Monday, April 30, 2018

Factory Tour Capital of the World


We’re staying in Gifford Pinchot State Park outside of York, Pennsylvania.   We stayed in this park 7 years ago on our last trip to Maine.  It’s a very nice park.  As an added bonus there are 2 18-hole disc golf courses in the park.

The park is 2,338 acres with a 340 acre lake.  It has rained part of every day we’ve been here.  Things are very green and soggy now.

York County advertises itself as the Factory Tour Capital of the World.  That certainly got my attention!  I’m always looking for factory tours on our travels.  We hit the jackpot!  There are more tours than we will have time for but we’re doing our best to get to as many of them as we can.

Perrydell Farms.

We woke up to a rainy, windy morning but decided to go ahead to Perrydell Farms.  We wanted to get there early enough to see them bottling the milk and we figured that would be inside so the rain wouldn’t matter.


We were surprised at how small an operation this farm is.  After parking we went into a small store and was told to go on back to the bottling room.  We met Tom (one of the grandson’s of the original owner, Howard Perry) and his wife Donna.  Donna makes the ice cream and Tom gave us the tour. 

Very small operation

Tom bottling the milk from this morning’s milking.

Tom would put the empty plastic jugs on the belt, they would then be filled with milk and lids applied then Tom would take the filled jugs off the belt and load them into plastic crates.

The only way to get it any fresher is to buy your own cow!

The farm was bought in 1923 by Howard Perry.  His two sons, George and Roger eventually took over the farm and they had the foresight to start bottling their own milk in 1963.

The farm is now owned and operated by George's sons, Tom, Greg, and Chip. Everyone in the family stays involved in the farm.  We also met Tom's mom while we were here.

The black pipe you see runs directly from the processing room to the bottling room.

Moving the milk from the processing room to the bottling room.

The breed of cow is mostly all Holstein.  There was a Jersey calf that was bought for a 4-H project and has since grown up and produced a few cross breeds.

The cows have just been milked and were resting.

The majority of the food fed to the cows is grown here on 170 acres.  An additional 180 acres of land is rented for planting and harvesting feed.  There are approximately 250 cows.  About 130 of them are milked.  They are milked twice a day and are not injected with any hormone that would force them to produce more milk.

The calves had their own area and each had a little “cow” house to get out of the rain.


We bought some ice cream.  Triple chocolate for me and salted caramel for Mark.

Ice cream for the road.

We also bought some ice cream for later.


And we bought a few other items.

Cookies and cream milk taste like 
melted cookies and cream ice cream!

Even though this was a very small farm we had a great time.  We arrived at 9:00 when they opened and were the only ones there for the tour but as we were leaving there were several people coming in for the tour.

7 comments:

  1. Oooh! I like Factory Tours too - I'll add Perryman Farms to our list - although Sea Salt and Chocolate Macaroni and Cheese sounds a bit suspect!

    Hoof Tracks Ice cream sounds good.

    Excited to see what other places you toured!

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    1. The Sea Salt and Chocolate was an ice cream flavor, and Mac and Cheese was an entirely separate thing (not an ice cream, thank goodness...)!!

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  2. These are the kind of tours I like: family owned and operated, with pride. Thanks for sharing.

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    1. Tom was a passionate guy and really sold the advantages of local "farm to table". We were happy to buy some things from them to support the cause...

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  3. omg, that place is about 30 miles from where our grandkids live. I will have to tell Kelly about it.

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    Replies
    1. Look them up on the Internet. The hours are posted on when they feed the calves and when they milk the cows too.

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  4. My grand daughters joined 4H since moving there. Now raising rabbits. They want goats, but need more property for that.

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