WPSU’s TV and Digital series, Keystone Stories, explores the people, places and culture that make Central Pennsylvania unique. In the third episode of Season 4, Keystone Stories explores “Farming” in Pennsylvania. In this sneak peek, you’ll hear how technology is helping a Clinton County family farm thrive and grow. In a visit to Dotterer Farms, you’ll hear from Doug, Candice, and Daniel Dotterer, and Lori Butler.
Lori Butler
I'm Laurie Butler. This is my family farm. Dotterer Dairy. My Pap and Gram started the farm in 1951. They had six kids. They started with about 15 cows and were farming around 150 acres. So if you fast forward to today, we are farming around 3,000 acres and milking around 1,200 cows.
We're able to keep up with this many cows because of technology. They have collars on that will tell us how many steps they take a day. We can pretty much tell of cows getting sick before she gets sick.
We milk every cow here three times a day. When a cow enters the milking parlor, she is identified when she walks in. And the computer up top will tell you like who she is, where she's from, how much milk she's given like the last time, how much milk she's going to be giving this time. And then when she's done giving milk, she can go back to the barn and chill out and eat what she wants, drink what she wants, and move around and be with her friends. We have three milk trucks, and we take at least one load a day to a land O'Lakes plant. And if you drink Weis milk, that would be some of our milk as well.
I think that people think that farmers just put a seed in the ground and it grows. Yes. That worked, you know, a long time ago, but we're not farming like my grandfather used to farm. We do have a lot of technology.
Doug Dotterer
A nice feature we have on the farm as far as technology, we have an app. Like last night I can tell you, not all our fields that we farm got over half an inch [of rain]. So there's no guessing. It is very nice tool to have. I wouldn’t farm without it.
Lori Butler
We have a sunflower maze. We get to open up our barn doors and then we'll offer tours in and around the farm. It's really great to connect the people that come for the maze to the farm. We have a store. My cousins Amanda and Candice run the Farmer's Dotterer.
Candice Dotterer
So we started the store back in April of 2023, and we started with deli subs, freezer beef.
Everything that's in our store is locally produced within Pennsylvania. Some just right up the street and State College, some is Williamsport. Local honey from Jersey shore, all local stuff.
Lori Butler
I just feel so blessed because my grandparents are still alive. They're 97 and 95. And just being able to, like, work with them and work with my dad and my brother and my cousins.
It's everything.
Narrator
Lori and Doug's second cousin lives just a few miles down the road. Daniel Dotterer grew up raising sheep in the 4H program. After college, he left the farm and moved to LA and worked in the entertainment business. He returned with new passions for using augmented reality to help the industry he's known all his life.
Daniel Dotterer
When I came back with this new technology. I was afraid people would would make fun of me. Holograms…I we we never really seen this kind of stuff except for maybe a couple movies. We have a huge veterinary shortage. So why not have that technology where the vet can visit basically do a holographic visit and see the animals and diagnosis that he can do here on the farm and do that remotely from his office. So if you're able to see multiple patients sitting in your office, not only can you reduce your rates, the cost for the farmers, you can actually increase your income, see more patients, help more animals, help more farmers.
I think it shows a lot about the leadership we have in the state. From Secretary Redding on down, that I was awarded a grant for Phase 1 for my remote vet application.
I mean, it's huge. It's how we're going to get this up and going.
Narrator
You heard from the family that owns Dotterer Farms in Clinton County.
Watch the full Keystone Stories episode about,“Farming,” Monday at 9 p.m. on WPSU-TV.