This story was written as part of an agriculture-reporting internship with the the journalism department of Western Washington University and Whatcom County Dairy Women, supported by a grant from the Dairy Farmers of Washington.
Wearing a red button-up shirt that matches the color of the barn his great-grandfather built, Larry Stap sits on the bed of his Mazda pickup. He might have to favor a hip that’s scheduled for replacement surgery in a couple of weeks, but his smile is as sweet as his family dairy’s chocolate milk. With fans from the Canadian border to Portland, Oregon, and plans to expand into eastern Washington, Larry Stap is a fourth-generation dairy farmer and owner at Twin Brook Creamery in Lynden, Washington. Counting his kids and grandkids, three generations now live on the farm.
Year farm started: 1910
Acreage: The farm includes 230 acres plus 50 acres rented from neighbors.
Facilities: The dairy farm and bottling plant are on separate sites, three miles apart.
Herd: All Jersey, 265 milking and dry cows and another 220 youngstock.
Cream of the crop: Twin Brook Creamery produces whole, 2 percent, 1 percent and fat-free milk; heavy whipping cream; half-and-half; strawberry and chocolate milk; and eggnog seasonally, all sold in glass bottles.
4,000 – 7,000: Number of glass milk bottles Twin Brook Creamery washes in a day.
Customers can return their bottles at the store where they purchased the milk and get their bottle deposit back.
Self-sufficient: “We grow most of our own feed. When you have enough land base, you can raise all your own feed. So that works out really nice.”
‘Lots of history here’: The oldest barn on the farm was built by Stap’s great-grandfather in 1911.
Family first: In 2006 Stap’s daughter and son-in-law Michelle and Mark Tolsma asked to join the family business. “Instead of getting bigger and adding more cows, we diversified and started bottling our own milk.”
‘Responsibility’: The main skill Stap says his father taught him. “Those cows need to be milked seven days a week, the calves need care seven days a week. You can’t just think about tomorrow, you have to think about long term.”
‘Always, always, always’: “Probably the biggest thing is to worship the Creator. Our mission statement is, We are a family-owned and -operated dairy that exists to glorify God, through the stewardship of the land and the animals that He’s entrusted to our care in the best way possible.”
Tech support: Twin Brook Creamery installed four Lely robotic milking machines around 2016.
Milking times: Cows are milked three to six times a day, depending on the cow’s daily production. Each cow produces about 55 pounds, or nearly 6 gallons of milk, a day.
Six: Approximate number of minutes it takes for the robot to milk each cow.
Snack time: Cows eagerly line up to be milked by the Lely robotic milker because they get a special high-energy snack. Cows enjoy the treat so much they sometimes “cheat” and try to go through the milking line extra times. The robot tracks their computer tags and shoos them off if they’re not due to be milked.
Toughest part of farming: “It’s seven days a week. You won’t get days off, you probably won’t get vacations, you still have to milk the cows when you’re sick, so be ready for some serious commitment.”
‘It all boils down to stewardship’: “If you don’t take care of the soil properly, you’re probably not going to have good quality feed. If you don’t take care of the animals that provide your living, they’re not going to produce well.”
Learning curve: “You can take some college classes, you can go to ag colleges and they’ll help you a lot. But you’re never going to get the learning that you have working on an actual farm. Just learn, learn, learn, because you’re never going to learn it all. It’s just amazing what you can take through life with you.”
‘The dairy I grew up on’: Wolfisberg and his four older brothers were raised on a 60-acre farm with around 170 cows along the Nooksack River. “We learned how to work on a dairy, then we did 4-H through the Barnyard Kids 4-H Club. They taught us how to show cows and prep cows for showing.”
Flower power: Wolfisberg’s father, Hans, immigrated from Switzerland in 1995. The family farm, Edelweiss Dairy, is named after the Swiss national flower.
Breeding grounds: “We have Jerseys mixed with Norwegian Reds.”
Jersey guy: “I like Jerseys because they’re smaller, a pretty efficient breed. So while Holsteins milk more than a Jersey, Jerseys will eat less and they also have a lot better butterfat.”
‘Pretty easy choice’: “My dad went organic mainly because he wanted to rotationally graze. Now he sells to Organic Valley because you are required to graze and not use spray and he was doing all that anyways.”
Brainy bovines: When Wolfisberg was younger, he says, he struggled at times to control his cows in the show ring. “Jerseys are the smartest breed,” in his opinion. “They know they can overpower you. They’re a lot more reactive, which can make it harder to train them.”
Not a walk in the park: Sometimes while showing,“the judge will have you switch animals to see how you do. That’s probably one of the most difficult things because you have to learn to lead a new animal.”
‘Every animal is different’: “The main thing is figuring out each cow. When you’re training a cow, a lot of times you can see norms throughout breeds, but you don’t really see similarities across the board.”
‘Stay cool’: “Sometimes animals act up and you just have to get the show done. The cow’s only going to get worse, especially if you overreact. So you just have to stay calm because they can sense when your heart rate goes up. So stay cool is the first thing. Then the second thing is start changing tactics. Try different holds on the halter to see if it settles them down. If it doesn’t, you’ve just got to get through and wrap it up.”
Unforgiven: “The reason you’re really calm with animals is because if you ever take your anger out on the animal they’ll never forget that.”
‘A pretty tough situation’: “When I was a bit younger, I had a heifer that was pretty hyper and not very good on the halter. She kept wanting to run out of the ring. I lost my cool and it was a learning moment of you can never get too antsy, because otherwise it’ll just get worse and worse. Eventually, it was bad enough that the judge had to stand there and block the animal.
“It was a good learning experience though.”
Advice for a fair newbie: “If it’s your first time at the fair, don’t show a full-grown milking cow, show a smaller heifer.
“And it’s fairly simple to learn the basics of showing. It’s once you get into senior classes that you get pretty nitpicky about showing.”
Tool tip: “Make sure that you know someone with a good set of clippers so you can clip your animal with the right clippers. This year I saw a girl brought a cow or a heifer and didn’t have the correct clippers. So it looked like a pretty bad clip job. But that’s okay because it’s her first year so she’s learning.”
Her aim is to share the reality of dairy farming. That might look delightful, as in a lineup of cows licking their lips with goofy glee. Or difficult – you try threading a two-foot long artificial insemination tube through the three rings of a cow’s cervix while rectally palpating its vagina!
DeBruin is one of the29.7 percent of women working in dairy product manufacturing, according to 2021 U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics.
She sees these Jersey and Holstein cows, which can range in weight from 950 to 1,800 pounds, as “ultimate athletes” and her job as keeping them in peak condition. Starting as early as 5:30 a.m., DeBruin says her day consists of constant problem solving.“My job is I get here and I triage. All day long. All these cows get milked three times a day. On my shift, that has to happen once. I know at 10 o’clock pen one’s got to go. Which means their pens have got to be cleaned. And the whole process continues for groups one through six.” The cows will produce about 7,500 gallons of milk during her eight-hour shift.
Although the cows wear pedometers and ear tags that track each animal’s temperature, activity and rumination, DeBruin is hands on. “A computer can tell me a lot but not always everything. I go through pen 8” – a maternity area which holds about 50 pregnant cows near their due date – “probably 10 times a day.”
“Part of understanding a cow is knowing how to read their normal movements. I see them every single day. I know them.”
Though the black and white cows look identical to a visitor, DeBruin — who has a degree in dairy management from Washington State University – spots potential symptoms. As a Lely Juno robotic feeder pushes a mix of grass silage, corn silage, grass hay, alfalfa hay and grain toward the cows, she points out one that’s mouth breathing. She explains it could indicate heat stress or that another cow is bothering it. “They pick on each other — it’s a like a big group of sisters, they’re not always going to get along great.”
While the barn is quiet except for an occasional moo and rooster crow, DeBruin is in continual motion. “Part of understanding a cow is knowing how to read their normal movements,” she says. “You learn that first, and then you can start to pick out the outliers. I see them every single day mostly, I know them.”
DeBruin started making TikToks in 2018 because of her interest in community outreach to help people understand cows and just how much happens on a dairy farm. She hopes that using the social media platform will bridge the gap between consumer and producer. “What I enjoy most is seeing people who have never been around cows get to experience what an average day on the farm is like for me.” Her audience extends beyond the dairy community, ranging from members of her family – who don’t come from a farming background — to cow lovers across the United States.
Her 2019 “That’s My Baby Daddy” TikTok on artificial insemination drew most of her followers. Then a follow-up video showing the calf resulting from the procedure proved popular.
DeBruin stops by cow number 3407, also known as Stacy. Who happens to be a pretty big deal on TikTok. “She’s my main go-to when I’m filming, because she’s very cooperative.”
Stacy also has quite the palate: “She likes Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, fruit snacks and granola bars. Not a fan of bagels. Bagels are where she draws the line,” says DeBruin. She explains cows often prevent waste in the food chain by eating byproducts of food manufacturing or produce that can’t be sold for human consumption, from locally grown potatoes to bakery goods from nearby Skagit County.
“I constantly look for laboring moms. Yesterday I had a mom who had twins.”
Stacy’s favorite snacks are just one of myriad details DeBruin tracks with the help of a crew of four to five workers. Even the cows’ “feet are really important. We have a hoof trimmer come once every three weeks, every cow gets done twice a year at a minimum.”
“I check who’s in heat that day. And who needs to be bred and also who’s sick, not feeling good.” Since cows provide maximum milk production for about 10 months after they’ve had a calf and optimally are bred 90 days after calving,managing each cow’s breeding cycle is a complex part of her work. After breeding and during a nine-month gestation, there’s a convoluted schedule where cows are dry stock in a waiting period where they are not milked while they rest and prepare to give birth. DeBruin is managing about 500 bovine pregnancies at any one time.
Her day is literally about life and death. “I constantly look for laboring moms. Most of the time they can do it by themselves. But yesterday I had a mom who had twins. And they were both backwards” (in a breech position for birth). “So I had to get help doing that.”
It’s also about mundane details and the cows’ personalities. For example, “I know that 2501 always is going to limp in her right hip. That is her normal. I know that she likes to eat on this side of the barn and she likes to sleep on that side of the barn, because they’re creatures of habit. They like the same thing every day,” explains DeBruin.
The job is physically demanding. “Sometimes my arms aren’t long enough to reach where I need to reach” if a calf is positioned weird, says DeBruin. She might call on farm owner Jerry Van Dellen or another dairy worker to help.
The harder toll is emotional, she admits. Keeping 800 large animals healthy and productive inevitably entails loss. “I’ve had animals that I couldn’t help even though I wanted to, had to sell animals that I was close to, and I bring it all home.”
“Milk fever is what I see the most of,” she says. “It looks like a cow can’t get up. It’s pretty common. A cow has her baby and her body isn’t pulling calcium from her bones to put calcium into her milk so it creates an imbalance. Calcium controls muscles: They can’t swallow, and they can die from it. It’s also really easily treated” with intravenous calcium and appropriate diet management.
Her “That’s My Baby Daddy” TikTok on artificial insemination drew most of her followers.
DeBruin, who has worked at Van Dellen Farms for almost two years, is well versed in addressing mastitis, or inflamed tissue in the udders. One of her other favorite cows, Peppermint, or 2792, is special to her because she was the first cow DeBruin treated for mastitis from start to finish.
On top of all this, DeBruin shares what she does on TikTok about once a month with her 12,800 followers. “It’s fun and exciting for me to teach people what goes into milking a cow or showing the start-to-finish process of artificial insemination,” she says. She says it takes about 45 minutes to film and edit each video.
DeBruin has no worries about running out of material. After eating 100 pounds of food and drinking 30-50 gallons of water each day, each cow poops up to 50-60 pounds of manure a day, all of which is then recycled into fertilizer and cow bedding on the 600-acre farm. “Cows are so incredibly useful,” says DeBruin. “Everything they do is super resourceful from how their stomach works to how they behave.” From her college days on, “I knew it would keep my interest forever.”
So next day she’ll do it all again –with 13,000 followers who can’t wait to see what Stacy and Peppermint are up to.
Follow Brianna DeBruin on TikTok @briannaparmentier
Follow the Whatcom County Dairy Women on TikTok @whatcomcountydairywomen
Here are other dairy farmer TikTokkers DeBruin recommends
She hands a visitor a hairnet, a red disposable coat and a pair of yellow booties with a smile. It’s not exactly fashion week, but strict consumer safety is more Darigold quality assurance manager Samantha Riegel’s style. Not an ounce of the 300,000 pounds of milk powder this 60,000-square-foot Lynden, Wash., plant processes daily ships without her approval.
Riegel stands guard against the slightest traces of microscopic taint to ensure compliance with all U.S. Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Washington State Department of Agriculture’s regulations. Such rigor is required, says Val Hillers, an extension food-safety specialist who retired from Washington State University after 25 years, because contamination can have lethal consequences.
Pathogens such as the bacteria listeria kill about 260 of the 1,600 Americans infected each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hillers explains that pasteurization, since it was implemented about 120 years ago, means that modern milk is almost 100 percent safe from bacteria like listeria and e.coli – although, in extremely rare instances, milk can be re-contaminated after pasteurization, she says.
The handling of dairy products at Darigold has evolved significantly since its founding in 1918. Before pasteurization, “milk was not exactly a safe product,” says Hillers. “Pasteurization is an extremely important part of keeping milk safe because animals, such as dairy cows, naturally carry microorganisms that can be harmful to humans.”
And the bugs are sneaky. Milk with pathogens often doesn’t taste bad or spoiled, says Hillers. “Whereas most bacteria don’t grow at refrigeration temperatures, listeria thrives in damp, chilled environments,” she says. “It’s a real problem for food processing, particularly milk plants, where the milk is stored in a damp environment.”
To counter that threat, the legal requirement for pasteurization is 161 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 seconds, explains Riegel. The Darigold plant runs 166 to 168 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 seconds, she says.
With her visitors humbled by scary facts and newly appreciative of their safety gear, Riegel opens the doorof a windowless beige building a few blocks from town mainstays like the Lynden Pioneer Museum and the De Wagen Wasserij car wash. She heads into a Willy Wonka factory of pipes, gauges, massive machines and conveyor belts run by a small crew of about 30 hard-hatted workers.
All the pipes – and it seems like there are miles of them — that run throughout the plant are cleaned every 24 hours.
Whether you’re eating toast, sipping hot chocolate or snacking on Snickers, you’re probably consuming milk powder, she explains. “Bread, chips, different kinds of granola or protein bars, candy bars. You name it, there are a lot of products in stores that use milk powder,” says Riegel, who graduated from the University of Idaho with a bachelor of science in food science with an emphasis in nutrition. “Between milk powder and milk proteins, they’re in pretty much everything.”
Most of the Lynden plant’s powder is exported. Walking through a maze of milk powder crates stacked as high as a house, Riegel points out the plant’s lone robot lining up 55-pound bags of milk powder on wooden pallets to be shipped out to countries in Eurasia and South America.
In developing nations where refrigeration is rare, fresh milk isn’t always an option, says Richard Palmer, a quality control supervisor at Darigold for 42 years. “It’s a lot easier to ship dry milk than liquid milk. It also has a two-year shelf life, which allows this product to be shipped and used across the world,” he explains.
Wearing a required hard hat and goggles, Riegel splashes through a soapy foot bath that prevents cross-contamination and enters a fluorescent-lit metal jungle where the milk is pasteurized.
Weaving through shiny tanks that hold cream and skim milk, Riegel says the plant receives around 3.5 million pounds of liquid milk per day. It takes 10 pounds of liquid milk to make around one pound of powder.
What’s more, everything the milk touches is cleaned down to the last particle. Darigold workers are “cleaning all day every day,” says Riegel.
All the pipes – and it seems like there are miles of them — that run throughout the plant are emptied and cleaned every 24 hours with a chemical wash. The entire plant – walls, floors, tanks – is washed every 28-30 hours. The nine 62,500-gallonsilos that tower over downtown Lynden are washed as they are emptied; per FDA regulations they must be cleaned every 72 hours.Cleaning equipment at stations throughout the plant is color coordinated in bright yellows, reds and blues to match designated areas to clean.
“The dairy industry is probably the first industry that took keeping their products safe seriously because they’re going to babies and children,” says Hillers.
Continuing to a room with a bank of security cameras like something out of a James Bond film, Riegel points out computer monitors that constantly read out the temperatures of the milk evaporator and peruse each part of the processing plant.
Riegel insists visitors twist in earplugs to prepare for the noise from the heart of the plant: the evaporator. This four-story-high metal heater fires up to 450 degrees and turns milk spraying from the top into powder before it reaches the bottom. It processes about 19,000 pounds of milk per hour. Metal detectors screen every bit of powder.
The downpour of creamy-white powder goes into a sifter machine — think of the biggest blender you’ve ever seen — to prevent it from clumping.
Milk trucks from local farms arrive 24 hours a day. “Cows don’t stop milking, so we don’t stop producing.”
Meanwhile, more milk pours in. Fifty mirror-finish double-tank trucks, each holding 75,000 pounds of milk from local dairy farms, arrive 24 hours a day, every day, including Christmas and New Year’s. “Cows don’t stop milking, so we don’t stop producing,” says Riegel.
That not one drop of milk is contaminated with antibiotics is also part of Riegel’s purview.
“We are a fully enclosed system,” she explains. “All of our milk comes in on tankers that are sealed. So if somebody tampers with that sealed load in transit, we will know and not unload that milk. It’s pretty much the only tampering point that could cause contamination.”
Similar to a race car pit crew, truck drivers jump out of the trucks, hooking up hoses to begin a three-minute testing process, which treats the milk as guilty until proven innocent. If there’s any trace of antibiotics, potentially the entire truckload is rejected — even if only one tank of the two tested positive. Riegel says such contamination happens at very low frequency, “next to nothing.”
Over at the lab, quality control supervisor Richard Palmer is judge and jury, hovering over arrays of tiny slides and samples. In his worn dark-blue polo with a faded Darigold logo, he proves food-safety superheroes sometimes resemble high-school science teachers geeking out over a bead bath that warms up milk samples.
As at the plant, testing for bacteria and pathogens goes on 24-7. Surrounded by calibration equipment, pipettes, scales, meters and sample incubators, Palmer says, “I don’t grade for Darigold, I grade for the customer. I pour my whole heart into it.”
After the tour, Riegel rounds up safety gear from her visitors and smiles ruefully as she moves aside a box of tomatoes on a desk to make room for the pile of equipment.
“I didn’t have time for my garden this year, my garden flopped,” she says. She laughs that her boss felt compelled to bring her backups from his garden. It’s yet another example, albeit small, of the team effort it takes to put healthy food on the table.
Barnyard Kids 4-H Club member Addison Jager eagerly invites visitors to the dairy area at the Northwest Washington Fair to meet her cows. “I just enjoy getting to share my love of animals with people who also love animals and enjoy doing what I do. And then sharing that with people who might not necessarily know about animals.”
A veteran of three fairs at 14, Jager values the friends, family and neighbors who’ve helped her:
“I’ve learned about cows from my friends the Polinders, my 4-H leaders, Mr. and Mrs. Bareman, Mr. and Mrs. Oostra. And Mr. and Mrs. Odens. And then a bunch of people in my 4- H club. Because they’re the best.”
Jager gives future 4-H competitors key points to remember while showing. Her main advice: Enjoy it. With a ready smile, she says, “Even if I get placed high or low, I still have fun.”
· Name: Addison Jager
· Age: 14
· Hometown: Lynden, Wash.
· School: Lynden Christian High School
· 4-H club: Barnyard Kids 4-H Club, since 2019
Connected through community: Jager showed Holstein heifers Dusty and Crystal at the Northwest Washington Fair. Sherm and Jeff Polinder of Ronelee Farms, family friends who are dairy breeders in Lynden, loaned them to her.
Bovine buddies: Jager’s heifers Dusty and Crystal “make really good pillows, they’re nice and warm and soft. I take naps on both of them.”
Best foot forward: Jager says the fair is a time to show off the hard work she’s done — and all the months of being stepped on!
Cleanliness counts: “It’s important to brush your animal because it keeps them clean and pretty.” It’s also crucial to make sure they’re fed and that their water is clean, she says, plucking a wad of straw out of Crystal’s water bucket.
She persisted: “One of my favorite memories is my first fair in 2019. My heifer Ribbon and I were back in the old dairy barn and she freaked out after a Jersey (cow) did the Jersey flop into the judge’s table. It’s like they freeze up, stop walking and flop over on their side. So Ribbon dragged me halfway across the ring, leaping and bounding like a deer. The halter got out of my hand and she took off to the wild blue yonder.” Eventually Ribbon was caught, Jager took her back in the ring … and won fourth place!
Tips for newbies: “I just watch the judge, focus on my animal, and I’m all good. Just have fun and let that shine through while you’re showing.”
Open mind: “You learn something new every day — I know I do.”
Here he offers suggestions for anyone exhibiting animals for the first time — and talks about who taught him the most about cow competition.
Name: Lane Oostra
Age: 17
Hometown: Ferndale, Wash.
School: Senior at Ferndale High School in fall 2022
4-H club: Barnyard Kids 4-H Club
Starting out: Competed in 4-H since age 6.
Learning curve: Oostra picked up details of animal husbandry from his mom, Heather Oostra, and his grandmother, Joanne Odens, who grew up on the DeWaard Dairy on Wiser Lake Road in Lynden, Wash., and still works feeding calves at Ronelee Farms.
Bovine bennies: Oostra says he loves working with cows because they are friendly and fun to practice with – plus he just likes all animals in general.
Tip for showing cows: Lane’s mom, Heather Oostra, says it’s important to coordinate your movements with your cow. “If she takes a step, he takes a step. It just looks more in synch…you’re working together as a pair.”
Overcoming obstacles: When Ooostra first showed in 4-H as a young kid, it was hard to get the cows to follow his lead at times. “You get a cow to cooperate by practicing,” he says.
How to handle a hyper Holstein: To help his cows chill out before and during showing Oostra walks them around the show-ring barnyard. He makes sure to feed them lots of food so they “focus on other stuff. Just calm them down.”
Favorite fair memory: ”Every day is pretty fun! When I’m not showing I like to go on rides or hang out with friends.”
Best advice: “Practice.”
Suggestions for a newbie: “If you really want to do it, then you keep on working on it. If you love it, just keep on working.”
In this audio Fair Share, Lane Oostra talks about showing cows at the 2022 Northwest Washington Fair and who taught him the most.
Produced by Sarah Sakurazawa / Blue Ribbon Stories
Music “Turning” by Blue Dot Sessions from FreeMusicArchive.com
