Raw Milk and Live Cookies

Raw Milk 
Dungeness Valley Creamery, $1.50/pint

Live Chocolate-Walnut Cookie
The Cookie Jar, $3

Whatever the dairy equivalent of "bread basket" might be, the Sequim-Dungeness Valley would have earned the title for much of the 20th century.  The arrival of the first cows in 1860 inaugurated a thriving industry; eventually the area boasted hundreds of dairy farms and thousands of cows, most of them Guernseys and Jerseys producing buttery high-fat milk.  

Over the last fifty years, though, Sequim-area dairying has declined.  The new norm emphasizes larger farms, industrialized techniques, lower-fat milk, and higher-yielding cows (typically Holsteins). 

One of two dairies remaining in the Valley today, the Dungeness Valley Creamery is extremely choosy about which trends it follows and which it bucks.  Located on the bluff above the Dungeness Spit, the creamery facility was built in 1992 by a family who have been in the dairy business since the 1970s.  The farm's 38 acres are home to 60 vintage Jersey cows, each with her own name and personality.  Their milk is sold unpasteurized and unhomogenized, so that the cream rises to the top, and since 2006 Dungeness Valley Creamery milk has also been certified raw.  

The milk is cold and frothy with the sweet-clean aftertaste of mown grass.  It begs to be put to work washing something down, and the Creamery has the perfect partner on hand:  Live Cookies.  Available in a number of flavors, these substantial treats feature flours ground at the last minute and stored cold in order to maintain their nutrients.  

The Creamery's stock of Live Cookies is limited to what was left over after Live Bread Shoppe owner/baker Sherry Fry closed her Sequim-based business in 2012.  Fry's new nutritional counseling business in Puyallup will eventually offer Live Cookies, along with a cookbook, Nutrition From the Cookie Jar. 

(If you're navigating using Sequim's free tourist map, note that the Creamery's location is marked incorrectly.)

Dungeness Valley Creamery
1915 Towne Rd
Sequim W360/683-0716