MYAKKA CITY, Fla. — Large-scale dairy farm operations are few and far between in Florida, but one that has been in the same family for generations is still going strong — Dakin Dairy Farm in Myakka City. 

What You Need To Know

  • The Dakin Dairy farm has resumed tours after suspending them due to COVID

  • The tours include visits to the cow's barns and stalls and the bottling operations

  • Courtney Dakin, who grew up on the farm, leads the tours

Like clockwork, each morning at Dakin Dairy, Courtney Dakin makes her rounds starting with the farm's youngest calves. 

“This guy right here is about 8 weeks old, and we just started the weening process with him," she explained. "That's why he's in this pen right now." 

Bottle feeding a weeks-old calf is just part of her morning routine that's become her full-time job. After growing up on the farm in Myakka City, she initially moved away and pursued a career in the service industry, but when the COVID-19 pandemic started more than two years ago, she lost her full-time serving job. That's when she decided to return to her family's dairy farm and start a new career as the farm's tour director. 

“I think it was my destiny to end up back out here," Dakin said. "When COVID hit and the restaurants shut down, I was a life-long server, as I called myself, but then my cousin Jerry reached out to me and asked me to take over the tours and I said I'll give it a whirl.” 

She will take visitors through the farm's nearly 100-year history on the tour, which resumed in December. The farm first starting operations in Maine in 1926 before the family patriarch, Pete Dakin, moved his family to Florida in 1963. What started as an operation at the current location with about 15 cows has now grown to one of the largest dairy farms in Florida, and the farm currently has 4,500 milking cows on site. 

Dakin will walk visitors through the farm's cow barns and stalls and even show how the cows are milked. She also shows how the milk is bottled and home-grown products are sold in their cafe and market. It's a glimpse into a true mom-and-pop dairy operation in the heart of old Florida, an experience young and old will appreciate after a day spent on the farm.

Dakin Dairy currently run the tours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The cost is $8 dollars per person. For more information, head to the farm's website.