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Organic Dairy Farms

Tresch Family Farms

With more than 2,500 acres and 750 Holstein, Jersey, and Jersey-Holstein cross breed milking cows, the Tresch Family Farms, located in beautiful Sonoma County, is Straus Family Creamery’s largest milk supplier. Joe and Kathy Tresch own the farm, working alongside their three adult children Joey, Lindsay, and Lydia. Joe and Kathy are deeply connected with their land. In 1995, they started the conversion to organic and in 1996, their cows became the second certified organic herd in California.

The Tresch family has been in the California dairy business since Joe’s family emigrated from Switzerland to California in the 1870s. The family’s journey led them to their current location in Petaluma, where Joe’s grandmother, Olympia Nonella Tresch, arrived as a 15-year-old with her family in 1905. They also brought two Holsteins, tied to the back of a springboard wagon. After Joe’s father passed away, he purchased the 320 acres from his stepmother in 1988 and leased an adjacent 1,189 acres.

The leased acreage brought Joe and the Straus family together when, in 1988, the City of Santa Rosa attempted to acquire the leased land to create a sewage reservoir. Joe and Kathy fought this plan and found allies in the Straus family, active members of the Friends of Estero organization, which tried to prevent the creation of the reservoir. After six years, they succeeded in saving the valley, and in 1996, the Tresches won the Sierra Club’s Environmentalists of the Year Award.

Joe had always been committed to a pasture-based and herbicide-free operation and followed numerous organic farm practices. When the Creamery needed more milk and the Tresches wanted to transition to organic, the collaboration was a natural one. The values that began with their great grandmother and nurtured by their parents are alive and thriving in the current generation of the Tresch family.

In addition to the dairy, Kathy Tresch, alongside her daughters, runs Olympia’s Apple Orchard on one of the two Tresch farms. The orchard grows more than 50 varietals of apples that are sold at farmers’ markets and local roadside fruit stands.

Tresch Family Farms Facts

2 Dairy Farms
Deer Valley East & Deer Valley West
2,500 acres
of certified organic land

Increasing Farmland's Carbon Sequestration

The Tresch Family partnered with Sonoma Resource Conservation (RCD) and Carbon Cycle Institute to finalize their Carbon Farm Plan in 2023. They are using the Carbon Farm Plan to guide them in implementing even more regenerative practices on their farms. In 2020 the Tresch’s partnered with Zero Foodprint’s Restore California Program to help prove the effectiveness of this program’s innovative grant to help restore our climate. The compost used for this project was applied to 25 acres and will help sequester up to 100 tons of carbon annually (equivalent to not burning over 110,000 gallons of gas each year). This project is just one of many regenerative organic practices implemented by the Tresch Family highlighted by an incredible riparian corridor vegetative restoration project in the 1990’s and planting over 10,000 trees on their land over the past 4 decades.

The $25,000 grant for the Restore California pilot project was generated by diners at Mission Chinese Food SF and Handline (Sonoma). Recology Organics provided the organic compost made from food scraps and green waste from SF Bay Area restaurants.

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