Horning Farms expands its offerings to the public
Mason Horning is the sixth generation of his family to live on the farm at 11834 E. Pleasant Lake Road
Once upon a time, the role of the family farm was to provide food and shelter for itself and perhaps shared some of its surplus with neighbors. As more people moved away from the farm life, a farm stand with produce and other farm fare was often seen. The modern family farm has evolved into something a bit more complex, enlarging to feed thousands–perhaps millions–of people with its operations.
Mason Horning, however, part of the sixth generation of the Horning family to make its living on the farm, is going back to his family farm’s roots–albeit in a more modern way.
Horning Farms in Freedom Township has hundreds of dairy cattle, as well as raising steers for meat and farming hundreds of acres for their cattle feed. They also have a website that tells the story of their farm and shares that they are “passionate about farming and the opportunity to raise food for ourselves and our community.” There are currently three generations of the Horning family actively working on the farm–Earl and Diane Horning; their son Jeff and his wife Lynda; and Mason and his sister, Katelyn Packard; two of Jeff and Lynda’s three children.
As part of a farmer-owned dairy cooperative, the Michigan Milk Producers Association, Horning Farms has access to the production power of three milk-processing facilities, one of which is the Heritage Ridge Creamery in Middlebury, Indiana. The Middlebury plant of Heritage Ridge produces cheeses for retail sale and another, in Constantine, Michigan, makes butter, although production there has slowed significantly due to COVID-19. The Horning Farms Cheese Shop, which carries eight varieties of the Heritage Ridge cheeses, is open for business 24/7 on the web, and products can be pre-ordered there and picked up from 4-6 pm on Mondays and Thursdays. As soon as butter is available from the Constantine plant, the farm shop will also start carrying that as well. You can also walk-in to the farm shop during its Monday and Thursday afternoon hours, and purchase the products.
“Because it’s a cooperative, it’s not like the cheese is made from our own milk,” Mason explains. “But we contribute milk to the creamery and so it’s ‘ours’ in a sense. Basically, we’re helping them out and that helps us, too. It’s all in the marketing.”
In addition to butter and cheese, the shop will be expanding very shortly–within the next week or two–to meats produced on the farm.
“We’ve always raised our own steers on the farm, and have been able to sell beef by the side or the quarter,” he says, “but now we can sell individually packaged cuts of beef, processed at a plant in Hillsdale that is USDA inspected.”
The store, too, is inspected and licensed for retail sale by the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD).
Currently, the varieties of cheese available are the Amish Creamery (a medium-sharp white cheddar-style cheese that is their top seller to date,) Cheddar, Colby Jack, Garden Veggie Jack, Monterey Jack with yogurt cultures, Pepper Jack, Salsa Jack, and Thunder Jack. If you’d like to sample them, the cheeses are currently being featured on Charcuterie Boards at Frank’s Place in downtown Manchester! Visit the shop online at https://www.horning-family-farms.com/
Stop in and visit one of the Manchester area’s newest businesses and help support the local farming community.
Inside the cozy cheese shop, Mason Horning shows off a couple of the popular varieties of cheese they currently carry. The shop will soon expand to provide even more farm products!
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