In the Record Courier: Carson Valley no longer the land of milk.
My husband, who gives no references, says he remembers there being about 26 dairies in Carson Valley during the last half of the 1900s. Said it was a good way to sell grass, a commodity regularly grown here. Feed cows grass. Milk from cows is drunk by families and/or fed to the hogs; everybody had a few hogs then. Or salt the milk as butter and ship it distances to populations like San Francisco’s.
But over time fewer families around here raised hogs, cows, sheep, chickens or grew their own fruits or preserved produce from their large family gardens. People moved to town, found other opportunities. Farmers and ranchers specialized.
