A Texas dairy farm is bringing some nostalgia to the East Texas area by reintroducing glass bottle milk. Volleman’s Family Farm, located approximately 230 miles west of Tyler in Gustine, is now offering its glass bottle milk in both Smith and Gregg county businesses.

The farm, owned by Frank and Annette Volleman, began bottling it milk in the returnable, refundable glass-bottles in the summer of 2020 but their story doesn’t start there.

The Volleman family can trace their dairy heritage back over 100 years to the fields of Holland and Luxembourg. In 1993, Frank and Annette Volleman made the decision to move their family from Europe to the great state of Texas to pursue their dreams of starting their own dairy farm.

The family decided to make another dream a reality by bottling their farm fresh milk and offering it to Texas families through local businesses, according to marketing director and daughter-in-law Shelby Volleman.

“We started off in just a few mom and pop stores around our area and have since then quickly grown to many stores across Texas,” she said.

Those stores now include locations in Tyler and Longview.

Volleman said the farm is very much a family-operated business.

“We are truly family-owned and operated. My in-laws, Frank and Annette, are still very much active in the business, all four of their sons, Ben, David, Andrew, and Daniel, came back home to run various parts of the operations and even the daughter-in-laws, myself and Anna Volleman, work for the family farm.”

Volleman said the product holds several unique qualities that go beyond the nostalgia.

“Our glass bottles make our product not only nostalgic in the fact that people remember the days of the milkman bringing milk in glass bottles, but also because they make a big difference in our product,” she said.

The glass material helps keep the milk colder which provides a richer and creamier texture – it also prevents any foreign odors or tastes from affecting the milk inside.

“We are also able to fully trace our products from beginning to end. Benjamin, the oldest son, grows crops in our fields which then get made into food for our cows at the dairy. David, the second oldest, oversees our dairy and cows,” Volleman said. “The milk from our cows then gets sent straight to our creamery, just a few miles up the road, where Andrew manages the creamery and distribution of the milk to stores. Daniel, the youngest, looks after our youngest cows and helps with milk sales as well.”

“So from start to finish, our milk is fully traceable which allows us to make the highest-quality product,” she said.

Volleman said she believes the products, now available at select stores such as Brookshire’s, Super 1 Foods, and Fresh in Tyler and the Super 1 Foods located on Marshall Avenue in Longview, will give residents the opportunity to be more sustainable.

“I believe our products will give the East Texas residents opportunities to be more sustainable and support a Texas business. With our bottles being glass, we have a bottle deposit process for every bottle purchased,” she said. “So if a customer buys one of our bottles, they will pay a $2 bottle deposit on it; however, once they empty out the bottle, they can return it back to any store that carries our products to get their deposit back.”

“We pick up all returned bottles from the stores and wash, sanitize and reuse them for bottling future products,” Volleman said. “We are very focused on sustainability on our family farm, and our glass bottles align with that value by helping to reduce waste in the environment.”

Volleman said the family truly cares about both its products and its customers.

“We are a family that truly cares about our products and customers. It can be very hard work running not only a small business but also a dairy farm, but we are so proud to be able to provide Texas families like ours with a high-quality product that comes fresh from our family farm,” she said.

The family also values transparency and sharing agricultural knowledge with their customers where their milk comes from by offering tours to the public once a month.

“We also want to be a source of knowledge for people on agriculture and the dairy industry, which is why we open our family farm up to tours once a month to let people see first-hand where their milk comes from and learn more about what goes into that process,” Volleman said. “The tour, which takes place at our farm in Gustine, offers an interactive experience to see the full process of their products from start to finish.”

Volleman said the farm received several requests to come to the East Texas and hopes to continue to expand throughout the area.

“We receive many requests from customers across Texas to bring our products to a store near them, and the East Texas market was a big area where we got a lot of customer feedback and requests from,” she said.

While Volleman’s Family Farm offers a variety of staple flavors such as chocolate milk, strawberry milk, whole milk, and heavy cream, they also have fun limited-edition seasonal flavors throughout the year.

Volleman’s Family Farm is located at 15400 Texas Highway 36 in Gustine and can be reached at 325-667-7420.

For more information, visit www.vollemansdairy.com.