Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

February 20, 2008

The Dairies Are Half-Pint, but the Flavor Isn't

By MARIAN BURROS
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/marian_burros/
index.html?inline=nyt-per>

ANNE SAXELBY had what she calls an "aha moment" a couple of years ago when
she drove upstate to try the cultured butter made by Evans Farmhouse
Creamery in Chenango County. Ms. Saxelby, who owns Saxelby Cheesemongers in
Manhattan, said that for all the butter she had eaten in her life, "I had
really never had butter before - this is butter."

More and more people across the country are being treated to the same aha
experience as they find a burgeoning variety of fresh dairy products made
in small batches on little farms and in small creameries. And it's worth
the extra money.

These artisanal operations are turning cow, goat or sheep milk into simple,
straightforward foods like crème fraîche, butter, buttermilk, ice
cream, puddings, custards, yogurt, yogurt-based sauces and yogurt drinks.
Many of these dairies also sell unhomogenized, and in a few cases even
unpasteurized, milk with an old-fashioned farmhouse flavor.

The movement is, in some ways, an offshoot of the American cheesemaking
revival that began 15 to 20 years ago, and some of the creameries make
fresh cheeses like mascarpone, mozzarella and ricotta that let the quality
of the milk speak for itself.

Chalk it up to a lucky confluence of events. Most small dairy farmers
cannot keep afloat selling milk to large processors at commodity prices, so
those who are trying to survive are looking for alternatives. At the same
time there is an increasingly sophisticated public that appreciates the
difference between mass-produced dumbed-down food and the handiwork of a
small dairy that has learned to produce exceptional butter or yogurt or ice
cream by doing it the way it was done before World War II, when there was a
creamery in every town.

Nancy Nipples started the Pike Place Market Creamery in Seattle 30 years
ago, selling milk, butter, cream and the like to help local independent
dairies. It didn't help enough, and little by little they disappeared.
"Last year a whole new group of local independent dairies started up a new
cycle," Ms. Nipples said. "Hallelujah! The cream has 40 to 45 percent
butter fat so you don't have to chant over it to whip it." (Nancy Nipples
is the name she uses to sign checks; her full name, taken after a divorce,
is Nancy Nipples the Milkmaid.)

The comeback is taking place across the country. Earlier this month, Milk
Thistle Farm, a young biodynamic dairy in Ghent, N.Y., began selling
organic milk at some New York City greenmarkets.

The demand for artisanal dairy has already turned butter into an $8
appetizer at Momofuku Ssam Bar in New York City, where the chef, David
Chang
<http://preview.topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/david_
chang_chef/index.html?inline=nyt-per> , accompanies half a baguette with
St. Helen's Farm goat's milk butter from England and Vermont Butter and
Cheese cow butter.

At Osteria Mozza and Pizzeria Mozza in Los Angeles, Nancy Silverton makes
fresh mozzarella every other day, buying the curds from two dairies just
outside the city. Four other mozzarellas are brought in from Italy.

Thomas Keller
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/thomas_keller/
index.html?inline=nyt-per>  cannot rave enough about the extraordinary
"quality, flavor and freshness" of Animal Farm butter, which Diane St.
Clair makes in Orwell, Vt. "When I started buying her butter, I saw
seasonal changes that don't exist in commercial butters," he said. "Her
butter is almost an orange in the spring. It has a different flavor profile
and nuances throughout the year."

Mr. Keller, owner and chef of Per Se and the French Laundry, buys as much
Animal Farm butter as he can get his hands on, which is nearly all of it.
For six weeks in July and August, the butter isn't available. "The cows are
doing their thing and I'm fine with that," he said. "I just love the idea
of supporting that kind of tradition."

Though few shoppers can buy Ms. St. Clair's butter, they are beginning to
find artisan dairy products like the crème fraîche made by Kendall
Farms in Atascadero, Calif., that Mr. Keller also raves about.

On the East Coast, stores are carrying the organic yogurt and heavy cream
from the 45 Jersey cows at Butterworks Farm in Westfield, Vt.

Begun 30 years ago, it has grown into a million-dollar business, said Jack
Lazor, who owns the farm with his wife, Anne. "We're having a ball."

"I wanted to be back on the land when I was at Tufts
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/t/tufts_u
niversity/index.html?inline=nyt-org>  in the 70s," Mr. Lazor said as we
stood near his broken wind turbine that would ordinarily have been
supplying a third to a half of his farm's electricity.

"We were working on the kitchen stove and making everything and going door
to door," he said, finally graduating to farmers' markets before selling in
stores.

But changing over to old-style dairy can be surprisingly difficult. Unlike
Mr. Lazor, Patrick Lango, a fourth-generation dairy farmer whose family
owns White Cow Dairy in East Otto, N.Y., near Buffalo, is still struggling.
There have been many unexpected barriers to meeting this new demand.

Finding the expert who knows how to do things the old-fashioned way took
him to Italy. That's where he also found the small-scale equipment he
needed. Then he had to persuade the New York State Department of
Agriculture and Markets to adjust its rules so they would apply to a tiny
dairy.

"You can either whine and complain a lot or you can ask yourself what can
you do with milk that's really easy and can get the most amount of money,"
he said.

He decided that turning the family farm into an 1870s village creamery made
sense because "it's food people would want but can't get. It's all about
food memory."

He does not think the public realized, even 10 to 15 years ago, what it was
missing in the kind of dairy products being sold in stores.

"We've pushed the technology approach too far in some cases," said Dr. Paul
Kindstedt, professor of nutrition and food sciences at the University of
Vermont
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/univers
ity_of_vermont/index.html?inline=nyt-org>  and an expert in dairy, "and
what's going on is a movement to alternative foods of all types," or what
some call real foods.

Mr. Lango never stops experimenting, and some of his most delicious results
are his low-fat yogurts: the maple, the vanilla bean with honey and the
orange, which tastes like a smoothie. The maple and vanilla-bean custard
and the cranberry custard have a lovely texture and flavor and the
yogurt-based habanero sauce would be wonderful on pork or chicken or fish.

In New York City, Murray's Cheese carries some White Cow products;
otherwise you have to live in or around Buffalo to enjoy them.

At the moment, Mr. Lango doesn't make a dime. "I've never drawn a salary in
20 years," but this year, he said, things will be better.

Without his passion, Mr. Lango might have given up long ago.

"I get very upset watching these farms drop away," he said. "It's criminal
what's going on out there. I really want to take on the world in a
guerrilla-like way. Our dairy can be a blueprint for little dairies."

States like Wisconsin, Vermont and New York are helping other small farmers
get these businesses going. In 2004, Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat of
Wisconsin, pushed through one of those infamous earmarks for $2.4 million
for just such a project.

Not all new dairy farmers get lucky the first time. Paul Stephan of
Leesburg, Va., eager to escape the hospitality business, bought a farm in
1999. He stocked it with a water buffalo bull and four water buffalo
heifers, ready to give birth. Mozzarella from their milk was the gleam in
his eye.

It was all downhill after that.

"I was very naïve," he said. "I thought I could tame anything with the
right handling. To make a long story short, the four were not milkable."

So he turned to his single Jersey cow and started making fresh cow milk
mozzarella.

The mozzarella took off; the buffalo and farm were sold. Now Mr. Stephan
buys cow's milk from a local farmer. His Blue Ridge Dairy Company
mozzarella has been joined by a crème fraîche with a delightful tang
and by yogurt, the nonfat version so thick and delicious you would swear it
was made with whole milk.

But it's the mozzarella that has reached stardom. Jersey milk, with its
high butterfat content, is part of the reason. Still, it was not creamy
enough to suit Mr. Stephan, so recently he began to add more cream, making
it the richest, creamiest, milkiest American-made mozzarella I've ever had.

As successful as Mr. Stephan has been, he can't get those water buffalo out
of his mind. He just bought 15 heifers from the Woodstock Water Buffalo
Company that until recently made mozzarella in Vermont. In the meantime,
watch for local buffalo milk mozzarella in Washington within three years.

Robert Kaufelt, owner of Murray's Cheese and a big booster of farmstead
dairy products, carries unhomogenized organic milk, cream and buttermilk
from Evans Farmhouse. Because the fat globules remain intact, the milk
tastes closer to the way it does when it has just come out of the cow.

The buttermilk is so good, now I will drink it willingly, along with a very
delicate organic goat milk from Kortright Creek Creamery of Stone and
Thistle Farm in Delaware County, N.Y.

Just a week ago I had my first taste of Hudson Valley Fresh Milk. This
cooperative of 10 farmers, begun in 2005, has found a better, meaning more
lucrative, way of staying in the milk business. These farmers are
guaranteed a minimum of $20 for 100 pounds of milk, and while the going
price at the moment is $22 because of the high price of corn, it's often in
the low teens.

Ronnybrook Farm Dairy, one of the better-known small dairies and creameries
in this area, buys some of the co-op's milk. Because the milk is
pasteurized for a very short time and arrives in New York City stores like
the Vinegar Factory and Whole Foods
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/whole_foods_market_in
c/index.html?inline=nyt-org>  within 36 hours of leaving the cow, the
milk tastes particularly sweet.

"The demand, I think, is huge," Mr. Kaufelt said. "People always want
better flavor."


*       Copyright 2008
<http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html>  The New York
Times Company <http://www.nytco.com/>

<http://www.nytimes.com/>
February 20, 2008
New York Times

Where to Find Some of the Good Stuff

By MARIAN BURROS
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/marian_burros/
index.html?inline=nyt-per>

AFTER tasting artisanal dairy products for the last six months, it was
apparent that descriptors like artisanal, small batch, farmstead, local and
grass-fed are no guarantee of great flavor. Here are some favorites:

BLUE RIDGE DAIRY Leesburg, Va.; (703) 443-0200: Mozzarella, Yolite nonfat
yogurt, crème fraîche.

BUTTERWORKS FARM Westfield, Vt.; butterworksfarm.com
<http://butterworksfarm.com/> : Heavy cream, maple yogurt.

EVANS FARMHOUSE CREAMERY Norwich, N.Y.; holzbaur@htva.net
<mailto:holzbaur@htva.net> : Cultured butter, unhomogenized organic milk,
cream and buttermilk.

HUDSON VALLEY FRESH MILK Duchess County, N.Y.; (845) 489-5087: Milk.

JENI'S ICE CREAM Columbus, Ohio; jenisicecreams.com
<http://jenisicecreams.com/> : Various flavors.

KENDALL FARMS Atascadero, Calif.; kendallfarmscremefraiche.com
<http://kendallfarmscremefraiche.com/> : Crème fraîche.

KORTRIGHT CREEK CREAMERY Delaware County, N.Y.: stoneandthistlefarm.com
<http://stoneandthistlefarm.com/> : Organic goat milk.

STRAFFORD ORGANIC CREAMERY Strafford, Vt.; straffordcreamery.com
<http://straffordcreamery.com/> : Coffee and mint ice cream.

WHITE COW DAIRY East Otto, N.Y.; whitecowdairy.com
<http://whitecowdairy.com/> : Low-fat yogurts; vanilla bean and cranberry
custards.



Copyright 2008 <http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html>