COUNTRY VIEW DAIRY
Dave and Carolee Rapson
Country View Dairy, which is located in Hawkeye, was established by Dave and Carolee Rapson in 2002. In 2011, the Rapsons built a brand-new creamery specifically designed to make yogurt from the fluid milk the dairy was producing. In 2013, the creamery created its soft-serve frozen yogurt mix product that it sells to ice cream shops, schools and restaurants.
Country View Dairy’s Choose Iowa grant project will increase its production capability by increasing storage and packing efficiency. This will add more value to the dairy’s fluid milk, expand its markets and allow it to serve more Iowa schools. Country View Dairy will purchase a large, water-cooled batch freezer as well as a piston filler machine designed for packing frozen yogurt containers.
Country View Dairy anticipates increased sales and customers. The Rapsons hope that this project will allow them to continue producing and selling dairy products to Iowa consumers for many years to come.
Project Update as of May 25, 2023
From Country View Dairy
“In the Fall of 2022 we were one of the fortunate recipients of a Choose Iowa Grant to help expand our production capacity and sales of our Hard Pack Premium Frozen Yogurt line here at the creamery located right on our farm in northeast Iowa. With this new equipment, we have been able to almost double our production capacity on our larger tubs of frozen yogurt, freeing up our current batch freezer machine to use for our single serve cow cup line. In a time when Class III Milk prices are below the cost of production, it is critical that we have the ability and capacity to produce more products through the creamery here than to send the milk on a truck on the market.”
