June 3, 2016
CapitalPress.com
9
Courtesy of Stuyt Dairy
Anastasia Stuyt, cheesemaker at Stuyt Dairy Farmstead Cheese Co., holds a handcrafted 20-pound
wheel of Gouda cheese next to Holstein Licky Lou. Rick Stuyt, right, is co-owner with his wife, Ansally
Stuyt. The cheese operation began in 2015.
Stuyt Dairy family adds
cheesemaking to its menu
By JULIA HOLLISTER
For the Capital Press
Ansally Stuyt, co-owner
of Stuyt Dairy, really knows
the business. It is part of her
family history.
“My husband, Rick, and
I both grew up on a dairy,”
she said. “Our great-grand-
fathers had a dairy and then
our grandfathers, then down
to our parents.”
Her family has farmed at
the current location in Escalon,
Calif., for more than 50 years.
She grew up involved in
4-H and FFA, and he grew
up in the Netherlands and
came to California for an in-
ternship. Rick had become
interested in making cheese
and in California he started
by making it for friends and
family.
“After we were mar-
ried 31 years ago, we both
worked for my parents,” she
said. “Growing up, our three
children helped with the
chores on the dairy, feeding
calves, milking, driving trac-
tors and more. They were
also in 4-H and FFA and the
two girls — Anastasia and
Michelle — were District 5
dairy princesses.”
They bought out her par-
ents’ ownership of the farm
in 2005, and today the busi-
ness is family-operated. The
herd consists of 500 Hol-
steins. The dairy is Stuyt
Dairy and the cheese plant,
adjacent to the farm, goes
by Stuyt Dairy Farmstead
Cheese Co. LLC.
The dairy crafts farm-
stead cheese in small batch-
es. Anastasia works full-time
in the cheese plant as a chee-
semaker. Her father, Rick
taught her the cheesemaking
process from start to finish.
Michelle is working at
California State Universi-
ty-Monterey Bay and will
come home the end of the
year in a marketing, techni-
cal and distribution role.
Son Nicholas is an assis-
tant agriculture instructor at
Modesto Junior College and
helps out on the farm.
“We made our first batch
of cheese in September 2015
and sold it in late December
of that year,” Ansally said.
The cheese is a raw milk
farmstead Gouda sold with
several different flavors:
smoked, cumin, garlic herb,
onion parsley, crushed red
pepper, jalapeno and chipo-
tle.
“We age it over 60 days
and up to 18 months,” she
said.
The cheese is sold
through local stores in the
area, where it retails for $11
to $12 a pound.
The company is expand-
ing, but Ansally acknowl-
edges the California dairy
industry faces major chal-
lenges.
“The two main factors
are low milk prices and the
pricing system,” she said.
“Also, California is no lon-
ger an ag-friendly state with
all the rules and regulations:
water and air board fees
along with all the paper-
work.”
She also said that the
state has “other small, hid-
den fees, that you could
call taxes, because they will
never go away. These fac-
tors, plus the fact that the
state has lost many dairies,
make it a challenge to dairy
in California.”
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