When David and Helen Osofsky founded their upstate New York dairy farm in 1941, they named it after their oldest son Ronny. No pressure there; if your mom and dad named the family farm after you, would you feel obliged to go into the family business?

Obligated or not, Ronny stayed on the farm while his brothers Sid and Rick pursued careers in investment banking and law, respectively. And when David and Helen decided it was time to hang up their milking pails, Ronny dutifully took over the dairy operation.

But fifty years after the Osofskys founded Ronnybrook, the challenges facing small dairy farmers had grown so daunting that the number of dairy farms in the area had dwindled from fifty to three, according to Jan Greenberg, author of Hudson Valley Harvest.

Wholesale milk prices were in a prolonged slump, and sales of the family’s high-quality breeding bulls weren’t sufficient to sustain the operation.

So Sid and Rick returned to the family homestead to help save Ronnybrook. The combination of Ronny’s commitment to producing pure, minimally processed milk and his brothers’ business and legal savvy proved a winning formula, transforming Ronnybrook into the thriving dairy farm and creamery that it is today.

Every aspect of Ronnybrook’s products reflects their dedication to quality, beginning with the glass bottles that people willingly pay a dollar deposit on, for the sheer pleasure of getting farm fresh dairy products produced, and packaged, the old-fashioned way.

A generation or so ago, all our milk came in glass bottles with the dairy farm logos baked right on them. The practice is so rare, now, that only one bottle manufacturer in the country still makes the special pyroglazed bottles that Ronnybrook uses (I’m usually pretty good about returning the bottles to get my dollar back, but we do use one as our coin jar).

Small family farms are often under pressure to expand or fold, but Ronnybrook bucked the conventional wisdom, scaling back their herd from 350 cows to 80 high-producing Holsteins, who graze on grass and a grass-based hay silage.

Many larger dairies pump their cows full of hormones and milk them three times a day. Ronnybrook prides itself on its products’ purity, so no hormones are added. And since the emphasis is on quality over quantity, the cows get milked just twice a day.

Ronnybrook’s product line has expanded as its presence has grown throughout New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. In addition to all kinds of milks and cream, Ronnybrook now makes crème fraiche, fromage blanc, yogurts (drinkable as well as regular), and a super-rich premium ice cream.

But Ronnybrook’s best known product is the non-homogenized, trademarked Creamline whole milk. Because it’s not homogenized, the cream rises to the top; skim it off, save it for your coffee, and have skim milk. Or, if you prefer, shake the bottle to get a rich, creamy whole milk. Either way, it’s farm fresh milk the way everyone used to make it.

And that’s the secret to Ronnybrook’s success. Something our grandparents took for granted, a product delivered to doorsteps all over America back in the day, is now a precious commodity that commands a premium price at farmers’ markets and upscale grocers. I can’t figure out whether that’s funny or sad, or both, but I’m really glad Ronny and his brothers cared enough to keep the family farm afloat.