Delco for the dairy and a Kohler plant for the house. The former ranch butter 

 house was used to cool and store the milk. 146 



The Greers occupied the ranch until December of 1934, when Charles 

 Dolcini and Fred LaFranchi took the lease; LaFranchi eventually left the 

 partnership. Dolcini upgraded the ranch to produce and ship Grade A milk, 

 building a large sanitary barn in 1935 next to the old milking barn. The old 

 dairy house, in its heyday a four-room dairy equipped with a steam turbine 

 separator, was torn down, as were the hog pens. The Dolcini family left the 

 ranch in late 1941; V. J. Bloom then entered a lease with Sayles Turney, one of 

 the owners of Roberts Dairy in San Rafael. On the first night of the hired 

 ranch manager's occupation, and only days before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, 

 the large old Bloom house burned to the ground, reportedly taking with it many 

 treasures of Olema Valley history that had been left in the house. Although 

 the fire was supposedly due to a faulty flue in the house, Bloom reportedly 

 evicted the tenant and canceled the contract with Turney; the tenant, named 

 Shotwell, then sued Bloom over loss of his possessions and won a settlement. 14 



Bloom found reliable tenants in Armin and Frank Truttman, brothers 

 who moved to the ranch in 1943 in partnership with their father, Joseph 

 Truttman, and San Joaquin Valley dairyman Manuel Silva. At the time Silva 

 operated about nine dairies in the vicinity of Dos Palos, and chose one of his 

 foremen, Armin Truttman, to manage a Bay Area dairy to satisfy the wartime 

 demand. Silva and the Truttmans bought the business at the Bloom Ranch, 

 although Silva and the elder Truttman sold their interests in the early 1950s to 

 the Truttman sons. V. J. Bloom limited the number of cows on the pasture to 

 120, but within a few years gained approval of the Truttman's management and 

 allowed an increase to about 160 cows. 14 ' 



Frank Truttman soon married one of V. J. Bloom's nieces and moved off 

 the ranch. Armin Truttman and his wife Helen raised a family at the ranch, 

 occupying either of two houses built at the ranch to replace the old Bloom 

 house. The larger of the houses was incomplete when the Truttmans came in 



146 Interviews with Boyd Stewart and Henrietta Greer. 



147 West Marin Star. December 8, 1934; interviews with Armin and Frank Truttman, Boyd 

 Stewart and Don Mclsaac; dated photographic evidence on the construction of the Grade A barn 

 was taken by Farrington Jones in the 1930s, courtesy of Roy Farrington Jones. 



U8 Information on the Truttman era, 1943-1990, from interviews with Armin and Frank 

 Truttman, Louis Bloom and Don Mclsaac. 



251 



