ReThink Ice Cream sources its milk from Hollandia Dairy, which is owned and
operated by the de Jong family,
including Ian and his father Peter, below.
Holsteins are milked at Hollandia’s San Jacinto dairy, above. At right, the cows enjoy certain comforts, including shade and fans on hot days.
to be disappointed. “A lot of them were airy, chalky or icy. They just didn’t have the creamy mouthfeel or satisfaction of traditional ice cream,” he says. “So, I set about making my own.” Getting the formula right “was kind of a long, involved process,” Haymaker says. “Originally, it took about six months, but, frankly, I’ve been tweaking it ever since. … I’ve worked with four or five food scientists now.” Besides getting the taste and consistency right, he also wanted to make sure his creation could be enjoyed by as many people as possible, including those with intolerances to gluten or dairy. So, he avoided any gluten-containing flavorings, colorings or thickeners sometimes found in other ice cream brands. And, while he himself has no trouble digesting milk, he knew millions of other Americans suffer from cramping, gas and other digestive upsets from consuming dairy products. “This is either because of the lactose (milk sugar) or the A1 protein found in most cow milk,” Haymaker says. “So, I wanted to solve both of those problems by taking out the lactose and using exclusively milk with A2 protein,” the casein protein found in human breast milk, as well as in goat and sheep milk, but in only some cows’ milk. A perfect partnership His search for cows that could source A2-protein milk led him to Hollandia Dairy. Headquartered in San Marcos where it runs a processing plant, the company owns a dairy farm
with 2,700 A2-protein Holsteins in San Jacinto. The business was founded by Arie de Jong, a dairyman from Holland, after settling with his family in Southern California in 1949. It remains family owned. The descendants also own several other dairies throughout California, with a total of about 60,000 cows. When Haymaker discovered Hollandia, he was immediately impressed. “They have a certification for the humane treatment of animals. They have heating and cooling huts to keep the cows comfortable and special food with recipes for each cow depending on its stage of life,” Haymaker says. “They vacuum up all the manure, so the gasses won’t degrade the ozone and then they put it underground in a digester and it recycles it, removing the methane, making it into a non-harmful fuel to drive their trucks and tractors around. Then they use the solids from the manure as fertilizer for the crops that they grow for their cow food,” he continues. “Plus, they have their own water well and they recycle their water, so they get multiple uses out of it.” Hollandia CEO Patrick Schallberger says that sustainability is a high priority for the company. “Here at the milk plant, we have 25 vehicles that run off near- zero-emission natural gas that are replacing diesel-burning trucks, and we’re trying to put even more digesters on the dairies,” he says. Hollandia also uses large solar-power systems at the plant and several dairies.
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