Dairy Dreams

Mayfield scholarship helps next generation

Like the Mayfield boys, Colleen Cruze (UT, 2009) grew up around whole milk and flavored ice creams and a long-standing gratefulness for the University of Tennessee. Her father graduated from UT and, like Tom Mayfield, was the son of a dairy farmer who chose to continue in the business. Now Colleen, a food science major in the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, wants to do the same.

“My dad milked cows every morning and night when he was at UT,” says Colleen. “Right now I mainly work in bottling. But when I’m in school, my farm duties ease off some.”

Colleen, whose family land sits on a bend in the French Broad River near Strawberry Plains, has directly benefited from scholarship funds generated by proceeds from the Thomas B. Mayfield Agriculture Scholarship Endowment established in 2007 to honor the Mayfield family patriarch, Tom Mayfield.

“It’s great to have the help,” Colleen says. “Colleges are expensive. One day it would be really nice to set up a scholarship at UT to honor my own dad, just as the Mayfields have done.”

Colleen says 500 acres of her family’s farm have been moved into a conservation easement. “It’s nice to know the land will always be there for farming. I’m really fortunate. It gives me a future.”

The Cruzes started bottling whole milk and buttermilk in 1983 and selling their products to co-ops and small “mom and pop” stores in the area. They currently milk about 150 Jerseys, some of which “we bought from the Mayfields,” she says.

“We make really good ice cream and our special flavor is blackberry. This summer we’ll have a farm store on the property, a place where families can come with kids, get blackberry ice cream—or pumpkin in the fall—and get a good look at where dairy products come from.”