North of San Francisco, Cream Rises to the Top
By R. W. APPLE Jr.
ARSHALL, Calif.
NOTHING brings out the geezer in me like a chunky, thick-walled bottle of milk — a proper glass bottle, not a wobbly wax-paper carton — with a dense, ivory-colored collar of cream climbing proudly into the neck.
It's guaranteed to make me start droning on about my golden Midwestern childhood, when an egg tasted like an egg, when Jack Benny cracked us all up on Sunday nights and when the 20th-Century Limited whooshing through Ohio on its way from New York to Chicago seemed like the acme of progress and sophistication.
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So I was enthralled by the saga of Bill and Ellen Straus, who made their separate ways to America more than six decades ago, he from Germany, she from the Netherlands. They met, married, raised four children and thrived here in rural Marin County, north of San Francisco, safe from the anti-Semitic nightmare of Hitler's Europe, producing some of the richest milk in the United States and, eventually, selling it throughout the Bay area in just my kind of bottle.
The Straus Family Creamery turns some of the milk into other products, including fruit-flavored nonfat yogurt, Monterey Jack and cheddar cheeses, and smoothies, which are sold more widely. Straus' cream looks as if it might whip itself. Its butter, high (86 percent) in fat, low (13 percent) in moisture and supersmooth on the tongue, is served at the region's leading restaurants, such as Chez Panisse in Berke
ley and the French Laundry in the Napa Valley.
Along the way, Albert Straus, the older of two sons, who now runs the creamery, developed a beneficial business relationship with Sue Conley, one of the proprietors of the widely acclaimed Cowgirl Creamery in nearby Point Reyes Station. She taught him marketing savvy; he sells her organic milk, which she and her partner, Peggy Smith, turn into crème fraîche, mascarpone, fromage blanc, a triple-cream cheese called Mount Tam and what must be the world's most delectable cottage cheese — velvety, truly cheesy, slightly tart.
Mrs. Straus, who died earlier this month at the age of 75, was a pioneer environmentalist. She turned the family property, above Tomales Bay, a fjordlike inlet of the Pacific Ocean, into the first organic dairy farm west of the Mississippi. She helped to snatch a particularly lovely coastal wilderness from the clutches of the developers and turn it into the romantic, mist-shrouded Point Reyes National Seashore. And she was a prime mover in setting up the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, which has kept the soft green hills of western Marin soft and green and made them safe for farmers, sheep and cows.
WHEN I stopped to see her a few weeks before her death, Mrs. Straus was lying on a sofa in the living room of the white house with green shutters, built by a pioneer from New Hampshire in 1865, where she spent her entire married life. She politely refused to talk about her health.
"I still have $60 million to raise for MALT, the land trust," she said in a low, tenuous voice. "I have wanted to keep the land from development, yes, to keep the land in agriculture, yes, but also to help farmers develop markets for their organic products. We're getting there, we're getting there."
Indeed they are. Instead of subdivisions, artisanal producers of all kinds of food have sprung up in western Marin and adjacent strips of Sonoma County. The Hog Island Oyster Company and two competitors raise prize-winning oysters in the pristine, low-salinity waters of Tomales Bay. The Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company makes California's best blue; Bellwether Farms produces not only cheese but lambs.
McEvoy Ranch presses extra virgin olive oil from the harvest of its 18,000 trees. Marin-based Niman Ranch has developed a national reputation for its naturally raised beef and pork, and entirely grass-fed beef from Marin has begun to make an impact in San Francisco. Utilizing organic, sustainable agriculture, Star Route Farms grows baby carrots, leafy greens and herbs.
All this takes place within less than an hour of the suburban sprawl of San Rafael, Santa Rosa and Petaluma. This is the California that was. Marshall itself has more cows than people. Hawks circle languidly overhead, and "cattle crossing" signs outnumber stoplights. It must be one of the few places in this part of the world where the speed limit (50) equals the population.
"We're not the sole reason for the survival of agriculture in Marin County," Robert Berner, the executive director of MALT, said in an interview. "But I think it's fair to conclude that without us things would have been vastly different. You would have seen the suburbanization of western Marin."
The trust addresses an old rural dilemma: many farmers are land rich but cash poor. The temptation to sell out to developers is enormous. By making large one-time payments to farmers, often close to half the appraised value of their land, MALT gives them the capacity to expand, develop new businesses, starting marketing programs, buy equipment, modernize or pay off their mortgages. In return, a permanent limitation or easement is placed on their properties, capping the number of houses that may be built on them. The owners agree never to use the land for anything but agriculture and never to subdivide.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/25/dining/25STRA.html?pagewanted=2
