CHARLEVOIX, Mich. – A sense of ‘place’ and a journey for profitability into the future are no small tasks when it comes to sustaining a family dairy farm beyond its first 100 years.
For Sarah Roy, her path back to the family farm has been full of twists and turns to what is now a partnership with her father Doug Warner in its rebirth as Norwood Centennial Farms near Charlevoix, Michigan — nearly 100 years after her great grand-parents moved their six children from their first farm in Norwood to the current location. At that time in 1926, the family business sold milk, eggs, beef, pork, chicken, and grain.
Today, the journey of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th generations is pivoting full circle — back to the consumer.
“When I was younger, dad didn’t force the issue. He wanted me to choose my own path with no pressure discussion about coming back to the farm,” she recalls. After college, Sarah’s path took her to Chicago in telecommunications management, designing trading floors and such. She met her husband Jason, and as they started a family, she retired from that profession to flip houses.
Sarah and Jason and their three children, Parker, Temperance and Annabelle were always going up to the home farm. As time passed, decisions about the future were on the table. She relates how “weird it would be to come to the farm and not have the cows there.”
So, she got involved to see if there was a path forward for the dairy.
“I didn’t want to say I never tried. I want to know I gave it a shot and tried my best,” Sarah reflects. “When I got involved, I quickly realized that we needed to evolve, or this wasn’t going to work.”
What they are doing is working, but it takes time, planning and investment.
Doug (above, right) lives on the farm and operates the 160-cow dairy with good employees. Sarah and her family are there for extended periods. Her son Parker (above, left) helps with field work, and her daughters help with the farmers’ markets. Sarah manages the business side, including the new ventures as they navigate the 4th and 5th generation potential with consumer-facing diversification.
“In general, smaller farms need to find additional paths,” Sarah observes. “It’s a lot of work, and I know Dad would not be doing the beef, which started this, on his own. I think what I enjoy most is just being a part of it and knowing that we are trying to find a path to keep our farm going. There are no words to describe fully what it’s like to be involved in this place, where so many generations lived and worked the land. It’s amazing.”
In March 2023, they started “evolving” with a line of summer sausage and beef sticks from the Holstein cows that get a “career change” from milk to beef. That business is really growing.
At the same time, Leelanau Cheese in Suttons Bay started testing their milk for cheese making ability. They worked on a raclette (a handmade Alpine herdsman’s cheese, known for its melting and silky texture). Norwood Centennial now has their own cheese spreads in four flavors made with their own milk that they buy back from the co-op.
Along with the sausage and beef sticks, cheese spreads are sold at their website, launched in 2023, for pickup or shipping in the continental U.S., and available at local farmers markets. They also wholesale into other establishments. The website keeps people up to date about on-farm events and the dairy’s evolution and progress.
In March 2025, their first hard cheese – Centurion Cheddar – was unveiled at the Taste of Charlevoix event – a year before the farm’s 100th birthday. They are working on three other hard cheeses as well.
“Each year we try to figure out new products,” Sarah explains and hints at having some other exciting ideas in the works, along with planning a centennial celebration for next year. “There’s a real movement for consumers to want to know where their food comes from, and the quality of it, and the people behind it — and they’re willing to pay for that.”
The herd of 160 Holstein cows has been a closed herd since 1982. The fact that it is all A2 milk and high in components is a good fit for the cheese. Sarah’s father has been breeding for A2 over the past 15 years. A.I. sire selection is geared for physical traits, economy, A2, and in 2021, they began moving into polled genetics (naturally eliminating horns).
The herd’s March 2025 RHA on 160 Holsteins was 34,335M 1394F 1083P. Similar production in February translated to 126.4 pounds of energy-corrected milk per cow per day, which earned Norwood Centennial the No. 6 spot for production per cow in the Central Star (DHI) across Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa.
For 2024, they earned the Silver Award for milk quality from their co-op with a 150,000 somatic cell count (SCC) average.
All of the evolutions over the past decade on the farm side are geared to land stewardship and cow comfort, hygiene, and management for high production of high quality milk. For the cows, this includes CowManager technology, cow mattresses, grooved rubber flooring, and other upgrades.
Sarah likes to focus on being proactive and using supportive care instead of relying on treatments. “I was glad to find Udder Comfort. It’s a good product in that proactive and supportive realm that really takes away the headaches for us. It’s worth its weight in gold,” she says.
“We were using the Udder Comfort blue spray bottles as needed in the parlor. Then we got the Udder Comfort Battery-Operated Backpack Sprayer at the 2023 World Dairy Expo. Now, we are able to do several proactive blue spray applications to the udders during the two weeks before calving,” Sarah explains.
“Doing this in the pens as they’re getting ready to calve puts us ahead of the game. We spend way less money and time on treatments, have far fewer issues, and are not needing the spray much in the parlor now,” she says, adding that, “In today’s world of so many product advertisements, this one lives up. I would rather put money into proactive and supportive care. Using Udder Comfort before calving makes a noticeable difference, especially for heifers. Everything is new to them. Now, they are less anxious, loosened up, and ready to go.”
— By Sherry Bunting
(Read more of their story, in their words, at the direct link on the Norwood Centennial Farms website here )
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