In the morning, we left the KOA compound to visit a Pfaff sewing machine store to see their new Husqarvarna Epic-like sewing machine. Husqarvarna bought Pfaff and they are doing a NH/CIH differentiation-like offering with different colors and stitches. Our in-house seamstress needed to see new model but none were available but she talked sewingese with the store owners.
After lunch, we toured a 300 head goat dairy/cheese making farm in the arid, dusty country side of Petaluma. The dairy also had 30 head of Guernsey milk cows. The cheese maker went into detail about the trials and tribulations of being a farmer in Petaluma in the last decades – feast to famine –and her learning process of trial and error of learning good cheese making.
Their current process is to use gravity to move the cow and goat milk from the milk parlor to the pasteurizer and then to the cooking table where the rennin is added which starts the bacteria cheese making process. The cheese maker learned that when pumps are used to move the milk that the molecules in the milk are broken down and the cheese is not so good – thus pumpless gravity system is now used.
While we visited the hundreds of goats, half of which were pregnant, a dairy cow gave birth to a female calf. Those in the tour who had given birth could feel her pain which she expressed loudly. The calf was about to get up for a drink when we exited the barn.