sale of this off-season "pickled butter," as the prices fluctuated day by day in the 

 fall and winter. 97 



The majority of the local butter, however, was shipped within days to 

 market. The 1880 writer waxed about the quality of the local butter, 

 enchanted by what he had witnessed at a Point Reyes dairy: 



It is thus that this elegant golden delicacy is prepared 

 for our table, and among all the choice products of the 

 glorious State of California none stands out in bolder 

 relief, nor strikes the visitor to our coast more 

 forcibly, none affords more real pleasure to the 

 consumer than the wonderfully excellent butter which 

 finds its way to the city markets from Marin county. 

 In quality, color and sweetness it is not excelled by 

 the famous butter producing sections of Goshen in 

 New York, or the Western Reserve of Ohio. Nor is it 

 equaled in any other part of the United States. What 

 a field for contemplative thought: The verdant fields 

 of grass, toyed with by the winds, bathed in a flood of 

 sunshine and shrouded in folds of lacelike and fleecy 

 mists fresh from the ocean with herds of kine feeding 

 upon them; driven at eventime into the corral and, 

 while thoughtfully ruminating, yielding the gallons 

 and gallons of rich, pure, sweet milk; again we see it 

 in great cans of yellow cream, fit for the use of a king; 

 and then the golden butter, and such a delicious 

 butter; Ready for the market and for the table of the 

 epicure. The grass growing in the fields on Monday is 

 the butter on the city tables the following Sunday! 98 



e. Marketing 



California dairies made 6 million pounds of butter in 1869, and the 

 figures continued to grow during the next decades. Marin County was the 

 highest producer at 1.5 million pounds, with the Shatters' Point Reyes dairies 

 contributing the lion's share; the Olema Valley contributed to a lesser extent, 



97 Munro-Fraser, Marin County, p. 299; Sneath, "Dairying in California," p. 390; San Francisco 

 Chronicle. October 30, 1886. 



98 Munro-Fraser, Marin County, p. 300. 



58 



