The Once-a-Year Tomales Cheese Panel Shares Its Hour With a Monthly Farm Tour
October 29, 2026
October 29, 2026
In 1862, Marin County churned a quarter of California's butter, and Tomales was one of the ports that shipped it, along with cheese, to San Francisco. In 2013, a goat-and-sheep dairy on the edge of town began making farmstead cheese. This Sunday, November 1, both of those dates are on the town's calendar, at the same hour.
The Tomales Regional History Center holds its annual open house from 1 to 4 p.m., with a cheesemaking panel at 2. Toluma Farms runs its public tour from 1 to 3 p.m. One of these events comes around once a year. The other comes around on the first Sunday of every month.
| Time | What | Where | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. | Annual Open House and exhibit opening | Tomales Regional History Center, 26701 Highway 1 | Free |
| 2:00 p.m. | Panel: "A Wedge of Cheese, a Sense of Place, a Chapter in History" | Same | Free |
| 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. | Guided public tour: milking parlor, pasture hike, creamery, tasting | Toluma Farms, Tomales | Ticketed through Toluma's booking page |
It's also the day daylight saving time ends, as the Point Reyes Light calendar points out. That gives you an extra hour in the morning, and the light goes earlier than it did a week before. If you plan to linger on Highway 1 after the open house, it will be close to dusk by the time you're done.
Telling Stories of Mexican California: Real Life & Myth Making is a traveling exhibition from the California Historical Society, circulated through Exhibit Envoy. It sets the actual history of California's Mexican era, 1822 to 1846, against the romanticized "Spanish Fantasy Past" that early boosters promoted. The Center added its own companion panels on Coast Miwok heritage, the Mexican land-grant ranchos and the families who shaped the Tomales Bay region.
Those ranchos are where the dairy story starts. UC Agriculture and Natural Resources' history of Marin agriculture describes Californio ranchers in the 1820s running thousands of longhorn cattle for hides and tallow, with Mexican and Miwok vaqueros rounding them up each year. After the San Rafael mission closed in 1834, the land and herds were divided into large ranchos. Dairying came after the Gold Rush. Before refrigeration, all the milk was churned into butter, and some families made their own cheese or hired a cheesemaker who traveled from ranch to ranch.
Roads were horse trails and wagon tracks, so the water did the hauling. UC ANR names Tomales and Bolinas as the coastal shipping ports, with tons of cheese, butter, potatoes, grain and clams going out from warehouses to San Francisco. Tomales, Olema and Nicasio served as trading centers for the dairy ranches around them. When the North Pacific Coast Railroad was finished in 1870, the towns along the line grew and the towns it bypassed, in UC ANR's words, "froze in time."
That's the background for the 2 p.m. panel. The cheese made around Tomales today continues a trade that ran through this town before the railroad came.
The panel's title, "A Wedge of Cheese, a Sense of Place, a Chapter in History," is a fair description of who will be speaking. The moderator is Carin Jacobs, a writer and curator who founded Place Matters and previously directed the Petaluma Arts Center and Sonoma State University's Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, according to Petaluma News. The cheese on the panel all comes from the same few years:
Those dates fall close together. Valley Ford began making cheese in 2008, the Cheese Trail started in 2010, the same year Joe Moreda became Valley Ford's head cheesemaker, and Tomales Farmstead Creamery followed in 2013. The cheese the panel represents took shape inside about five years, in country where butter and cheese were shipping out of Tomales by the 1860s.
Nick Campbell's creamery is also the one hosting Sunday's tour. Toluma Farms is a 160-acre goat-and-sheep dairy in Tomales owned by Tamara Hicks and David Jablons. They began caring for the land in 2003 and opened it as a dairy in 2007. The farm's site currently lists 80 sheep and 200 goats. In 2010, the Marin Agricultural Land Trust bought an agricultural conservation easement on all 160 acres. The creamery started making farmstead goat and sheep cheeses in 2013 and also buys Jersey cow milk locally. The current list is Kenne, Atika, Teleeka, Liwa, Koto'la and Bossy.
According to Toluma's tour page, the public tour takes you through the milking parlor, up to the pastures for an explanation of the farm's organic pasture management, past the animals, into the creamery for a look at how the cheeses are made, and finishes with a tasting. Pets aren't allowed on the property. The tour runs on the first Sunday of every month, 1 to 3 p.m.
Since the tour comes back monthly, the open house is the one to plan around. The panel happens once, and the History Center is also holding its Board election at the open house. Some ways to arrange the day:
If you have a group that can't make a first Sunday, Toluma offers private tours any day of the week at 11 a.m. or 1 p.m. They're $300 for up to six people and $50 for each additional guest, and they include a cheeseboard of six or more of the farm's cheeses.
Five weeks after the open house, December's tour date lands the day after a holiday tradition at Tomales Town Hall. The Hall's annual "Cheer!" holiday potluck is Saturday, December 5, at 5 p.m. It's free, and the Trustees host the bar. The next afternoon is Toluma's December first-Sunday tour, so a weekend with houseguests could fit in both.
The Hall's schedule between now and then, as posted:
Toluma's tour will keep its first-Sunday schedule. The panel bringing two local creameries and the Cheese Trail's founder together at 26701 Highway 1 happens only this Sunday at 2 p.m.
If the panel gets you thinking about ranchland under an easement, or a West Marin property with a working history of its own, B.G. Bates would be glad to walk that ground with you. Begin your West Marin story. Connect with B.G. Bates.
B.G. is dedicated to her community and continues to be a known resource with a unique and knowledgeable perspective on all aspects of West Marin.
