Drought!

When the first rains of the season arrived last November, you could practically feel the parched soil breath a sigh of relief. After a long, dry season, the green grasses quickly sprung back to life, poking out from a sea of golden brown like a 5 o’clock shadow.

In a normal winter, creeks and streams - which are mostly or entirely dry in the Summer - would start flowing again, filling up and replenishing the reservoirs which supply water for all the cows.

But despite the lush bloom, we had so little rain that the earth never became saturated with water. The creeks didn’t flow. And the reservoirs are drying up.

With family farms, money is always tight … but then what happens when Mother Nature stops providing her free water??

Milking cows drink 30-50 gallons of water each day and now, today, dairy farmers are needing to purchase water. For a typical, small scale dairy in our area, that can easily cost over $1,000 per day.

There’s an old joke: “How do you become a millionaire rancher?” “Start off as a billionaire.”

Even in the best of times, it’s hard to make money as a rancher. More often than not, it’s less about profit, and more about just staying in business.

There’s never enough money to pay the bills. Indeed, Pop would often quip that, in the dairy business, our brother would spend the money, and Pop would need to figure out how to pay. After Pop died in 2003, we spent many months sorting through all the piles of accumulated documents in our father’s office (now the TV room), and we discovered his secret … dozens and dozens of active and inactive credit cards, used to constantly transfer outstanding balances in order to prevent paying interest fees. All tracked in his hand-written accounting ledgers, without the help of computers.

Here at our ranch, we remember the drought of the 1975-1977, when we almost went out of business. Back then, our dairy was saved by Old Man Cerini, a 96-year old dowser in the nearby town of Tomales, who could detect water using his body’s mysterious mystical ability. If you come out to the ranch, ask me (Michael) about that story … it’s a good one.

Anyways, we’re now entering what is shaping up to be a horrible drought year. And that means, even when you’re here at the ranch to escape for a short vacation, we ask that you do your part in helping conserve this precious, limited resource: keep your showers short (5 minutes or less), turn off the faucets while brushing your teeth and/or washing the dishes, and when going to the bathroom - as they said during the 70s drought: “If it’s yellow, it’s mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down.”

Here’s a good piece on local ABC TV (below), and a related article in the local Petaluma newspaper - both featuring Don DeBernardi, who also made (until recently) the delicious Two Rock Valley goat cheese we include in our artisan cheese collections.