Marin's Pastures of Plenty

Heifers resting by the creek, George Lucas' Big Rock Ranch, Marin County, northern California. All these photos are © 2010 by Maureen Hurley and may not be used without express written permission from her. Please respect copyright.

There's a great SF Gate Inside Scoop blog by celebrated executive chef/restauranteur Hoss Zaré at Flytrap, who interviewed Straus Family Creamery owner, Albert Straus. Albert who once told me that majored in ice cream at Cal-Poly, has revolutionized the organic dairy industry. I remember Albert's mother, tiny Ellen Straus, made the best strawberry shortcake in the world. Ellen was also co-founder of the first agricultural land trust in the nation, the Marin Agricultural Land Trust.

(See the history of MALT at YouTube.)

During the late 1970s to the early 1990s, we made an annual party trek to the Straus farm, Blake's Landing Farm on Tomales Bay, to bring on the Autumn Equinox. My cousin and I made wild huckleberry ice cream with Albert's fresh cream in an old wooden ice cream paddle churn—with all the kids madly cranking away.

We shucked oysters and barbecued salmon, bratwurst, corn and tofu on the metal water trough-cum-grill. We visited the creamery, we petted the cows and fed the calves. We danced in the barn and raised the rafters. But the piece de resistance was always Ellen's strawberry shortcake piled high as the Matterhorn with fresh whipped cream.

So it was with delight that I read Hoss's fine interview with Albert. But it also got me thinking on how much has changed in Marin since I was a child—once dairying was an important part of Marin's culture and identity. Where did it all go? Suburbs, parking lots and malls. Like how it goes in the Janice Ian song: pave paradise, put up a parking lot. If not for Ellen Straus.

Cows headed toward the milking barn, Nicasio, Marin County, northern California. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

Few people know that Marin was the cradle and epicenter of California's milk industry. During the early 1860s and 1900s, Irish (including my family), Italian-Swiss and Azorean-Portuguese immigrants realized Marin's bucolic climate, lush pastures and verdant rolling hills, were perfect for dairying. And they were right: Marin cattle produced exceptional milk. 

By the 1900s, Marin supported more than a thousand dairy farms. Once Marin led the entire state of California in the production of highest quality milk, cream and cheese. Imagine a tiny county producing 1.5 million pounds of butter annually. There were myriad creameries and cooperatives that helped to shape the milk industry into what it is today.

In 1862 Marin provided a quarter of California's butter…. Since the 1800s, when dairying developed in Marin, the dairy industry has been known for its high-quality delicious milk. The invention of the milk bottle in 1884 made handling and distribution of milk much easier. The California Cooperative Creamery was established in 1913 by local milk producers to process and distribute the milk products (milk, butter, cheese). —From University of California's Agriculture and Natural Resources webpage, Historical Roots of Marin Agriculture.

Holstein heifers admiring their reflection—who's the fairest in all the land? Point Reyes, Marin County, northern California. Double-click to enlarge. © 2011 by Maureen Hurley

In a 1984 oral interview, Nicasio rancher, Earl Dolcini, said that "Marin County provides about twenty-five percent of the milk supply for the Bay Area." During the 1960s, there were 150 working dairy farms (so many local dairy farms were lost when the Point Reyes National Seashore was established). But the alternative, vast planned suburbs in Terra Linda and Corte Madera, was a far worse proposition. But the upshot was, by 2006, there were less than 30 working dairies left in Marin.

Some surviving Marin dairies managed to go organic like Albert Straus who founded the first kosher and organic creamery west of the Mississippi in 1993, or they were able to branch out and find a boutique niche and develop specialty cheeses—like the LaFranchi's Nicasio Valley Cheese Company. Albert's organic milk products were good enough for Prince Charles at a royal foodie gala in Inverness. (But I'm getting waaay off track here.) 

Since 1959 Marin has lost 32,000 acres of agricultural lands. (1944 census figures show 1,800 ranches, as compared to 276 today.) In the early 1970s, Marin's agriculture was threatened when plans for major highway extensions to the coast were developed. The county was rezoned to include three major planning corridors, of which two - the coastal recreation and inland rural corridors - contain most of the agriculture in Marin today. They are protected by A-60 zoning, which allows no more that one house per 60 acres. —From University of California's Agriculture and Natural Resources webpage, Historical Roots of Marin Agriculture.

Point Reyes, Marin County, northern California. Double-click to enlarge. © 2011 by Maureen Hurley

I have mixed feeling about the outcome of the A-60 zoning despite Marin Agricultural Land Trust's important successes preserving the farmlands along Tomales Bay. Farther inland, in the San Geronimo Valley, it had a different butterfly effect. As a teenager, I too worked on that A-60 zoning initiative—it was one of my first real political awakenings. Encouraged by Ellen Staus' success, we campaigned, we held town hall meetings, we testified at the planning commission, and felt an overwhelming sense of victory when we won. 

But there was a lot of resistance to the aggie preserve movement. Many people —from developer to ranchers—didn't want land use regulated for several reasons. But we didn't listen. Then the reality of it settled in. While the A-60 zoning ruling benefitted and helped to preserve many of the threatened ranches along Tomales Bay, including the Straus Ranch, the zoning had a very different effect farther inland.

Alas, the A-60 zoning ruling backfired in the rural communities of Forest Knolls, and Nicasio, where the agricultural initiative was gutted and whittled back to A-40, A-20, and A-10; it made available large lots for the rich. Another kind of suburb plan replaced the working ranches. The dairy cattle nearly all disappeared, or were replaced by horses.

The newcomers to Marin built lavish gated communities and huge compounds, with ecologically wasteful homes that squandered more square footage than a shopping mall, instead of adhering to the traditional Marin farm houses. (The new development also raised our property taxes through the roof).

The agricultural initiative did not successfully preserve most of Marin's agricultural lands. It created estates. Like the Native Miwoks our ancestors displaced, we were being displaced by foreigners. We felt betrayed by the very cause we all believed that would preserve our way of life. The native Marinites began fleeing Marin for Sonoma County and points north because they could no longer afford to live in Marin.

A side effect, or a fallout from the A-60 zoning, the newcomers came in droves and they brought with them, their new, ugly ways. Our new landlords, having founded independent fifedoms, also barred us from the very land that we had traditional access to for decades when the ranchers still owned it. The precursor movement that led to the Marin Agricultural Land Trust inadvertently helped make Marin an exclusive playground for the rich.

(This all gets quite complicated and convoluted: during the 1960s and 70s, the Marin property tax base had skyrocketed, partially because many ranches had been turned into a vast 70,000 acre playground by the Point Reyes National Seashore (1962-64), thus placing a higher tax burden on the rest of Marin.

Then, the national seashore attracted more than 2.5 million extra visitors a year—many who wanted to move to Marin. Circa 1970, Marin real estate was suddenly booming. Every time a house sold, our property taxes went up. This was the tumultuous era that led up to the passing of Prop 13, the 1978 Jarvis-Gann Initiative to Limit Property Taxation—its passing lowered property taxes, but it also inadvertently also gutted the newly impoverished CA educational system.)

Newcomer Robert Orr bought a chunk of Mt. Barnabe, and built a castle fortress below the fire lookout tower. Twice I was shot at as I rode the fire roads I'd ridden on all my life—as did my grandparents. Sim Van der Ryn bought another A-40 chunk on the ridge above our house and developed his theories of sustainable living and housing there. 

At least Sim Van der Ryn recognized us locals as neighbors and that we had a Spanish custom of prior access to the fire roads and so he let the horsemen pass by instead of trying to shoot us. But soon he moved north to Occidental, sold his place to someone who sold it to that real life maniac, Klaus Kinski—who was an irate bag of pustulence and rage on a good day.

Kinski threatened to shoot me and my aunt's lame old dog for trespassing. When a rifle is aimed at you like that, forget about eating Warner Herzog's other shoe. It was more like eat shit and die. The blood turns curiously cold, you break out into a clammy, cold sweat, you're enveloped in a suspended animation of cold fear before the adrenalin kicks in.

A childhood boyfriend, rancher, Allan McIsaac once said to me, "When a rancher switches from milk cattle, to beef, it's the beginning of the end of ranch lands." Allan was right. When the Holstein and Jersey dairy cattle were sold off, they were replaced by Herefords—beef cattle that quickly led to horses, horses and paddocks led to suburbs and suburbs led to SUVs.

Cow takes in camera. Point Reyes, Marin County, northern California. © 2011 by Maureen Hurley

The suburbs of Strawberry, Mill Valley, Greenbrae, Bon Air, Marinwood, Montecito, Lucas Valley and Novato all were once rich dairy farms. When the McIsaacs went to beef cattle, I worried that Tocaloma would become yet another suburban casualty. But they managed to hold onto the land, thanks to Ellen Straus's lasting legacy, the Marin Agricultural Land Trust.

Point Reyes, Marin County, northern California. © 2011 by Maureen Hurley

Who even remembers Roberts Dairy, Greenbrae Dairy, Miller Dairy, Butterfield's Sleepy Hollow Dairy, San Geronimo (Dollar) Creamery, Nicasio Creamery or Lucas Valley Dairy?

Roberts Dairy, San Rafael founded with two Jersey cows in 1898, by 1945 owned six ranches, including four West Marin ranches: the Tocaloma Ranch, Glenbrook Ranch, on Limantour Bay, the “K” Ranch on Pierce Point, New Albion Ranch on Drakes Bay, the Stetson Ranch in Santa Venetia, Roberts Dairy in Happy Valley (Montecito), and in San Rafael, the 4th & Mary Street Creamery. The dairy closed in 1958 (image from Facebook).

This is a eulogy for what was lost. Once upon a time there was a verdant Marin where grazing cattle on the hillsides were enough to feed the eye. If not for Ellen Straus's vision and determination, the bucolic pastures of plenty would disappeared and West Marin would've become one vast paved parking lot.

Beef cattle, Petaluma, Sonoma-Marin County border, northern California. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

(Thanks, Hoss, for spurring me on!) Hoss Zaré's culinary talents brought acclaim to San Francisco's Ristorante Ecco, and Aromi, (later Bistro Zaré); a pioneer in the Sow Food movement, Zaré opened Zaré Napa in 2005, but missed the City, and returned to open Zaré at Flytrap in 2008—specializing in Persian and Mediterranean cuisine. Do vist Hoss, and tell him I sentcha.

For further reading on the dairy farmers of Marin, check out the Marin County Free Library Carla Ehat oral history project.