- June 11, 2025
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Curious creatures, cows. Curious about us humans. So says Garrett Dakin, who should know, because he owns Dakin Dairy Farms with his three brothers and has been part of his family’s milk business since childhood. A cow’s curiosity only goes so far, though. “They’ll let you get close, but they will not let you touch ’em,” Dakin says.
I’m up for the challenge. As an enticement, I pick up a handful of feed and extend it to one of the cows, who’s just finished a milking session. She meanders over, pauses, inches a bit closer, then stops and gives me a long, soulful — curious — stare. Her coat is a ruddy white accented by puzzle pieces of deep brown. A yellow tab with the number 5965 hangs from each ear. I push the feed closer to her, about a foot away. “Go ’head, it’s OK,” I murmur. A cow whisperer. Shortly after, she slowly turns and saunters away, joining the rest of the herd.
I don’t get to touch #5965 but I like to think we had a moment. Our human-bovine encounter was among several memorable experiences I had at Dakin Dairy Farm on a sun-kissed day in mid-March. The 350-acre complex is just 10 miles from Lakewood Ranch in Myakka City.
Dakin is the only dairy farm in Florida that’s open to the public, says Garrett, 43. An employee hosts tours, often showing large groups of young school kids the ins and outs of the farm, and then cutting them loose to frolic on the adjacent playground and mingle with goats and other farm animals in the petting area.
I get an extended, behind-the-scenes tour in Garrett’s well-used GMC pickup. He’s a big, bearded dude — 6-foot-2, 260 pounds, he says — with a high-pitched, twangy voice that’s like a plucked banjo string. He’s wearing a black golf shirt with the company logo above the front pocket. The logo also adorns his camo baseball cap.
Before the tour, we meet Jason Dakin, the eldest brother at 44, for a chat in the company offices. The two younger sibs — Grant, 36, and Ethan, 34 — just left on a rare and well-earned vacation.
During our pickup trek, Garrett — a natural storyteller — discusses the workings of the farm, the dairy business, the Dakins’ multi-generational commitment to it and the dynamics between the brothers, who purchased the property from their uncle, Jerry Dakin, in May of last year.
Along the way, I see every facet of the farm, from the fields of grass that make up the primary food source for the herd, to the final product that’s bottled on-site in plastic retail containers.
Garrett touts the brothers’ efforts to maintain a highly sustainable farm that recycles anything it can — especially water — and makes a bespoke product from cows that have “a better diet than your average football player.” Most mass-market milk is blended from different sources. Dakin Dairy milk is produced exclusively on this farm, which “gives it its own flavor profile,” Garrett explains.
He’s a refreshingly candid man. “I can make more money serving hamburgers at McDonald’s than what I’m doing today,” Garrett says, only half-joking. The brothers don’t take profit from the business because at the moment they’re in break-even mode. Running a dairy farm is a tough racket. “Just the other day I had a guy from a government office ask me, ‘Why are you guys still doing this?’” Garrett muses. “And I said, ‘for some dumbass reason, I love it.’”
So do his brothers, Garrett asserts. Milk pumps through their arteries.
The Garrett brothers’ grandfather, Romanus “Pete” Dakin, ran a dairy farm in Maine. In 1963, he visited Sebring, Florida, and really took to the place. Pete returned home and told his wife, ‘We're movin’ there, and I’m not milkin’ another cow for the rest of my life,’” Garrett recounts.
Pete relocated his family — including four sons — to Sebring and bought a home. After about a year, he got restless. Pete drove around Florida, found a 60-acre spread in Parrish, and bought it. He built two chicken houses and started raising the birds. “Then the chicken market crashed or something,” Garrett says. “He told my Grandma, ‘The only damn money I ever made was milkin’ them damn cows. I hate doin’ it, but I’m gonna do it again.’” In 1974, Pete built a milking parlor, converted the chicken houses to feed barns, bought 110 cows and began accumulating the surrounding 200 acres.
Pete gave his oldest son Cameron — the Dakin brothers’ father — a barn in which to raise calves. “Next thing you know he has, like, 200 of ’em,” Garrett says. “So he sent them off to get raised up, and then he realized he needed to build him a dairy because he was gonna have some cows to milk in about two years.”
Cameron, now 72, and his brother Farren, who died of Covid in 2020, bought a piece of land in Myakka City in 1979, and two years later opened Dakin Dairy not far from the current location.
From an early age, Jason and Garrett got up real early to help their mother, Sondra, feed the calves before going to school. “I think that’s why my folks had two more sons after us — because they needed the cheap labor,” Garrett says with a mischievous grin.
In his mid-teens, Garrett got a stern life lesson. He recalls, “I told my Dad, ‘I’m 16 years old now; I want you to go buy me a truck.’ He laughed at me. He said, ‘There are three things I’ll give you: I’ll give you a ride to the bank. I’ll give you a ride to look for a truck. And I’ll give you a job.’ He instilled in us that there’s no reward if you don’t work.”
Garrett joined an on-the-job training program while at Lakewood Ranch High School — where he was part of the first graduating class — and did some HVAC work during his senior year. But he got stuck inside a pipe on a job in the dead of August and freaked out. So, it was back to dairy — for good.
The Dakin family has owned four dairy farms in the Myakka City area, and there are now two. The current Dakin Dairy Farm was founded by Jerry Dakin in 2002. The other is Cameron Dakin Dairy, about seven miles away. All along, the Dakin brothers worked on the farms, learning the business, top to bottom. Last year an opportunity opened. Their uncle Jerry had grown weary of the grind and put the farm up for sale. The announcement caused plenty of consternation among locals who worried it would be sold to developers. The purchase was probably fated. Jerry wanted to keep the farm in the family, and the brothers wanted a farm of their own.
Garrett says the brothers toil “from dark to dark,” and rarely take vacations. When they manage to get away, they like to hunt and fish. For a weekend every June, the extended family — all the brothers are married with kids — heads to the keys for a weekend, where they rent a nine-bedroom house.
Dakin Dairy Farms is a menagerie of buildings, silos, open-air barns and fields. Visitors first encounter a cafe that serves ice cream, shakes, merchandise (and soon food, Garrett says), in a space that evokes a country store. The main building houses offices, a sophisticated milk processing plant, bottling and storage. A covered, open-air milking parlor is attached.
It’s late morning as I lean on a railing with Jason Dakin, looking down on two long rows of Holstein cows that stand placidly in stalls for one of their three daily milking sessions, each of which takes about six minutes. The cows then amble back to a vast open-air barn, where individual stalls are laid with soft white sand. They’re free to roam out into a small field, but most prefer the shelter, says Ethan Dakin, especially during the hot summer months. Each of the barns is equipped with huge fans to help keep the cows cool, although on this 70-degree morning they’re switched off. “My power bill is $32,000 a month,” Garrett says.
Hungry creatures, cows — 70 pounds of dry food a day, Jason told me. It’s called silage, which is 60% fresh-cut grass. One section of the farm includes several huge mounds of natural raw materials that combine to make the silage. There’s grain from the Yuengling plant in Tampa, dry bakery waste, cotton seed, soybean meal, hominy, grass. Hay makes up the smallest pile. The dairy contracts with a feed nutritionist, who blends the ideal mixture.
Back at the building, Garrett walks me through a door and into the massive storage room that has pallets stacked high with plastic containers of milk. An analog thermometer on the wall reads 35 degrees. I’m wearing a T-shirt. Impervious to the cold, Garrett explains the finer points of the space. After a few minutes, I tell him I need some warmth. We adjourn to the cafe, where he treats me to a luscious chocolate shake.
Dakin Dairy Farms has no CEO. Each of the brothers is listed in company documents as “Manager.” With no top boss and no voting majority, the corporate structure seems like a recipe for conflict. “It makes for a lot of meetings,” Ethan says with a hearty laugh. “But we manage to work it out pretty well.” When it comes to making decisions, the older brothers don’t push around the younger ones. “If it’s your idea, you own it,” Ethan explains. “If we agree on it, it’s your job to follow through.” He then adds with a laugh, “So sometimes you think twice before puttin’ up an idea.”
One reason the siblings work together well is because each one concentrates on a different facet of the operation, while having expertise in the overall business. Garrett is in charge of crop management. Jason takes care of the herd. Ethan oversees the milk plant. Grant handles the finances and is the primary mechanic.
Dakin Dairy produces roughly 8,000 gallons a day, Garrett says, and sells to a variety of retail outlets, mostly within the region. As of early April, its milk was in 29 Publix stores, Detwiler’s Farm Markets, Sarasota Memorial Hospital, some farmers market vendors and a handful of other places.
Ed Chappell, a long-time employee who’s in charge of sales, says that a problem within the milk business is that major grocery chains use it as a “loss leader” and build in miniscule profit margins. That means Dakin has to sell its milk as a premium product. “We have a good story to tell about our cows being grass-fed,” Chappell adds. “There is a taste difference. Whatever the cow eats is going to represent the flavor of the milk. We differentiate ourselves by being better quality and price accordingly.”
The Dakin Brothers have expansion plans: more cows, more milk production, more efficient systems, more sales, better profits. But not more land. The eastward creep of residential development in Manatee County makes land nearly impossible for a farmer to acquire. Garrett explains that during certain seasons his farm must lease land to grow extra crops for feed. As more agricultural businesses sell their properties to developers, the available land to lease will shrink and likely vanish. “I expect we’ll be out of business in 15 to 20 years,” Garrett says, sitting on a bench in the playground.
He utters this prediction without rue or a hint of bitterness. That’s just the way it is. The dairy business, which once thrived in Florida, is being phased out. But until then, the Dakin brothers will do all they can to make Dakin Dairy Farms an ongoing, successful concern.
They don’t expect to get rich. “If I didn’t do this, I’d probably be in the military,” Garrett says. “But I’m still serving the country. I’m helping people put food on their table. A big part of the reward is knowing, ‘I just fed you.’”
