- And we're gonna figure out how this becomes this, becomes this.

(upbeat funky music) - I'm Chris Koval, and we're a fourth generation dairy farm in Stillwater, New York.

We milk 500 cows and crop 1200 acres through the town of Saratoga and along the Hudson River down into Stillwater.

We have four generations of families have worked here, and it works out really well that we have such good community, that works with our family.

- I'm Jen Koval.

We have about 500 milking cows.

I'm here to talk about the young stock on our farm, and we start with the babies.

So this is a calf hutch, and we have some of our young stock in calf hutches, individually housed.

And then we also have some groups inside.

- We purchase very clean sand that looks just like beach sand, so the cows stay super clean, which adds to cleaner milk.

This little technology right here tells us how long the cow's milking, how much milk she makes, what her temperature is.

So it measures all that by the milk.

So this is a separate bunk silo which we keep grass products in.

This one is a triticale that is a hardy winter crop and the cows love it.

So we've worked with Stewart since they started.

We're one of the only dairies that were there in the beginning when they were processing milk 40 years ago.

But today, we ship between 4 and 5,000 gallons of milk a day to Stewart's and that milk is on their store shelves in 48 hours.

- I'm Matt St. Onge.

I'm the dairy manager here at Stewart's in charge of all dairy from milk receiving all the way through finished product.

This is our milk receiving bay.

We currently have 20 farms that we receive milk from.

So we bring in about 28,000 gallons of milk a day into this facility.

We run six days a week in the dairy, so we're always bringing in fresh milk.

This milk that gets pumped off today, we're using that today to be, you know, in the shop and at the store tomorrow morning.

This milk will go into two big silos.

Each silo holds 30,000 gallons each.

So basically, a pasteurizer.

We bring milk into a balance pan, it goes and gets heated up.

There are regulations based off of FDA that says at what temperature and at what time, how long it needs to be pasteurized for in order to kill any pathogenic bacteria.

The milk that we bring in for ice cream is the same milk that comes from our farms.

So we have the extra butter fat that comes off of the skimming process, typically goes to ice cream.

- I'm Jason Brown.

We're headed to the ice cream department.

I manage the ice cream department.

I like Philly vanilla.

This operation actually starts at midnight, so it only runs to about 10 in the morning.

All right, so we take all the milk in the cream from the dairy, and we'll put it into our fat processors where we will add our stabilizers and our sugars.

So this right here is a patch of chocolate ice cream that's made up that we're gonna pasteurize.

Send it through a homogenizer, which really just takes a bunch of all the fat globules and it beats them up.

So after it goes through the homogenizer, it goes through our cooling press, and it goes from 165 and it drops down to under 45 degrees.

And that's where we store it in our mix tanks.

So we have our mix titles here.

They're located outside and they're alcoved in through the front of the building here.

These are 5,000 gallon silos.

And what we do is we will make a base of ice cream, whether it's a white ice cream, chocolate, sherbet, we have 15 different mixes that we base all our ice creams off of.

And we'll make it and we'll age it for about 24 hours before we package it.

You guys want a milkshake?

So after we make the mix and we age it for that 18 to 24 hours, we'll pump it over to our flavoring batchs, and we'll actually add whatever we're gonna put in here.

So this is gonna have a chocolate caramel based added to our chocolate ice cream for the chocolate caramel tornado.

So in here, this is our freezer warehouse.

This is at about negative 20.

So we store the product in here until the product core comes down to a zero degrees, and then it's frozen solid, and we ship it out to our stores that then the customers can purchase there.

- It was cold in there.

(people chattering) - So in 1921, the Dake Brothers started the ice cream business, and they sold 4,000 gallons in the first year.

And then, 1945, they purchased the first Stewart shop.

And it was in Boston Spa.

I think Stewart's means community to everyone.

It's kind of the hub for all of the community, whether it be like the diner or the ice cream shop, or you go to get breakfast, or coffee with the guys.

It is the spot where everyone can meet and talk, and greet each other.

And we have friendly partners that are just, they're just great.

And Stewart Shop is, Stewart Shop's really, we really work to be a part of the communities that we serve.

So this year we're especially happy because we're celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Make Your Own Sundae.

And that is the sundae where you can, you know you pick any flavor that you want from the cone counter, and you top it with marshmallow topping, butterscotch topping you know, the Jimmy, the Sprinkles, all of the toppings that are at the Make Your Own Bar.

And it's so fun.

So we're celebrating 75 years of the Make Your Own Sundae this year.

- Thank you for joining us on this episode of Field Trip.

Visit us at wmht.org/fieldtrip and let us know where you think we should go next.

Cheers.

- Do you need a top?

- No, we're gonna eat this right now.

- Do you wanna top?

- No, thank you.

- The fun chips have a slightly different flavor than I thought they were gonna have.