Meet Heidi Cooper of Cooper’s Hilltop Farm in Leicester

Today we’d like to introduce you to Heidi Cooper.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I am originally from Minnesota and moved here just under 10 years ago. My grandparents were Iowa farmers but my mother did not stay on the farm so I did not grow up with very much experience in agriculture other than summer visits and selling sweet corn on the side of the road in Jr. High with my farming friend neighbor. When I first moved to Massachusetts I secured an office style customer service job; managing customer relationship is something I’ve always excelled at. After a few years I was becoming bored with my job and decided to take up part time employment at a local farm as being outdoors was something that made me much happier than being in an office building. I eventually left my office job and met my future husband through Farm Bureau, an agricultural organization.

In 2013 I moved to my husband’s dairy farm and we started our family, while I also started becoming more involved in his business. In the past 4 years we’ve worked together to improve the management of our direct-to-consumer farm business as well as diversifying our offerings from only dairy to include also beef, pork, eggs, chicken, and soon-to-come lamb. We’ve worked hard on solidifying our brand and diving into the agritourism side of business by offering a new petting zoo area, educational workshops, tours, and collaborative events with local groups and organizations. We are fortunate to now be in a position where we sell out of product as quickly as we’re producing it, while producing what we believe is top quality products. We also maintain strong relationships with other farmers and small businesses in the area by selling their products in our store and working with them behind the scenes to support each other as an agricultural community. In addition to our business responsibilities we have a 3.5 year old and a 2 year old that enjoy working with us on the farm and constantly keep us on our toes.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Personally, my largest struggle has been learning to manage a professional role as well as my role as a mother and wife. Our oldest child was a surprise for us, so when I was thrown into being a mother while also learning how to manage a family business, then soon after getting married, it was quite a challenge for me. It’s actually still something I work on consistently as I try to maintain a strong business presence while I also do what is right for us personally as a family. There are certainly benefits to working a full-time job while I am also the primary caregiver for my children, but it also is still trying to work full-time hours with incredible distractions and obligations that are just as, if not more important.

In terms of our business, the main struggle is always to have enough customers to support a full family involved with it. When I joined the farm and James and I started to grow our family, our main challenge was being able to generation enough additional income to justify our additional presence while also improving the business for future growth and success. Any business rooted in agriculture is risky as we depend on volatile factors such as weather and government decisions and involvement. We needed to figure out a way to increase our overall sales and customer base to create a larger revenue base. The tricky thing is we needed to do this without the resources to instantaneously increasing our main sale product (milk/cream), so we did that by diversifying and adding more livestock and offering our own beef, pork, chicken, and eggs. Diversification and implementation of branding and stronger marketing strategies like community involvement have been imperative to our successfully overcoming our obstacles and challenges.

Cooper’s Hilltop Farm – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Our farm will be a century farm next year in 2018. Owned by my husband’s family since the early 1900s they purchased their first dairy cow in 1918. Through the past 100 years they’ve changed and made improvements, diversified and adjusted marketing strategies to keep up with consumer trends and demands. We operate a farm store where customers can purchase our milk, cream, beef, pork, chicken, eggs, and other local products 7 days a week, 9am-9pm. nearly all of the product we raise is sold direct to our consumers through our farm store, and dairy is by far our largest area of income. We use vat pasteurization which utilizes lower heat and leaves more of the good proteins, providing our milk with a richer flavor. Because our milk is not ultra-pasteurized like milk is in stores, it is ideal for cooking, baking, cheese making, and more. We are fortunate to work with a handful of chefs and hold a waiting list of customers seeking to utilize our product in their restaurants and coffee shops.

We are most well-known for our eggnog that we make for the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter seasons. Aside from that our flavored milks (chocolate, strawberry, coffee) and creams are the things people rave about. Our heavy cream is particularly hard to compare with as the butterfat content is so high; it is unmatched for making whipped cream, butter, sauces, and much more.

To appeal to more customers we began to diversify four years ago and since have added our own pasture raised beef, pork, eggs, and seasonal chicken. We work with a local chef who creates prepared frozen meals using our meat and are always looking for more creative ways to market our products. We are lucky, however, that we sell out of product as we are able to process more so at this time we are content with our offerings.

In the past few years we have also kept a strong focus on connecting with our consumers more. Facebook has been an incredible free marketing resource and allows us to share all aspect of our farm with the people that shop with and support us. We focus on meaningful community involvement, giving back when and where we can, and also opening our farm at different times. We now have a petting zoo and family visiting area for folks to enjoy as well as offering more consistent family activities, educational workshops, farm tours, and fundraising activities. We truly think we have expanded in all different directions, in just the right way, to maximize what we have to offer our consumers.

What has been the proudest moment of your career so far?
I have two very specific, very different, “proudest moments” I can think of.

First and foremost involved my daughter Ellie, who is now three. She’s been my farm chore sidekick since day one, and that includes all aspects of my job. Last summer was the first summer I raised meat chickens at a larger scale for our customers and she has helped me catch chickens to crate and send to processing since that time. Just last month she came out with me, her father, and her little brother to crate birds and she took incredible pride in showing her little brother “how to be a chicken farmer”. She was thrilled to show him how to pick them out by size, how to properly hold them, and then remind him that they were going to be delicious. I know that sort of thought process would likely mortify some parents, but as farmers that take pride in raising our own food, I couldn’t be more happy that my three-year-old understands exactly where her food comes, every step, from start to finish.

On a more business/practical note, our last Christmas holiday season was incredibly successful for us. As a management team we properly planned, prepared, and scheduled ourselves for our optimal product output. Combining this with an incredibly competent store staff, proper marketing and product availability communication online with our customers, we absolutely smashed our Christmas Eve gross sales goal. I set a specific dollar amount with my store staff, a number we had never achieved before. By the end of the evening we realized we had not only hit that goal but also overcome it by an additional whopping 50%. It will be a tall task this year to make those same numbers, but it is a challenge we’re looking to face and overcome.

Contact Info:

• Address: Cooper’s Hilltop Farm
  515 Henshaw Street
  Rochdale, MA 01542
• Website: www.coopershilltopfarm.com
• Phone: (508) 892-3720
• Email: coopershilltopfarm@gmail.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/coopershilltopfarm
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/CoopersHilltopFarm
• Yelp: www.yelp.com/biz/coopers-hilltop-dairy-farm-rochdale

Image Credit:
Jessica Strout

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