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.