Painterland Sisters share how they run their farm, business and lives

GRANTVILLE, Pa. — What began as a vision to secure a northern Pennsylvania dairy farm for future generations now provides a market for other family dairies in a national product line that the Painter sisters say proves dairy can thrive without diluting either the milk or the people behind it.

Stephanie and Hayley Painter are co-founders and co-CEOs of Painterland Sisters Organic Skyr Yogurt, telling attendees at February’s Pennsylvania Dairy Summit in Grantville that their company’s growth has transformed from a family farm survival strategy into a national brand.

Today, their yogurt is sold in roughly 8000 retail locations across all 50 states, producing about 500,000 cups per week.

The impact on milk demand has been significant. By 2025, they reported sourcing milk from 161 organic family dairies, with plans to expand further in 2026.

Seven years earlier, they were wondering about the future of their own family’s fourth-generation Tioga County dairy farm.

“How can we stay on our farm for generations to come?” they asked themselves.

“The answer was we had to take our destinies into our own hands. We had to create a stable milk market for our farm and others,” said Hayley during the business showcase panel on “controlling your own destiny.”

Painterland Farms sits among the rolling clay hills of Tioga County, where the Painter family has dairied since 1941. Certified organic since 2003, the farm milks crossbred cows adapted to mountainous terrain in a beautiful but remote setting with long milk-haul routes and limited processing options.

When markets destabilized in the late 2010s, the family considered selling cows. Pickup challenges and price volatility left little room for error.

“These are the cows from cows that our grandparents had,” said Stephanie. “So, we wanted to know what can we do for future generations?”

Their answer was to move closer to consumers. But they needed a plan as bold as their vision.

They studied potential value-added products, including cheese, searching for something that could absorb milk supply and command enough value. They settled on organic skyr yogurt, a thick Icelandic-style product requiring large quantities of milk per serving.

Rejecting the ‘take it apart’ playbook

In developing the product, the sisters encountered a familiar processing model focused on extracting components for margin.

“We wanted to take milk in its purest form and not take the nutrients out and then put something else back in,” said Stephanie.

“We want dairy to shine. Milk’s doing a good job just the way that it is,” Hayley added.

At the processing level, brands often fractionate milk by skimming cream for other uses, extracting protein for powders, or diluting products to increase yield and reduce price, while selling high-value components separately.

“The choices at the processing level made by brands or retail stores, there’s options to actually strip out that milk, strip out those nutrients… divide it into streams… strip out some protein… there’s a lot of ways to dilute it. We didn’t want to do that,” Hayley explained. “We wanted to keep all those nutrients in there and provide the most nutrient-dense product we could.”

Their yogurt reflects that philosophy. A unique ultra-filtration process condenses four cups of whole milk to one cup of creamy skyr yogurt. The only separate component is some of the excess cream partially skimmed at the beginning so that their finished yogurt is 6% milkfat. With one single-serve cup of yogurt containing four cups of milk, they do have some extra cream to sell without sacrificing flavor or nutrient density.

Painterland Sisters yogurt currently comes in Plain, Vanilla Bean, Meadow Berry, Blueberry Lemon, Strawberry Fields, Savannah’s Peach, and Passion Fruit, delivering 16 to 21 grams of protein per one-cup serving. The probiotics and live cultures render the final product lactose-free, broadening its reach.

Advice they refused and why

Keeping the milk intact raised production costs as well as skepticism among some original advisors. When consultants advised lowering protein, pulling milk out, or reformulating for margin, the sisters said they “pushed it all away” and surrounded themselves with people who supported their vision.

“Let’s just keep it good, the way that it is, and just emphasize that,” they said.

Price became the next obstacle. “There’s no way you’re going to sell a $3 yogurt,” they remembered hearing.

Their response came from the perspective as farmers who know what milk costs to produce, sticking to their guns that the product is worth the cost because of the amount of nutrient-dense milk in each cup of their yogurt.

Early consumer reactions often hinged on taste, which is followed by its naturally nutrient-dense qualities and product transparency. They shared an example that summed it up.

“One person said: ‘I took a bite and it was so decadent, I thought this must be really bad for you,’” they recounted. “Then they looked at the ingredients and saw it was just milk.”

Finding the first believer

Even with a compelling product, getting into the dairy case was not easy. The sisters were young, unknown, and had a yogurt priced above many competitors. Today, they’ve been recognized by Forbes magazine as a Top 30 under 30, earned multiple awards and recognitions, and have been mentioned on the floor of the U.S. Congress twice.

What made the difference, they said, was one distributor willing to take a chance: Pennsylvania-based John F. Martin & Sons with an extensive distribution network.

“They represented a lot of independent retailers, and they really did take a chance on us,” Stephanie reflected. “We believed that we could make this work. We just needed the chance to prove it.”

The sisters supported their pitch with in-store sampling, education, and storytelling, showing buyers not just the product but the farm and family behind it.

Once shoppers responded, expansion followed. Additional retailers, including regional and national chains, came onboard, and sales data accumulated.

Real is both risk and reward

The sisters credit their success partly to refusing to reshape themselves to fit corporate expectations. From the beginning, they showed up as farmers, wearing boots and speaking directly.

“We just followed our hearts and our souls and our story we wanted to tell,” Stephanie said.

Early attempts to conform felt wrong. At one trade show, they tried standard business attire. “We felt so uncomfortable,” said Hayley. “So, we started showing up just how we are.”

Consultants encouraged tightly scripted messaging and even fear-based tactics. The sisters rejected those approaches in favor of positive storytelling about agriculture.

Even though their product is certified organic, they choose not to use fear tactics against conventional dairy farmers but instead speak of how they farm and how this fits their land and what they value.

“Remember who you are,” they said, recalling advice from their family.

A long road to launch

Business planning began in 2018 with a Center for Dairy Excellence grant. The first sale did not occur until March 2022.

During those years, the sisters learned everything from supply chains to labeling regulations. At one point they produced thousands of yogurt cups that could not be sold due to labeling delays and had to be hand-labeled by family and community members.

They maxed out credit cards, moved back home, and worked without income for several years.

“I think our ‘a-ha’ moment was when we realized we couldn’t go back to the family farm, and there might not be a family farm to come back to,” said Stephanie. “We didn’t see another option, so we poured everything into this.”

They talked about the unstable market they were trying to escape and their vision that extends beyond their own brand. They hope to revitalize dairy farming in northern Pennsylvania, where land once used for cows is increasingly turning to brush.

“Can we get more cows back on these rolling hills?” Hayley asked. “I hope so.”

She also pointed to the need for mid-scale processing capacity in Pennsylvania, including co-packing models, to help launch new dairy brands and prevent bottlenecks.

Education as the real product

“We don’t sell yogurt,” said Stephanie. “We educate people.”

Social media, retail interactions, and packaging all serve that goal. Each cup of yogurt becomes an opportunity to explain dairy’s nutritional value, farming realities, and rural community impacts.

“When you mix taste with information, people start learning, engaging, and connecting with their food and farming,” Hayley observed.

A signal for dairy’s future

For farmers attending the Summit, the stories offered a hopeful message: value-added products rooted in authenticity can create real demand for milk.

The success of Painterland Sisters yogurt suggests dairy’s future lies in presenting real whole milk products confidently, allowing milk’s natural attributes to shine as real food, delivering real nutrition, produced by real farms.

“Dairy… it’s officially back,” Hayley declared, citing consumer interest in taste, nutrient density, ingredient transparency, and connection to farming.

What started as a bid to save one farm has become a model for how dairy farmers can reclaim market power, not by stripping down to become something else, but by doubling down on who they already are and what they already produce.