For this week's KCRW Market Report (click here to listen), Gillian Ferguson went to Marshall, California in Marin County to talk to Vivien Straus, to discuss the history of farming and ranching in this region. For anyone who's been to the Tomales Bay area, you know this is a bucolic part of Northern California where cows graze on the hillsides and oysters grow in the bay.
Her father, Bill Straus, began his dairy farm in the early 1940s in Marshall. Her mother, Ellen, joined him in 1950. Later, Vivan's brother Albert started Straus Family Creamery, where she served as the marketing/sales director for 11 years. She also worked for several years at Cowgirl Creamery.
These days, Vivan and others are working to preserve the region's agricultural roots. One way they're doing that is the Cheese Trail.
