LYNDEN, Wash. — Larry and Debbie Stap and their family own and operate a unique small dairy in northwestern Washington.

“I was born and raised on this farm, which was established by my great-grandfather in 1910,” Larry said.

“In 2006, our daughter and son-in-law asked us if they could join the dairy, as the fifth generation, and we were delighted,” Larry said.

Rather than getting bigger and milking more cows, they decided to add value to their milk, eliminate the middleman and stay small by opening a creamery.

“So now our daughter and son-in-law are full partners with me and my wife,” Larry said.

“We started bottling our own milk in 2007. Up until then we were conventional dairy farmers, shipping our milk to a co-op,” he said.

The farm now has 11 full-time employees. Two are involved with the dairy, milking 240 cows. The rest are involved in processing the milk and distribution.

Even the name of the farm is unique.

“My grandfather named the farm Twin Brook. The road we live on is called Double Ditch Road; it has a year-round stream that flows along both sides of our road,” Larry said.

Salmon spawn every fall in this double stream, and steelhead spawn in the spring.

“My grandfather didn’t want to call it the Double Ditch Farm,” Larry said. “He also sold flowers as well as milk, and had a nursery, so he named it Twin Brook Farm and Nursery. When we started bottling milk, we changed it to Twin Brook Creamery.”

A lot of history surrounds the farm.

“My mom is still here, at age 91, and lives next to us. My dad passed away two years ago at the age of 91,” Larry said.

Dairy farms today are challenged by public perceptions.

“Some folks think farmers abuse and exploit the land and animals,” he said. “We get a lot of bad press, but if any of the prior generations actually did those bad things, I wouldn’t be on the land or have a farm today. My family took good care of it; I learned stewardship from them.”

When they started bottling their milk, they came up with a mission statement: “We are a family owned and operated dairy that exists to glorify God through the stewardship of the land and the soil that He has entrusted to our care, in the best way possible.”

“It is a statement we use when talking to people, telling them that this is the motive behind what we do,” Larry said. “Do we always do it perfectly? No. Does anyone? No. We just try to do it better than we did before.”

One area many dairies focus on is water conservation. In the past 50 years, dairies have become much more efficient, including with water use.

“The carbon footprint and the amount of water it takes to produce a gallon of milk has drastically dropped, and this is the message we need to get across to people,” Larry said.

Many people focus instead on how many gallons of water a cow drinks. “The simple economics is that you have to look at the big picture.”

A cow needs a certain amount of intake — feed, water — just to live and maintain herself, he said.

“Whether she gives you one gallon or 10 gallons, or 20 gallons of milk, that basic maintenance requirement stays the same,” he said. “It only takes a little extra intake of water or feed to get the extra milk.”

The cows also provide fertilizer to grow their feed.

“Waste is not something any of us want,” Larry explained. “A cow also helps sustain herself by putting back on the land the best fertilizer to grow the feed she needs.”

Every year the Staps have an open house. About 500 people attend it to learn about the dairy and creamery.

“I try to explain how animal agriculture is the perfect cycle for taking care of the land,” he said. “The animal produces food for us — meat or milk. In order to produce this, it needs high quality feed.”

The soil supplement of choice for any farm is manure, he added.

“Nature has been perfecting this cycle forever and we get the benefit,” he said.

“We do many little things to make it work. Milk from a cow is about 95 degrees, but the ideal temperature to store milk is 35 to 38 degrees so we need to chill it quickly,” he said.

One of the quickest ways to do that is with a heat exchanger using stainless steel plates. Every other plate has milk or water.

“You put cold water in, put warm milk in, and out the other end comes warm water and cool milk,” he said. “We let the cows drink that water; they much prefer drinking warm water than cold water.”

A cow’s rumen is body temperature, and warm water keeps that rumen working and flowing nicely without shocking it with cold water, he said.

“That’s just a tiny example of how we use our water more efficiently,” Larry said.

“We also work hard at increasing the organic matter in the soil,” he said. “The higher the organic load, the more moisture it can retain, like a big sponge.”

“Our soil here is mainly sandy loam, but we also have some ‘peat ground’ that holds more moisture,” he said. “Last summer we had about eight weeks without rain, and the forage growing on the peat ground never turned brown. It had enough stored water to keep things green.”

When you add more organic matter, soils do better and require less irrigation, he said. “All these little things add up to conserving water and making you more efficient and better stewards of the land.”

One negative development for the farm is urban encroachment.

“Our dairy is half a mile from the Canadian border, in the northwest part of Washington. Right across the border are millions of people, increasing numbers of homes, pavement, etc. and big gravel mines,” he said. “Over the years, the stream that flows in front of our place — that originates in Canada — has a little less flow each summer.”

With all of those hard surfaces, water runs off and doesn’t sink in, so there’s less groundwater to keep feeding the stream, he said.

“We also have water rights issues,” Larry said. “When the river flow gets a little low, the regulatory agencies think everyone has to stop irrigating, so now there are court battles coming our way.”

The Washington State Department of Ecology is going to sue every water right holder in Whatcom County this year, he said.

“The attack on our food supply nationwide just doesn’t quit,” he said. “People don’t realize they are hurting our future food supply by putting farmers out of business.

“If we have to import most of our food, it’s like importing most of our oil. It can be shut off at any time,” he said. “I just hope that day never comes. It is imperative we keep our own farmers in business and rely on our own food production.”