For the makers of Shatto Milk, success is cold and tasty

A woman at Whole Foods Market on 119th Street in Overland Park asks Leroy and Barbara Shatto about the boiler at their dairy that burst into flames.

"I worry about you and your cows," she says.

The fire, extinguished without injury to man or beast, was reported in a Shatto Milk Company newsletter. The monthly "moosletter" debuted in 2005, two years after the Shattos began bottling and selling the milk they collect from cows on their farm in Osborn, Missouri.

On this Saturday afternoon, Whole Foods has invited local producers to show off their goods. The Shattos have set up a table in the rear of the store, next to the dairy case. Barbara pours samples from glass bottles kept on ice and extends warm greetings to shoppers who pause at the table.

"We're Shatto Milk Company, a local family farm," she says.

A mother helps the young boy perched in her cart swig chocolate milk from a small paper cup. She says the child has known only her milk and the Shattos'. "We came today just because we knew you were here," she says. Touched, Barbara gives the boy a small stuffed animal. It's a cow, of course.

Before starting Shatto Milk Company, the couple sold their raw milk to an agricultural cooperative. But they had trouble getting a price that covered their costs. At one point, the farm was losing 45 cents on every 100 pounds of milk it sold. "That wasn't working," Leroy says.

Shatto Milk Company began five years ago out of desperation. Today, the Shattos give tours five days a week, sell milk soap online and visit upscale grocery stores to meet city folk who worry about their cows. Shatto milk has emerged as a local brand in a league with Boulevard beer and Roasterie coffee.

The product has considerable appeal. It comes from cows that haven't been treated with artificial growth hormones. The animals live on a dairy 45 miles outside the city, a significant factor for those who try to mind their carbon footprints.

And the bottles, in addition to being reusable, are cool as hell.

In 2006, Ally Letsky ordered 200 Shatto pints to give as gifts (with cookies) to guests for her wedding reception at the Rockhill Tennis Club. "Wedding favors are kind of generic and boring," she says. Letsky thought the Shatto pints "were just gorgeous," and they evoked her roots in tiny Harrisburg, Missouri.

Alas, Letsky's marriage to Benjamin Altschul was not made to last. But both bride and groom remember the Shattos fondly.

When Letsky sent Altschul an e-mail to ask him if it was OK to talk about the wedding in print, he replied: "I don't know how you feel about them, but I think that they are probably the best company I've ever done business with."

Gray clouds smother northwest Missouri. It's midmorning on a Thursday in August. A dozen adults and children are standing in the country store at Shatto Farms, surrounded by Puffer Balls and $40 hoodies. A woman behind the cash register is speaking on the phone with a Sedalia resident who wants to know when Shatto milk will be available in her area.

Paper hats are distributed in preparation for a tour of the bottling room. Our guide, Leroy Shatto, enters the room wearing jeans, a white polo shirt and a white baseball cap. Cowboy boots accentuate his height (he's 6 feet 4); Prada eyewear indicates a familiarity with urban style.

Shatto can count on two hands the number of tours that he's missed since 2003, the year he started bottling his milk and inviting people to watch. "We have all these people from Kansas City coming up who want to see what a cow looks like," he tells today's guests, who have come from near (Gladstone) and far (Illinois).

Stainless-steel machinery and plastic milk crates fill the bottling room. A pasteurizer sits in the back corner. A man carries a sack of sugar on his shoulder to the section of the floor where chocolate, strawberry and other flavors of milk are created. The ice-cream maker looks not much bigger than the yogurt machine at a smoothie store.

A worker flips a switch. Milk begins to pour into half-gallon jugs that travel on a mechanized line. Shatto pulls out a bottle to let his guests feel how cold it is to the touch. Skim milk, Shatto explains, is the most popular white variety "because of all the healthy people in town."

His tour personality is that of a country fellow with just enough common sense to get by. The dairy, he says, is a way to support the cows. "My wife still hopes I can make some money before I die."

The harsh math of modern agriculture has forced a lot of dairy farmers to find new lines of work. Their numbers have dwindled by 40 percent in the past 10 years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "All my friends who used to milk got smart and quit," Shatto says.

Shatto, who is 54, wasn't ready to give up his cows. So he applied for a grant to study ways to keep dairies in Missouri. He spent time in supermarkets to learn more about consumer preferences. He visited small dairies in the East that processed their own milk.