DUNGENESS — Out here, the labors of love are many.
There is love between two young mates. Love for animals. Love for the family who built this place.
This dairy has long been known as the Brown farm: Jeff and Debbie Brown’s place off Towne Road. Then, after nearly every other dairy in this valley had gone away, the Browns decided to try a new venture: raw, unpasteurized milk from their Jersey herd.
And as they put the milk on the market, their Washington State University-educated daughter Sarah was with them all the way, caring for the animals, working on packaging and marketing of the Dungeness Valley Creamery’s rich product.
After college and unlike many of her contemporaries, Sarah Brown returned home, bringing with her a degree in animal science and product management.
“I wanted to farm,” recalls Sarah, now 30.
Dairying wasn’t really part of her plan, though. She knew from experience that this is “so 24-7.”
Back here in the Dungeness Valley, though, Sarah saw her future. Surrounded again by her beloved Jersey cows, she could not imagine doing anything else. Dairying was, after all, in her blood.
At the same time, Sarah thought she might like a partnership, the kind her parents had. Jeff and Debbie Brown had started their farm back in the early 1990s as a conventional dairy, then converted to raw milk in 2006.
Sarah, meanwhile, posted a profile on MySpace, that forerunner of Facebook. She posted a photo and put “farmer” in the “occupation” box.
Before long, a guy named Ryan McCarthey from Port Ludlow started asking questions.
“Are you really a farmer? You don’t look like one,” he remarked.
Next, Ryan began inquiring about cows. He seemed genuinely interested, so Sarah decided she’d talk to him.
So he invited her on a series of outings. Sailing? River rafting? Yes, she responded. But logistics kept getting in the way. Weeks passed, and finally he got on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and rode out to the farmhouse.
They went berry-picking in a field just across the river. Then a walk on Dungeness Spit. Finally, the pièce de résistance : Sarah gave Ryan a tour of the Dungeness Valley Creamery.
“I tried to watch my step” in the pasture, Ryan remembers. He had brand-new motorcycle boots on.
That was July 6, 2007, when the two hit it off. The following July, Sarah and Ryan McCarthey were newlyweds — and Ryan was getting ready to ship out to Iraq.
After eight and a half years in the Army Reserve, he was sent to work in civil affairs, helping Iraqis with projects — even a potential dairy farm, though that ultimately proved to be a difficult proposition.
And so Ryan and Sarah spent their first year as husband and wife on different sides of the world. Sarah lived at the farmhouse with her folks and worked at the creamery, bottling milk and marketing it all over the Puget Sound.
She also managed to buy a house for the two of them, “which was interesting because I needed his signature,” she recalls.
After Ryan returned home, they moved in together at last. He used his G.I. Bill benefits to earn a bachelor’s in applied management at Peninsula College. He also learned to milk cows and do a passel of other tasks on the Brown dairy farm.
Jeff and Debbie, meantime, began to think about retirement. They could do this, in large part because their farm is in an unusual position. Its 38 acres are protected by a North Olympic Land Trust-Friends of the Fields conservation easement, a legal guarantee that the land will be a farm forever. And the Browns knew a young couple who fiercely wanted to be farmers.
“When we got engaged,” Ryan recalls, “I knew how passionate Sarah was about staying here.”
So the McCartheys moved out of their home and into the Dungeness Valley Creamery farmhouse. Full ownership of the dairy was transferred to them on March 1 of this year — 20 years after Jeff and Debbie Brown had established the farm.
Soon, Sarah and Ryan will honor one of the creamery’s traditions: a fall day full of music, food and farm tours, complete with doe-eyed calves, hayrides, the Juanamarimba band, butter- and kefir-making demonstrations — and this year, another family member to greet visitors. He’s 10-month-old Tyler, born right after farm day 2011.
Although scores of people stream onto the grounds for the day, it isn’t such a stressful time, says Sarah. Since she grew up here, she knows all the food vendors and musicians to call, and she knows a lot of the people who come by.
For Ryan, 29, all of this is an unlikely story. His father, Dennis McCarthey, worked for the Department of Defense. And though Ryan went to Chimacum High School, he wasn’t exposed to the farming life. The only time he’d ever set foot on a dairy farm was when he was a boy taking swimming lessons from Sandy Short at the Short’s family farm outside Chimacum.
In a classic example of “Who’d have thunk?,” Ryan is a modern dairyman: facilities maintenance man, finance manager and troubleshooter at the Dungeness Valley Creamery. And if one of the workers can’t make it in on any given morning, he milks the cows.
Farming “isn’t as straightforward as I expected,” Ryan deadpans.
He and Sarah work round the clock, tending their 120 animals — including the 60 milkers producing some 300 gallons of milk daily — and running the business that employs 10 staff people. They want to expand the operation, yes — but rather than reaching farther afield, the McCartheys hope to deepen their local market.
Already, natural-food stores across the North Olympic Peninsula stock Dungeness Valley Creamery milk, but the couple would like to shift sales in an even more local direction. This would reduce trucking costs — Ryan is always having to work on their three delivery vehicles — and reduce competition with other raw milk producers around Washington state.
Clearly, this pair is on the same page, fully invested in the farm’s future.
“To help Sarah live her dream,” Ryan says, makes this a good life.
“I’m very blessed,” adds his wife, “to have someone who wants to do this with me. It’s like a miracle.”
Turning to Ryan, she asks with a smile:
“Where did you come from?
“He was an answer to a prayer.”