Founder (former owner)
Diane St. Clair
- Discipline
- Founder (former owner)
Portrait of Diane St. Clair
i. Biography
Animal Farm in Orwell, Vermont is where Diane St. Clair built a practice around reading cows, weather, and the day-to-day shifts that shape dairy work. That attention turns into artisanal butter and buttermilk, made with patience and exacting care. “It’s all about the cows.” Before Vermont and the routines of the dairy, Columbia University and public health work in New York City gave Diane St. Clair a background in discipline and steadiness. Those habits carry into the farm work: measured process, respect for ingredients, and the basic understanding that quality starts well before a product reaches the table. For Chef Thomas Keller’s restaurants, Diane St. Clair makes artisanal butter for Animal Farm, extending a farm product into restaurant service without losing its source. She also supplies butter to Chef Barbara Lynch’s No. 9 Park restaurant of No. 9 Park, keeping the work tied to Orwell while sending it into another kitchen.
Where They Are Now
At Animal Farm, Diane St. Clair makes artisanal butter and buttermilk through work that depends on consistency, close observation, and familiarity with animals and seasonal change. On a farm, the materials are never abstract; they are tactile, seasonal, and alive.
Career - making artisanal butter for Chef Thomas Keller’s restaurants, Animal Farm, Orwell, Vermont - supplying butter to Chef Barbara Lynch’s No. 9 Park restaurant, No. 9 Park, Boston, Massachusetts - bottling buttermilk, Animal Farm, Orwell, Vermont - worked in public health, New York City, New York City Education: Columbia University
Signature
Diane's signature dishes include Gardener’s Glove, Frost, First Cut, and The Animal Farm Buttermilk Cookbook. The names point to texture, temperature, field, and barn, the naming that lets craft register before explanation does.
In Their Words “I was too busy soaking up my favorite odors of horse sweat, saddle soap and leather, fresh cut hay in the barn and iodine wash on the floor of the dairy milk room.” Diane St. Clair lists the farm by smell: practical, specific, and grounded in work. The line stays close to the materials of the place and the routines that define it. “The themes of my childhood were spending time alone, but not being lonely; a deep and abiding love for being on farms, with their animals and regular rhythms, and enjoying hard work.” Diane St. Clair frames the farm as a place shaped by solitude, rhythm, animals, and labor. The statement is less about sentiment than about the conditions that made the work feel natural: attention, repetition, and comfort with hard work.
FAQ What is Diane St. Clair's current role? Diane St. Clair is Made artisanal butter and buttermilk. Where did Diane St. Clair train or study? Diane St. Clair trained at Columbia University.
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