Vella Cheese Company announced last week on social media that they are closing after 94 years in business. As our daughter said, “That’s awful.” And I think lots of people will feel that way.
Most famous for their Dry Jack, the family posted “Our business has never fully recovered from the challenges of COVID, and the financial demands of operating a small, artisanal company in today’s fast-paced food industry have become more than we can sustain.”
So sad, as Sonoma loses a part of our culture, in all senses of that word. Many of us have relied on “Vella’s,” as locals refer to the cheese company, whether we purchased their cheeses on Second Street East, at grocery stores, or even in cheese shops elsewhere. With the loss of Vella’s and, previously, Sonoma Cheese Factory, Sonoma is now left with no truly commercial cheese producers, once the pride of our cattle ranchers and wider community. I so well remember Ig Vella insisting to me that they only used Mulas Dairy’s milk, although I eventually met truck drivers bringing in milk from more northern reaches.
Many of us have memories of Ig (pictured) and Sally Vella, parents of both Chickie, who has now been running Vella Cheese Company for years, and Ditty who previously owned The Cheesemaker’s Daughter cheese shop on East Napa Street.
I spoke with Ig many times as he arrived at the cheese factory about the time I came by on my daily walks along the Bike Path. He would wave me over as he got out of his car, we would chat and, on his suggestion, cross ourselves and pray to the white cross on Schocken Hill.
While he had a sometimes rough side, demonstrated as Sonoma’s First District County Supervisor, and as head of the Sonoma County Fair, every time my husband, Gerald Hill, needed one of his three hip replacements or other surgeries, Ig would tell me to “wait right here” during my walk so he could go into his office and bring me a bottle of healing water from Our Lady of Lourdes fountain in France.
And then there was Ig Vella’s funeral at St. Francis Solano church. Suddenly there was a loud crackling noise, and it was everyone opening the paper stuck into their programs. The paper was actually a cheesemaker’s hat like the one Ig used to wear. So we all put them on.
And Sally Vella, mother of both Chickie and Ditty, devoted her “work life” to managing St. Francis Solano School’s Church Mouse shops, and was also an ever-giving community volunteer.
Their historic stone building on Second Street East was built for a brewery in 1904. In 1931, Tom Vella, his wife Zolita Clerici Vella, and Celso Viviani turned it into a cheese factory. After World War II, Tom Vella moved cheese making to the Sonoma Mission Creamery building where Burgers & Vine is now, at the southeast corner of First Street East and East Spain Street. Eventually, the Viviani and Vella families split, and the Vivianis created the Sonoma Cheese Factory, which has not made cheese in years and is no longer owned by the Viviani family.
As Ditty Vella said to me, and surely to many other customers as she prepared to close her international cheese shop, “If everyone who came in to say how much they would miss our cheeses from all over the world actually came in to buy cheese regularly, we wouldn’t have to close.”
Loads of people lined up around the building to purchase their last cheeses from dear Vella’s. Chickie’s children, Miranda and Gabriel (Gabe), have been helping both with managing the cheese production and with this closing sale.
Vella’s, as we know it, has stopped making cheese and will continue to sell what they have already made at 315 Second Street East, Sonoma. (707) 938-3232.
But wait — Another Sonoma food family is hoping to rescue Vella’s cheese factory. Maybe it isn’t over yet. Stay tuned.
Helping Our Friends from Nepal
“Representing our substantial and generous Sherpa community, Nima Sherpa of Sonoma Grille called from the Sonoma Sherpas’ emergency meeting Monday morning to outline how we can all help ameliorate the disastrous results of flooding through parts of their native Nepal and Tibet.
Planning a Sherpa Chef Potluck, Sonoma residents will be welcomed to support these efforts to help locally in Nepal as we did following the Kathmandu earthquake.
All funds raised will go through the official Nepali President’s Emergency Fund, where our local Sherpa leaders have contacts and can be sure the money goes where it will be needed.
Watch this space for updates on location and date of this fundraiser, as well as how else we can help.”
Mystery Meat from Mystery Countries
While medical doctors seem to be concerned about Donald Trump’s 14-pound weight gain, we must wonder if that is all from eating Mickey D’s burgers or the Colonel’s fried chicken.
Just a minute, though.
An FB posting by “We The People” on Heather Cox Richardson’s Substack page suggests that “30,000 pounds of beef” imported by Trump allegedly from Argentina, has been recalled for not having been inspected.
An FDA Class I recall means there is a “reasonable probability that the use or exposure to a violative product will cause serious, adverse health and consequences or death.” But the Class I recall can also be applied when a product enters the U.S. and skips inspection.
Meanwhile, the principal American’s cattlemen’s associations oppose Trump’s import of beef from countries he won’t name, and question how in the world bringing in cheaper beef helps their industry. Rep. Mike Thompson is trying to return the “country of origin” labels.
Allegedly, the beef was sold in Florida and Texas with freeze-by dates of August 15-20. If you have any of it, maybe you should return it or throw it away. And Costco is allegedly refusing to sell this imported beef.
Trump and Dolly – not
Between threats to Canada, Switzerland and the Kennedy Center, Donald Trump claimed last week, the day after she died of cancer, that the late Dolly Parton liked him. Dolly Parton was painstakingly non-partisan, and dedicated her life to what she thought was right. She actually went to church, and lived her Christian religion by helping others in many ways – something the president might consider emulating.
Other than writing 3,000 songs and performing them brilliantly, Dolly did a lot of good deeds quietly. She secretly furnished high school football uniforms to southern Black high schools. Having made $10 million from royalties after Whitney Houston covered her “I Will Always Love You” masterpiece, Dolly spread her wealth around.
She used that money to buy a strip mall in a Nashville Black neighborhood and quietly called it, “The house that Whitney built.” She purchased and distributed 300 million books to children around the world through her Imagination Library, inspired by her father’s inability to read or write. It is said her birth family was so poor, her father paid the doctor who delivered her with a sack of oatmeal or corn meal.
She really did meet her husband, Carl Dean, at Nashville’s Wishy Washy Laundromat. Not having a typewriter, she said she sometimes tapped on her fingernails to tell herself what she was writing and setting the song’s rhythm. And apparently, she wrote both “Joline” and “I will always love you” the same day. And wrote “9 to 5” on the set of the movie. Incredible poet and talent!
Dolly really did live with her parents and 11 siblings in a one-room house in Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains, near Pigeon Forge, a fact described in her song, “Coat of Many Colors.”
She famously rejected the suggestion that she was a “dumb blonde,” saying, “I ain’t dumb and I ain’t blonde.” Dolly was asked in one interview I saw how she managed to negotiate all the recording and business contracts she had, and she said, “I think like a man, and I act like a woman.”
Some of the funniest quotes I remember or found by Dolly Parton were her story about dressing up as herself and entering a Drag Queen Dolly Parton Look Alike Contest. She couldn’t even tell her own story without laughing. And she lost the contest by “not looking enough like Dolly Parton.” Maybe she wore the wrong one of her 350 wigs.
Told she should change her look, she replied, “I ain’t gonna change my look – I’m gonna make a fortune out of it.” And she told filmmaker Ken Burns, “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.” Dolly often referred to her enhanced “boobs” as “my girls,” and said “You can get new boobs, but you can’t get new legs.”
What did Dolly Parton eat to create and keep that sexy figure, standing only 5 feet tall? For breakfast she liked Folgers coffee with cream and scrambled eggs or a bagel and cream cheese. She also liked to make and save egg salad around for all last-minute meal purposes. She liked baked or mashed potatoes all the time, especially lunch and dinner, as well as seafood, and salad with Ranch dressing.
Dolly’s favorite dinner was chicken and dumplings or roast pork with green beans and okra. She also liked Taco Bell and nice restaurants, but commented “If the food’s too pretty, it ain’t too good.” Red wine always helped.
And maybe her best advice of all: “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”
Trump vs. Canada
It appears that Donald Trump needs to hate and attack someone or something all the time. After writing and signing the trade agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico in his first term, and calling it the best agreement ever, he now says it is terrible and demands Canada pay a 50-percent tariff on numerous essential goods, while insulting Prime Minister Mark Carney and claiming, “We don’t need anything Canada has.” That would include lumber, medicines, minerals, wheat, electricity, crude oil and natural gas, all things paper, plastic kitchenware, and household appliances. Canada can shut off loads of electricy to several New England states, and someone posted online last week that Costco was full of customers customers loading up on toilet paper.
Trying to isolate and starve Canada into submission is like playground bullying and it won’t work on Canadians. We have family in Canada and Jerry and I co-taught American Politics & Government and Comparative Politics at two Canadian universities for several years.
Trump claims, “They want to be treated like a state without being a state.” Au contraire; Canada and Canadians do not want to be a state and are resisting Trump’s personal goal of taking over Canada, which is part of the United Kingdom.
As Trump’s international reputation declines, along with that of the United States, Carney’s popularity and Canada’s international respect increase, and several countries are shifting more commercial business to China and India instead of to the United States.
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