Cypress Grove ends own goat dairy, refocuses on cheesemaking in Humboldt County
Cypress Grove is ending its McKinleyville goat dairy, a move that could ripple through local jobs, farms and Humboldt’s specialty-food identity.
Cypress Grove is pulling back from its own goat dairy in McKinleyville, a shift that reaches beyond one company and into Humboldt County’s small but visible agricultural economy. The change affects a Dow’s Prairie operation that helped anchor local jobs, goat suppliers and the county’s reputation for high-end dairy production.
The company said it reached the decision after a strategic review of the long-term sustainability of commercial goat dairying in Humboldt County. Cypress Grove stressed that it is not leaving cheesemaking, but narrowing its focus to what it has done for more than four decades: making goat cheese, developing products and protecting the brand identity that made it one of the county’s best-known specialty food companies.
Cypress Grove opened the McKinleyville-area dairy in 2011, after construction began in 2010, to secure a reliable milk supply at a time when local sourcing was difficult. Local coverage at the time said the dairy would create 12 living-wage, fully-benefited jobs between the McKinleyville and Arcata facilities. The company’s own history traces its roots to 1983, when it was founded, before an earlier period of buying milk from other farmers and then returning to company-owned milk production.
The operation grew into a major herd presence on Dow’s Prairie, just north of Arcata. Cypress Grove says the dairy expanded from about 150 kids to more than 1,500 animals and earned 100% scores from both the American Humane Association and Certified Humane. The company also described the site as a model dairy, a sign of how closely the operation became tied to Humboldt’s agricultural image.
Its exit from dairy farming underscores how difficult goat milk production has been to sustain here. University of California Cooperative Extension materials said that in 2007 there were five commercial milk producers in Humboldt County milking about 1,800 goats. A SARE project summary said labor, feed and fuel costs continue to worsen profitability, while Humboldt County’s 45 inches of winter rain create added management problems, including foot rot, housing needs and kid care. UC ANR materials also note that Deborah Giraud helped facilitate the Humboldt/Del Norte Goat Milk Producers Association and started the first dairy goat auction at the county fair, evidence of how much coordination the sector has required just to hold together.
For McKinleyville and Arcata, the consequences go beyond one corporate restructuring. Cypress Grove’s dairy was part of a broader local network of workers, transport, feed, animal care and specialty food production that helped define Humboldt as more than a logging county or a college town. As Cypress Grove shifts back to cheesemaking alone, one more piece of the county’s agricultural landscape is being redefined.
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