Justin and Siska Reece - The 2026 Caldwell/Nampa Agribusiness Chamber Committee Farm Family of the Year

The Caldwell/Nampa Agribusiness Chamber Committee announced Justin & Siska Reece as their 2026 Farm Family of the Year.

They own Moo-Riah Dairy and Copper Cow Creamery in Melba, Idaho and work it with their five sons.

Siska Reece: My family bought this farm in 1994. They were looking for a place where we could just really work together as a family and it would possibly be able to support more than just my parents and us as siblings, and if we wanted to stay on the farm we could all work together for that. At the time it wasn't a dairy farm, it was just a ranch and we would do all the harvesting, we would take turns driving tractor. round the clock, and it was definitely a family affair. Fast forward, five years later, we started this dairy, and the dairy was a family homeschool project. We decided as a family to milk Jersey cows over Holsteins because of their personalities, their size, the creaminess of their milk, ultimately that's what my grandpa dairy farmed with back in Holland in the early 1900s, and so that was really special for us. So we bought a herd of Jersey cows out of Ohio and brought them over here. We started milting in August of 1999. At that time, I was just graduating high school, so my older brothers and I all went to college to get dairy science degrees and some ag mechanics degrees, and that's... what we used as the basic knowledge. We were one of the first dairies in Idaho that actually used a computer system to tell us when our cows were in heat and how much milk our cows were giving, every single milking, every single shift. That was an instrumental management tool in helping us take care of our cows and knowing who needed extra care and who needed help. For the past five years, It's been really tough for the dairy industry. My husband and I love sharing our farm with the public and educating the public and the world about agriculture. We've always wanted to do some sort of outreach to the community to inform them about agriculture and where their food comes from and how much farmers actually love their cows and actually take care of their cows and their land and their fields and their crops and We always had a dream of starting something that would educate the public, but we thought that someday when the dairy is profitable, we'll be able to start that visitor center slash museum slash educational center. We weren't coming across a time where the dairy was super profitable. And so last year, we had to kind of sit down and really evaluate where we're going. We had to just pray about what the next step was. And we know this is God's dairy, and we just decided if we have to sell it to pay off everybody that we owe money to, we will do that. And we both had a very clear answer from the Lord. This is his dairy, and he's not ready for us to sell it. and we just need to trust him and so we did and that was really awesome that we both felt so strongly in such a strong peace but it was also really scary because we didn't know how we were gonna pay the bills and we ultimately just prayed and I think within two or three weeks I probably had 20 or 30 people that point blank started asking us, When are you gonna start bottling your own milk? When are you gonna start making your own cheese? Why can't we just buy ice cream from you? I guess the wheels just started turning and I was like, Wait a second. Maybe now is the time. Maybe the time isn't when we're profitable. Maybe we can reach out to the public, start telling our story now. And so that's what we're doing. So here we are. This is our little glorified lemonade stand. We're selling our own milk and cheese and ice cream. And the kids are working. I have five sons. And my husband and my sons are helping us build all of this together from the ground up. We're out in our field right here, our cows. are literally less than a mile away right across that field. It has been amazing to see the joy on our customers' faces when they come back and they love, love, love the milk, and it reminds them of their childhood. The ice cream is going to be a lot like how your mama used to make it when you were little, and I mean, it's just good old-fashioned ingredients, milk, sugar, cream, and vanilla. We love it. We serve soft-serve ice cream, lots of different flavors of milkshakes. I have amazing employees that we couldn't do it without them. And God has just tremendously blessed it. I mean, this is his farm, and now it's his creamery, and he's just using us as stewards to share our story and shine his light. And we're just excited to do that.

Video by Cinema Syndicate LLC