Made There

(upbeat music) (gentle music) (cheerful guitar music) - This is Steensma Dairy.

These are our cows.

(cow moos) We are milking about 200 cows here.

This is where the magic happens.

(chimes ringing) (cow moos) (gentle guitar music) - I'm Kate Steensma.

I'm a fourth generation dairy farmer at Steensma Dairy and Creamery here in Lynden, Washington.

Our family has been farming right here on this land since 1946.

I really love farming in this part of the world, because it's a really lovely balance of temperate climate.

Something that sets us apart today in the dairy industry is that we are one of the few farms who still graze our cows.

We can grow a lot of good grass here, and from that, produce a lot of great milk with our cows.

(cheerful guitar music) - We view ourselves as grass farmers, and we just use the cows to harvest our crop.

We want the cows to have a fresh piece of grass every day, so we are on about a two-week rotation here.

They go out on that field for one day, and then for 13 days, the grass has a chance to recover.

Because grass is a solar collector, we want as much leaf capacity out there collecting those solar rays, turning that carbon dioxide and sunshine into carbohydrates that the cows can consume, and make wonderful milk for us.

(cow moos) (gentle guitar music) - I like working with animals more than I like working with people.

They're pretty much always happy to see you every single day.

They have their bad days too, just like we do, but there's a definitely a connection there with animals that's special.

- A few years ago, I started the Creamery Project, and we specialize in Icelandic style yogurt.

(upbeat music) - The cultures we use in our skyr yogurt create sort of a tangy buttermilk sort of taste, and especially in our plain flavor, and that's really my favorite part about it is like that rich tangy flavor that it has, which again, just makes it so much more unique from other yogurts.

Traditional yogurt isn't as thick as Icelandic style yogurt.

The Icelandic style, because it has the cheese cultures added to it and being strained through cheese cloth, it's a lot thicker, and it also results in a more protein-dense, nutrient-dense product, because we're using all the solids and separating out the whey.

- Being able to make healthy, nutritious food locally and meet the people who are actually buying it, we know our customers.

We meet them at the farmer's market, and I love having that direct relationship, and we even take feedback.

I feel really connected to the community, being able to feed our community.

(upbeat music) (gentle lullaby music) - I've seen so many of my fellow dairymen who don't have a next generation, and they get to my age, and their entire life's work is sold off on the auction block in a matter of a couple of hours.

To see my family get involved, it just gives me hope.

It doesn't give me a big paycheck after the auction, but it gives me hope for the future.

(cheerful guitar music) - Here at Steensma Creamery, we make Icelandic style yogurt.

Our three most popular flavors are plain, maple, and raspberry.

If you're like me and you wanna minimize food waste, you can use this tip to get every last drop out of your skyr yogurt jar.

When you have a jar just like this that's just about empty, and you wanna get the last bit out, you can pour in a little bit of milk, and then you'll shake up the jar, which can take shorter or longer, depending on how much yogurt you have left in there.

But you'll wanna shake it really well until you get all the sides clean.

And what you get as a result is that this can be a great substitute for buttermilk in really any recipe.

I like to use it in pizza dough or biscuits.

It also works really great as a base for smoothies, especially our raspberry one.

So once you have it shaken up really well, you can use that in any recipe, again, as a great substitute for buttermilk, or my family's favorite, putting it on cereal, making for a great protein-rich breakfast.

(cheerful bluegrass music) - [Announcer] "Made There" was made possible in part with the support of Visit Bellingham Whatcom County.