Photograph by George Sakkestad
Ron Garthwaite is learning what Kenneth Peake has known for years: The dairy farmer's day is a long one.
By Suzanne Cristallo
Lest we forget that milk, butter and cream come from cows, we need only travel to Claravale Dairy in Monte Sereno. Twenty sets of big, brown eyes watch intently as customers come up the hill to purchase the rich stuff. For the initiated who carry away up to 60 gallons of the Jersey and Guernsey products each day, the ritual is a comforting reassurance that we still have rural roots and that some things should never be synthesized, pasteurized, homogenized or standardized.
"One taste of this milk is reminiscent of the times I spent on Grandma's farm," says Saratogan Jean Leonard, a customer of Claravale for 15 years. She firmly believes that the natural enzymes present in the unpasteurized milk added years to her husband's life.
"Cooking--or pasteurizing--breaks the enzymes down," she notes, and also changes the taste. "You forget all that until you get a taste of this."
Claravale Dairy has operated for almost 70 years under the loving care of 90-year-old Kenneth Peake, who lives on the several acres of dairy now surrounded by towering new homes. His interest in the dairy is in the process of being sold, but he still delivers its products to 10 customers every Tuesday in his old green truck.
"Every drop of milk that has come out of this place is matched by a drop of my blood," he says of the unrelenting daily task of milking and caring for the animals and the land they occupy.
New owner Ron Garthwaite, 42, is learning what that means. A genetic researcher with advanced degrees, he worked at UC-Santa Cruz and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco for the past five years while doing a little dairy-cattle breeding and milking on the side. His plunge into dairying full time came with the opportunity several months ago to run Claravale as a demonstration farm under the auspices of the nonprofit Claravale Preservation Foundation, which is purchasing the dairy land.
"The hours are the biggest difference," he says of his new career, which requires rising at 4:30 a.m. for the 5:30 milking and bottling, stretches through another milking at 4 p.m. and continues with barn cleaning and other chores until finally lights go out at the dairy at about 9 p.m.
A Los Gatos bachelor, Garthwaite works alone through weekends and holidays. He hopes to find help soon, so he can expand his product line by taking the excess skim milk which is left after butter is made and turn it into ricotta and cheddar cheeses. "I also plan to become certified organic," he says.
Claravale Dairy, corner of Via Lomita and Bicknell (off Quito Road), Monte Sereno. Open daily 6:30-9:30 a.m. and 3-6 p.m. 354-4743.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, February 12, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.