FOOD GU Y HAND
CLOVERLEAF CREAMERY COMMODITY Little dairy in Buhl keeps it small and sweet GUY HAND “This was formerly the Smith’s Dairy,” says Bill Stoltzfus of the building he bought in 2007, just a block south of Buhl’s town square. “The place had been in the Smith family for 70-some years.” This modest cream-colored bottling plant and the soft-spoken man who now runs it hardly look like players in a new, national agricultural movement. But they are. Stoltzfus, a lifelong dairyman, moved to Idaho in 1992 from Pennsylvania’s once pasto- is “careening down ever more extreme paths with less and less connection to anything ral dairy country. He still carries a hint of the recognizable as real milk.” rural East in his voice and a lasting love of the As we walk from his quaint storefront into small dairy farms that dot his home state. a small, spotless bottling plant where glass “We do a non-homogenized whole milk, milk containers rattle along a conveyer belt, a 2 percent and a low-fat milk,” Stoltzfus Stoltzfus says he believes in real milk. says as he shows me around the pleasantly “Our raw milk comes into the big tank old-fashioned retail space that fronts his bottling plant. Behind the counter are 24 fla- there,” he says, pointing to a stainless steel vat. “And we do not separate our whole milk.” vors of homemade ice cream. “We also are That’s significant. planning on trying to get into some cottage Modern milk is a study in deconstructioncheese and possibly some yogurt and do our ism. Even whole milk is usually separated into own artisan cheese.” its component parts then reassembled as any of Most modern dairymen have gone a very the countless variations of milk-like substances different route than Stoltzfus. The Idaho dairy that customers now demand: skimmed, nonindustry has grown explosively in the last fat, low fat, 1 percent, 2 percent and what decade. Fed in part by factory dairies fleeing could be, after that industrial disassembly more tightly regulated places like Califorprocess, only euphemistically described as nia, dairy is now Idaho’s No. 1 agricultural industry. But rather than managing small herds whole milk. Along the way it’s also pasteurized, homogenized, spiked with vitamins and and bottling the milk for regional distribuoften other additives like thickeners, emulsition, as Stoltzfus does, the typical Southern Idaho dairyman has turned to the concentrated fiers, stabilizers and flavor enhancers. “So by doing the whole milk, just whole animal feeding operation, or CAFO, focusing on volume, assembling herds as large as regula- milk, we don’t have to do any of that,” says Stoltzfus. Although he pasteurizes all of his tions allow (sometimes larger), then selling milk—and federal regulations require that his milk on the notoriously volatile commodity separated milk, like 2 percent, are fortified market where it’s largely churned into lowwith vitamins—he doesn’t homogenize or othquality, processed cheese destined to anonyerwise fiddle with his whole milk. The cream mously top distant chain store pizzas. Artisan even floats to the top. Stoltzfus tries to keep it cheese it ain’t. Although Stoltzfus is quick to point out that as simple as the law allows. He even uses those old-fashioned, returnable glass bottles because he’s not against the choices other dairymen he believes they make the milk taste better. But make, his Cloverleaf Creamery is nonetheless it’s not simply a lightly processed product that part of a small but significant national trend attracted him to the bottling leading away from that highly business. industrialized dairy model. “Well this is Ashley and Anne Mendelson, author CLOVERLEAF CREAMERY Bobby Sue and Dinah,” of Milk: The Surprising Story 205 Broadway Ave. South, Stoltzfus says, introducing me of Milk Through the Ages, is Buhl 208-543-4272 to his herd. encouraged by this countercloverleafcreamery.com Dinah is 13 years old. Lite, trend toward small, locally the grand elder of the clan, focused milk production. She is 14. writes that “milk in many ways “I think the average dairy cow in the counexemplifies an American love-hate relationship try is around 4 years old,” Stoltzfus says. with food” and that modern milk production
30 | JANUARY 19–25, 2011 | BOISEweekly
Cloverleaf: The cream-ery of the crop.
A growing number of dairy industry critics say factory farms, which frequently manage thousands of animals at a time, often abuse them. A few years ago, one Magic Valley dairy was accused of burying cattle alive. Without question, crowded, manure-slicked factory farms shorten animals’ lives. Stoltzfus says he understands the economic factors that compel fellow dairymen to ever-larger operations, but just hesitates to join them, believing he can better care for his own animals by keeping the herd small. The advanced age of many of his 81 milking cows, unheard of in industrial dairies, is testament to that belief. “To me, I like the hands-on of the cattle and working with them and all that,” he says as he gives Bobby Sue a pat. “And I never had a desire to manage a lot of employees and large number of cows.” In contrast, the owner of one of Southern Idaho’s mega-dairies told me he prefers an airconditioned office to a milking barn, and the division of labor that a large-scale operation demands—the separation of menial work from management—suits him just fine. Stoltzfus, on the other hand, likes the milking barn. Rather than selling high volumes of raw milk at low prices as an air-conditioned stairway to management, bottling his own milk allows Stoltzfus to charge a stable price that makes sticking close to his cattle possible. “One of my frustrations with just supplying for the commodity market was the answer to high milk prices was produce more because we’re making money, and the answer to low milk prices was produce more until it gets better. And it’s a continuous, self-defeating deal, and that’s what agriculture has come to,” he says. Feeling like a slave to the commodity market is hardly an ailment unique to dairymen. It’s the reason cattle ranchers, chicken growers and vegetable farmers have turned toward the local-food movement, farmers markets and direct marketing as a way 32 to capture a fair price for producing a WWW. B O I S E WE E KLY. C O M