
Wisconsin Sassy Cow Creamery
Clip: 5/4/2026 | 4m 33sVideo has Closed Captions
In Wisconsin, some “sassy cows” create special kinds of cheese and ice cream.
In Wisconsin, some “sassy cows” create special kinds of cheese and ice cream.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
America's Heartland is presented by your local public television station.
Funding for America’s Heartland is provided by US Soy, Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education, Rural Development Partners, and a Specialty Crop Grant from the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

Wisconsin Sassy Cow Creamery
Clip: 5/4/2026 | 4m 33sVideo has Closed Captions
In Wisconsin, some “sassy cows” create special kinds of cheese and ice cream.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship>> Consumers like you often look for different products at the supermarket than they might have searched out even a few years back.
Think about the changes.
Gluten free products, organic foods and an explosion in everything from yogurt to cheese in the dairy case.
Meeting that demand means that farmers and ranchers have to adjust production.
Well, our Sarah Gardner visited a dairy farm in Wisconsin where that "adjustment" affected entire herds of cows.
>> Whether at the grocery store or elsewhere, surveys show that consumers today want more choices in their food selection.
And farmers and ranchers are meeting the demand for more organic foods as well.
The U.S.
Department of Agriculture certified just 13,000 organic dairy cows in 1997.
By 2008 that number had grown to a quarter million animals.
Those statistics impact the kind of choices being made by farmers.
Numbers that played a role in production for Wisconsin's Sassy Cow Creamery.
Back in 2000, brothers James and Robert Baerwolf took their parents' dairy farm, split the herds in two, and began producing both organic and non-organic or traditional milk products.
>> At my farm we have 200 organic cows.
And at my brother Robert's farm we have 400 non-organic cows.
>> So, are all your products both organic and non-organic from the creamery?
>> Yes, We offer two separate lines.
Some of our customers choose to purchase organic milk at some of our stores as well.
And then some of our customers at store locations choose to purchase our non-organic milks.
>> With their dairy herd totaling several hundred cows on two separate farms, the Baerwolf brothers provide organically grown feed to that livestock segment and traditional feed to their other cows.
Between the two farms sits the production facility, a creamery built in 2008.
Here hundreds of pounds of cheese are processed.
Hundreds of quarts of ice cream are manufactured.
And more than 20,000 gallons of milk are bottled each and every week, organic and non-organic in separate production runs.
>> So, this is where the cheese curds operation happens.
>> Yep, this is our cheese vat.
We started at about six this morning.
>> How many gallons or ounces of... >> 3000 pounds of milk.
>> 3000 pounds of milk?
>> Yes.
>> So how many gallons of chocolate milk?
>> About 600 gallons.
>> 600 gallons, what once a week?
>> Yep, Thursday is our chocolate milk day.
>> The majority of the Sassy Cow dairy products will be delivered to grocery stores and supermarkets all across the state of Wisconsin.
But the Baerwolf brothers also saw a need to augment their dairy entrepreneurship with their own retail operation.
Serving both segments of the buying public, their farm store offers organic and traditional milk.
Oh, and did I mention they even have trading cards with pictures of the cows producing the milk?
>> And then there's the cheese making side of the business.
Tell me a little bit about that.
>> For us we do a small amount of cheese.
But, fresh cheese curds are popular, so we do about one vat per week.
>> The cheese curds are packed as a handy snack food, with some of the product finding its way into Wisconsin school rooms.
>> We 're also part of their school lunch snack program.
And so we provided some cheese curds for them to take to the schools especially in winter when there isn't fresh produce available for the program.
>> Sassy Cow also participates in the "Buy-Local, Buy-Fresh" program where Wisconsin growers promote sustainable farms by selling their products to local restaurants.
>> A lot of their restaurant members use a lot of our different products, our milk, our heavy cream.
And so we've made a lot of connections through their program with local chefs looking for local products.
>> As for the Sassy Cow Creamery, the Baerwolf brothers hope to eventually turn the company over to their kids, who they hope will become fourth generation Wisconsin dairy farmers.
>> Our parents had farmed, and our grandparents had farmed on the same location here.
So You know what it will be like for our kids only time will tell.
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