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CapitalPress.com
Friday, June 3, 2022
Onion Peak Dairy: A steep learning curve
By GAIL OBERST
For the Capital Press
NEHALEM, Ore. — Those
quick to criticize millennials hav-
en’t met Laura Grauwen, 33, and
Blake Panos, 31.
The parents of a new baby boy,
George, took over operations at
Onion Peak Dairy, after her father,
Mike Grauwen, suff ered a trau-
matic brain aneurism in 2019.
Although both were raised in
this small farming community
along the Nehalem River, they’d
each chosen other careers — Laura
was a bartender and Blake was in
construction.
When disaster struck, their rela-
tionship was so new, Blake said
he fi rst met Laura’s family when
they visited Mike in the hospital’s
Intensive Care Unit.
Their romance quickly turned
serious. Laura left her job to help
on the dairy, and Blake followed.
Laura had been raised on the farm
with her brother and sisters.
“It would have been really sad
to not have this land be the epicen-
ter of our family anymore,” Laura
said. In hopes to maintaining the
dairy, she off ered to manage it with
Blake’s help.
Initially, her father was reluc-
tant to turn over operations to his
eager proteges. Mike wanted out.
To that end, he sold all but 50 of
his 200-plus milking herd.
In the meantime, Blake and
Laura set out to prove themselves
as farmers, purchasing beef cat-
tle and working with the cows left
from the herd.
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Gail Oberst/For the Capital Press
Blake Panos, holding baby George, and Laura Grauwen of Onion Peak Dairy in Oregon’s Nehalem
Valley.
Within a year, they sold the beef
cattle and focused on expanding
the milking herd and “proving up”
their agreement with the Organic
Valley cooperative.
Today, they milk more than 100
cows on 200 acres leased from
Mike, aiming to one day own it
themselves.
There have been more than
a few bumps in the road. A few
months after Blake moved to the
farm to help Laura, she fell off a
horse and injured her leg. Within
a year, she was pregnant, although
Blake brags that she was milking
the cows into her ninth month.
The pandemic has delayed their
wedding until this year.
But unexpectedly, COVID has
helped, rather than hindered, the
couple’s success. As their for-
mer employers closed shop, they
focused their eff orts on the dairy,
Blake said. “It (COVID) pushed
me. You don’t have a choice.”
With little dairy experience,
Blake quit his construction job
and worked full-time with Laura.
He said he had to go “from zero to
100, real fast.”
The couple has had plenty of
help from friends, neighboring
dairies and family. Blake’s par-
ents live in Nehalem. His grand-
father, who retired as a millwright
at the Tillamook cheese factory, is
the couple’s go-to welder and fi x-it
man.
The couple said they had a head
start, taking over a modern milking
parlor and a previously successful
dairy operation.
“It was a steep learning curve,”
said Blake. “But we’re getting it
fi gured out.”
Little “Georgie,” born in Jan-
uary, is the namesake of Lau-
ra’s dad, Mike George Grauwen,
who was so named for his father,
George Grauwen.
He in turn was one of a long line
of Georges in the family beginning
with Laura’s great-great grandpa,
George Schuppen, who hand-
milked the family’s fi rst 50 cows
on a dairy in Colorado.
The fi rst George’s grandson,
also named George, established a
dairy in Eatonville, Wash. His son,
THANK YOU
to the dairy producers that work hard every day to make
the foods that help feed the world.
CALDWELL, ID
JEROME, ID
SUNNYSIDE, WA
Helping You Raise Healthy Animals
TM
Mike, grew up on the dairy, and as
soon as he was old enough, took a
dairy job in Tillamook.
“One day, he drove by this farm
and thought it was a dream,” Laura
said. Eventually, Mike rented the
farm, and then bought it. Laura
was 6 when she and her three sib-
lings moved to Onion Peak with
the rest of the family.
“Coach Mike” has now recov-
ered but remains retired. Long
before his aneurism, Mike and
Melinda, Laura’s mother, were
part of Organic Valley.
The Grauwen dairy imitates —
as do many Oregon organic dair-
ies — New Zealand strip-grazing
practices and genetics. The herd is
a “melting pot” of New Zealand
Jerseys, Friesian Holsteins and
others. The cows are grass-fed in
18 rotating pastures carefully man-
aged with fertilizer produced by
the cows, scraped from the barns,
processed in tanks and returned to
the soil.
The herd is milked every 16
hours, twice one day, and at noon
the next.
The pastures are irrigated from
a slough during the summer. Quot-
ing Mike, Blake said: “We’re
really just grass farmers.”
Despite the hard work, the
young couple have plans to remain.
They hope to move into the farm-
house as soon as Laura’s parents
build their own place.
Cuddling
Georgie,
Laura
refl ected on his future.
“I loved my childhood and I
wanted to give him the same,” she
said.