Cowgirl Creamery Trivia (Mom version)

In honor of mom - who died 18 years ago - we just wanted to share a fun bit of trivia about mom and dad's contribution to the world of artisan cheese.

Back in the mid-1990s, mom was canvassing door-to-door for the Democratic party when she met Sue Conley. They quickly became friends and then Sue became friends with my brother and helped him launch our family’s creamery. Shortly thereafter, Sue cofounded Cowgirl Creamery.

Sue started creating cheeses and, from the very beginning, mom was there. Even inspiring the company’s name … really!

Sue recalled “the name Cowgirl Creamery came to us one afternoon while we were standing in front of our barn, exchanging ideas with Ellen Straus. Across the street, a young woman was hitching her horse to a post in front of the bank, and Ellen remarked, “Ladies, we are in the wild west.” And I (Sue) said, “So we must be cowgirls and this must be the Cowgirl Creamery."

Mom helped Sue create her very first cheese: Quark, a German-style ricotta/cream cheese which my dad had grown up eating as a kid in Hamburg. Dad actually played an important roll, too ... in ‘quality control’. Every week, Mom and Sue would present yet another trial batch of quark, which dad would excitedly try, then just as quickly reject with conviction: ‘Not sour enough’. When it did perfectly match with his childhood memory – which it eventually did - it was really quite delicious.

We love this photo of Sue (on the left) and mom making quark (~1999), taken by Pt. Reyes based photographer (and old family friend) Art Rogers.