for ag business at DMACC and from there my love for agriculture continued as I, you know, continue to meet people and network and a lot of opportunities got opened up to me there. I worked for, I did feed consulting out of college and then from there I worked for a small family-owned creamery that processed their own milk. And I think that’s where this whole idea of our business kind of started. It was definitely a seed planted while I was working, working at that creamery. And yeah, it gave me a lot of knowledge for what we’re doing today. So truly if it wasn’t for that job in that position, I, we’d probably be clueless out here, treading the waters, trying to figure it out, but I think that background knowledge helped us quite a bit get started with what we’re doing today. And yeah, and Tanner’s background is pretty similar. 

Tanner Tenley: So yeah, my dad and grandpa milk cows their whole life. so I was very much involved with them at a young age and that’s where I grew my love for the passion of dairy cows. With my dad, a lot. My grandpa sold out in 2010. So we had roughly around 70 cows at their max of Holstein grade cows. And I just, yeah, grew a passion for the dairy cows and could never get away from it. I worked for a couple different dairy farms in the past years after that. And just always found myself reconnecting with the dairy industry or dairy farms, what have you, cows. So I just never got away from it. And then I met Lakaya and yeah, just took off from there and kept it going. 

Lakaya Tenley: So from that, I had a group of cows that I started, my herd in high school. Some family friends housed them for me while I finished my education and we got married in September of ‘22. And then shortly after that, so July 1st of 2023 is when it was legalized to start selling raw milk. So it was kind of God’s perfect timing that we had some cows to milk that we owned and really just hit the ground running in that aspect.

So yeah, and Tanner raised outside hogs for Neimann Ranch for a few years and there were always beef cows around Tenley Farms and so we just felt like the direct-to-consumer meat business was also very complimentary to what we were trying to do selling raw milk. So that kind of tied it in a perfect little bow for us to do the direct-to-consumer and operate in this avenue. So we milk cows on the farm that Tanner’s family grew up on. So this is a century farm and we’ll be carrying it on into a heritage farm in our lifetime. So we’re excited to see that come to fruition.

Lisa Foust Prater: What kind of dairy cattle do you have right now?

Lakaya Tenley: Yeah, so predominantly jerseys. We felt like, so since we, my cows were milked at a family friends, we feel like when we have the opportunity to pay it forward, we milk a couple other people’s cows that, you know, they may be older, their wife didn’t want to milk them over the winter. So we have a couple of those mutts, so to speak, but we’re happy to have them and pay that forward because if it really wasn’t the Bonner family in East Moline milk cows for me. And if it wasn’t for that family, we really would not be in this position that we are today for just the opportunity to own Jersey cows in general. Yeah, and I served as a national Jersey queen in 2017 and 18. And so yeah, there’s a deep history of Jersey cows here and we love them and proud to milk them.

Lisa Foust Prater: I love that. They’re so beautiful Jersey cows. have such pretty eyes and faces. I love them too. 

Lakaya Tenley: They’re beautiful cows. Yes, yes.

Lisa Foust Prater: I can’t get over the fact that your grandma was involved with the butter cow for all those years. What an Iowa icon. That’s amazing. 

Lakaya Tenley: Right, yeah, that’s my claim to fame.

Lisa Foust Prater: Yeah, no kidding. That’s so great. So you guys have the dairy cows now and you also, I read have some Angus and some Duroc pigs. So you’re marketing the meat from the cattle and the Durocs?

Lakaya Tenley: Correct, yeah. So was that predominantly the breed that you raised? 

Tanner Tenley: Yeah, we’ve always had Angus, but I mean we do have some shorthorn cows and there is some crossbred cows, but the Angus is dominant. We use Angus bulls. So yeah. And then the Durocs, the meat quality with the Durocs, that’s where it’s at. And I’ve always liked red pigs, so it just works.

Lisa Foust Prater: So tell me what your plans are with your award.

Lakaya Tenley: We’ll be establishing a farm store here in Mechanicsville right now. The bread and butter of our business is our milk drops. So we do a lot of traveling around Eastern Iowa. We also service central Iowa, traveling out there to do milk drops where our customers, essentially meet us at a centralized location at a certain time. They pick up their products and go about their week. So we do that every week. We travel to on Mondays, we go to Quad Cities, Muscatine and Coralville. And then on Thursdays, we travel to Ames, Ankeny and Mitchellville.

So between all those drops, we can sell approximately 350 gallons of milk every week. So at this time we don’t have a centralized location where customers can come to the farm and see the farm, see what we’re about. So we’ll be establishing the Milk House Market here at Tenley Farms this summer. So we’re really excited about that.

Lisa Foust Prater: That’s so exciting. That’s going to be great.

Lakaya Tenley: Yeah, yeah, yep. And we really do see this as an opportunity to just advance agritourism in our area. You know, everyone’s looking for that experience these days and we’re just excited to be able to offer that to our local community from the homework I’ve done. There’s not a place in Cedar County where people can come and do that and we’re excited to kind of step in that gap and offer that experience to people that may not have it otherwise.

Lisa Foust Prater: Yeah, that’s awesome. And it’s always good when people have a chance to see where their food comes from and meet farmers and talk to them and see that they’re actual human people who care about their animals. Yeah. Yeah. That goes a long way for people’s opinions about agriculture. 

Lakaya Tenley: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but eat the food too, right? We’ve had some really awesome customers along the way. And just the loyalty factor when people find a producer that they resonate with and they connect with, you’ll find a lot of loyalty in that. And we’re just so grateful for those people that gave us our start.

Lisa Foust Prater: So talk to me about you. You touched on when the law in Iowa changed regarding raw milk. So tell me about that and for people who may not be familiar with like if the laws in their state are different, tell me what changed and what that meant for you.

Lakaya Tenley: So yeah, from my understanding, it wasn’t legal at all to sell at Iowa. And I could be wrong on this, but as of July 1st of 2023, has, you know, it’s a direct to consumer sale. So the customer sees my face every week. They know that I am the producer of this product and there’s obviously stipulations to be able to sell. So testing your milk for coliform counts once a month and doing disease testing once a year. So, and I feel like we’re just kind of in the trenches with everyone who wants to do it and we’re just figuring it out. But really, truly, we’re just so grateful for the opportunity to have this platform to sell raw milk in general. You know, no one’s selling milk commercially from 10 cows, right? And we did throw around the idea of selling commercially when we got married, but at that time you know, commercial milk prices just weren’t very encouraging for young people that wanted to hop into it. And we’ve seen a lot in the industry, right? I grew up, I mean, this is what my family did, and just knowing the waves and how brutal it can be at times. And I knew if we milked cows, I wanted to own our market. I wanted to create our market. It’s something we created. It’s nothing that can be taken away from us, you know, with a letter in the mail or a phone call, right? And I found when the raw milk bill got passed, I’m like, this, this could be a real thing. And like I said in the beginning, we really hit the ground running just because we kind of strategized how we wanted to do it.

I lived in Ankeny five years prior to us getting married, so I had some crunchy health friend moms, you know, that were really interested in raw milk. And so we had the people, we had the network, and really it was just word of mouth and it just spread like wildfire. And yeah, that’s kind of how we got our start with the raw milk. And yeah, haven’t looked back, so.

Lisa Foust Prater: The timing of that is perfect for you. And it really is one of those things that it does open up lot more possibilities for, like you said, a smaller producer with fewer head of cattle to really do some things on their own and make some impact on their own operation when you can market like that directly. It makes a big difference in your bottom line. So that’s amazing that that worked out for you.

Lakaya Tenley: Yeah. and it’s, you know, creating your market. It’s when you start a business, I feel like, yeah, you start that core business, whatever it is, right? Whether it’s direct to consumer meat, whether it’s, I don’t know, a plumbing business. Like you start that business, but you also really have a marketing business on top of that. Like you can’t sell anything if people don’t know about you, right? If you’re not putting yourself out there. And I think that can be a challenging thing to overcome, know, when you put yourself out there, whether it’s on social media or advertising yourself. But yeah, so the marketing thing, it’s been fun. We’ve been having fun with it. 

Lisa Foust Prater: And yeah, this kind of award program, you know, I was reading the info from Iowa Farm Bureau Federation and the other, you know, folks that received awards too, and just seeing the different kinds of operations that are represented. It’s just so great to see the young farmers and the different kinds of things that they’re doing. I don’t know, it just gives you a lot of hope that there’s just people out there, just go-getters willing to work hard and wanting to make their own way. And I love it that you’re getting support like this. It’s so great.

Lakaya Tenley: Gosh, yeah, and even the people that operate in our space, the direct to consumer thing, yeah, we’re all trying to sell meat products, right? Or just trying to sell our products in general. And everyone I’ve talked to, it never comes across as a competitive edge or a competitive thing because we’re all so different in our own right, in our own, we just bring so much uniqueness to the marketplace and you know, I talked to a lot of people that are doing the direct to consumer Meat thing and I learned so much from them and like I’m just so grateful that they’re willing to just help a sister out, right? Help a brother out. And because it’s not easy and it isn’t for everyone and not everyone wants to go start a business. You know, they just want to be a farmer and sell their product at the end and that’s great. And we need that in this space to feed people in the overall realm.

Lisa Foust Prater: There’s so many things that you don’t think about, like the logistics of, you know, shipping and freezing and packaging and all the things. And, there’s just, there’s so much involved in it that goes way beyond animal husbandry. It’s just so much more than that.

Tanner Tenley: 100%. Yeah. You wear many, many different hats. 

Lisa Foust Prater: And some of that, you know, they don’t teach you that or you don’t learn that, you know, growing up, if that’s not what your family does. So you’ve really kind of got to just fly by the seat of your pants and learn as you go.

Lakaya Tenley: That’s right. Yeah, you find what works for your operation and that kind of gives you the inspiration to do the next thing and how you’re going to connect with the next customer.

Lisa Foust Prater: Well, congratulations, you guys. I’m so excited to talk to you and to hear about your award and your plans. And I’m excited to follow along and watch this whole market come together. I know it’s gonna be wonderful. So congrats.

Tanner Tenley: Yeah, thank you so much.

Lisa Foust Prater: Thank you for listening. Please subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Open the latest issue of Successful Farming and visit us online at agriculture.com for more interesting features and news for your farm and Join me next week for another episode of 15 Minutes With a Farmer.