Visiting the cows and bees

by Julie Cummins

On September 16, I organized a farm tour, called the "Milk and Honey Tour," for CUESA. This description originally appeared in the CUESA weekly e-letter, and I am re-posting it here because getting a firsthand look at the animals that produce our food is the most satisfying part of an Eat Local life.

It has been said that milk and honey are the only substances in our diet whose sole function in nature is to serve as food. Whether or not this is true, they certainly symbolize abundance of biblical proportions; the phrase “land of milk and honey” comes from a reference to Caanan in the Bible. Last month, a group of 43 food lovers made a journey to our local lands of milk and honey—Spring Hill Jersey Cheese (Petaluma, CA) and Marshall’s Farm Natural Honey (American Canyon, CA).

Spring Hill Dairy is set amid Sonoma County’s rolling hillsides, which are tawny gold this time of year. In our Mediterranean climate of dry summers, the Spring Hill cows get to roam the fields and eat green grass from January through July. During our visit, the 400 bovine ladies were clustered in a pen, but they still eat well during the dry months; Larry Peter, owner of Spring Hill Cheese, grows them a special silage blend of fava beans, oats, rye grass, and other crops that is harvested green, chopped up, and fermented under a huge tarp. Larry supplements the silage with a mix of grains, including flax, soybean, barley, and corn. 

The Spring Hill cows, identified by numbered yellow tags hanging from their fuzzy ears, came and looked at us with some curiosity. Larry’s affection and concern for them became clear when someone in the group said, “It looked like something was wrong with number 330’s eye,” and Larry responded, “Oh! Number 330, she’s an old cow.” He explained that when she was a calf she was poked in the eye with a thistle and it never healed properly. Though each of the cows may be called only by a number, Larry seems to know and care about them as individuals.

Spring Hill is a relatively small dairy and Larry and his family and staff make great efforts to treat the cows well. He described many ways in which he tries to improve on the conventional practices of the dairy industry. For example, he milks his cows only twice a day instead of three times. He also lets them live to a ripe old age; some cows in his herd get to be 14 or older, whereas the average dairy cow in California only lives four or five years. And in 2004, Larry converted his entire operation to organic practices.

The plant where Spring Hill Cheese is made, adjacent to the milk barn, is not very big; our little group filled up most of the space between the shiny metal machines, vats, and tubs. Larry described the cheese-making process, impressively rattling off procedures, pH measurements, and temperatures that vary depending on which of their many cheeses he’s making.

We also toured Spring Hill’s recently purchased Petaluma Creamery in downtown Petaluma, which opened in 1913 and processed milk from dozens of local dairies for decades until it went under a few years ago. Larry bought the creamery and the milk supply agreement that came with it, with the hope of keeping local dairies in business and Sonoma County hillsides in agriculture, and of having a better place to make his own cheese.

Though the new facility seemed huge, Larry says it’s small by industry standards. It has much of the same equipment his cheese plant has (pasteurizer, vats, etc.), but everything is larger, and there are some additional high-tech gadgets, such as an ultrafiltration machine. Larry is gearing up to begin making cheese at the Petaluma Creamery in the next few months and says he feels “a lot better” about moving production to a plant with nicer equipment, improved quality control, and the ability to process milk more quickly. Meanwhile, he is purchasing milk from local dairies and turning it into cream and powder to help pay the mortgage and the whopping $160,000 monthly PG&E bill!

Larry told our group, “The Ferry Plaza Farmers Market saved my farm.” When he started out in the ranching business, he sold potatoes at the fledgling market to make ends meet. Gradually, he saved up to build the cheese plant on his land, producing fewer and fewer potatoes and more and more cheese. If it weren’t for his farmers’ market customers, who were willing to pay a fair price for his potatoes, he wouldn’t have been able to grow his business, and Spring Hill Cheese wouldn’t be what it is today.

Click here to view a slideshow on the CUESA website of our time at Spring Hill >

The “Flying Bee Ranch” in American Canyon, at the southern end of the Napa Valley, is just the base of operations for Marshall’s Farm Natural Honey. The ranch is the hub, where the honey house and office are located, but most of the action takes place at 600 hives spread out in 100 locations, all tended by Spencer Marshall. It’s not clear who does more traveling: Spencer, traversing Bay Area highways to visit his hives, or the bees, going back and forth from hive to flower gathering nectar and pollen.

At the bee ranch, Spencer shows our group a couple of demonstration hives. He cracks open the top, gives the hive a puff of smoke (to keep the bees docile), and then looks inside. He offers us each a veil to protect our faces from potential stings, but is not worried about this gentle hive himself. He searches through the frames and locates the queen bee for us. Her long, shiny abdomen stands out among the fuzzier, striped worker bees. “Some beekeepers requeen [(replace the old queen with a new one)] every year,” he says. Spencer thinks that’s too much work; he’d rather wait until each hive needs a new queen. His preference for natural beekeeping methods also means he loses hives every year to disease, since he shies away from heavy chemical pest control. This year he used one chemical: thymol (found in thyme oil), to ward off the deadly varroa mite.

The 100 different hive locations yield honey for over 20 Marshall’s varietals. Some varietals come primarily from a single type of flower, such as Pumpkin Blossom or Orange Blossom, while others are from a certain locale, such as Buzzerkeley or Napa Valley Wildflower. Each harvest is kept separate and transported back to the honey house in wooden beehive boxes called supers, which carry ten frames each.

Once in the honey house, one of the best smelling places on earth, the honey is extracted and stored. “We only have three machines that run on electricity here,” says Helene Marshall. First, there is the uncapper, which removes the thin wax caps from the frames. The bees build the caps to seal the cells when the honey has the right moisture content. Frames are placed on the belt and when the power is turned on, they disappear into the body of the machine. A horrendously loud, metallic grating sound issues forth and the frames emerge uncapped. Since the width of the comb is not perfectly even, the thinner parts remain capped and must be scraped manually with a metal comb.

The second machine is the extractor. The frames, now uncapped on both sides, are placed vertically into the big metal drum of the machine, which holds about 60 frames. The extractor rapidly spins the frames, emitting a low whirring sound. A light, honey-scented breeze rises through the open top and the honey flies out of the cells by means of centrifugal force. The honey rains lightly against the edge of the drum and drips down the sides to collect in the bottom. It is then released through a spigot into a storage container. Helene says their honey is strained, not filtered, which leaves bits of pollen in the honey. Straining is like using a colander lined with cheesecloth, whereas a filtering mesh is much finer, more like a nylon stocking.

The third machine is the warming tank, a giant metal tub that heats water to around 95 degrees. The containers of honey are placed in the warming tank if they crystallize, because honey must be fluid to be poured into bottles. The mellow heat turns the honey crystals back to liquid without heating it so much that the flavor and other beneficial properties are destroyed. Most large commercial honey operations heat honey to higher temperatures.

Once the honey is liquid, it is stored in buckets or drums, each labeled by variety and decanted by hand into bottles and honey bears. The wax from the uncapping process is placed into a large wax melter (okay, there are actually four electric machines) that keeps it at a constant 120 degrees. This liquefies the wax, which congeals into globs that can easily be separated from the honey that clings to the wax caps. This honey is Marshall’s only non-raw honey and is sold as the caramelicious Wild West Wildflower blend that is the favorite of many.

Like the bees and the cows of Marshall’s Honey and Spring Hill dairy, all the people who have a hand in operating these businesses dedicate a tremendous amount of time and energy to feeding the rest of us. Farm tours and the farmers’ market are places to be reminded of their hard work and to express gratitude for their gifts. For without milk and honey, life wouldn’t be nearly as rich.

See a slide show on the CUESA website of our time at Marshall's Farm >

Thanks to CUESA volunteer Barry Jan for his wonderful photos!

Julie Cummins lives in Oakland, CA and is Director of Education for the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA).