Sustainable Farming at Its Best: Compost, Cows, and Cheese
The Happy Cows of Pt. Reyes. Don’t they look smug.
A couple weeks ago, we took a much needed field trip up north to Point Reyes to visit the hilarious and cheesy Point Reyes Compost Company. Did we say cheesy? Yes. And we meant cheesy. Because in addition to high quality, super classy poop, the family also makes cheese. Aaaaahmazing cheese. The compost is awesome, too, and of course we carry it, because it is both quality and hilarity mixed into one fine bag of crap. (Their tagline? “Our products are mostly crap.”)
The Point Reyes Compost Company is married to the Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company. Literally! Teddy, big man on poop campus, and our hilarious guide for the day’s tour, is the son in law of Bob, who’s the big cheese of the family. Allow yourself a little bit of mental gymnastics to appreciate both things simultaneously. Fabulous compost and insanely good cheese, all from the same herd of well cared for and pampered cows. We think it’s a fine recipe for sustainability.
Teddy giving us the inside tour.
The Milking Barn. Can you tell how clean this place is? In case you can’t, I’ll just tell you: it’s super clean.
So when the company invited us up to peruse the grounds and meet the cows AND try their various cheeses, of course we said YES PLEASE! Have you had their blue cheese? It’s more than a little amazing. I have to say, we ate our share during our visit. Blue Cheese hangover? Not so pretty, but so worth it.
Macaroni & Cheeeeeese. With bacon.
This small company has taken steps to close the loop of waste in inventive but common sense ways, from input to output. The cows are maintained on a diet largely consisting of materials that are the (edible!) byproduct of other consumer industries, and on the other end, the post-cow waste is lovingly handled in small batches to ensure that the crap that you take home is High. Quality. Crap. Plus, who doesn’t love any company that has a methane digester on the property that can, at peak, provide 85% of the power required to keep everything running?
A sampling of the bovine diet.
This is 2 days worth! Holy crap!
We came away from the day with the warm impression that this family really cares about the impact they are making on the environment (and on beautiful Point Reyes!), the care they take with their cows (their cow’s health care program is largely based on preventative services – big YAY!) and about creating an efficient and primarily closed system where the waste produced goes to good use – in our home gardens and yours! We also went home with a taste for their blue cheese that may sour us on any other ever again. Sigh. Life is so hard.
Bebe Cow!
Red Winged Blackbirds. Droves of them – so pretty and so noisy.
While we were distracted by the CHEESE, a baby cow escaped from the baby cow village and started “maintaining” the landscape.
If I were a cow, I’d be pretty stoked to hang out here.
Baby cow cottages. Don’t worry, they have room to move around.
This is what they use to turn the compost. Serious stuff!
It’s important to make sure your poo is well cooked to destroy harmful pathogens!
