Making Goat Cheese

Making Goat Cheese

Our fresh chèvre (from the French word for goat) is made in small batches once a week at the cheese facilities of our neighbors at Turkey Hill Farm.  Our milk is pasteurized in the late afternoon and once the milk has cooled, rennet and culture are stirred into the milk and left to do their magic overnight. Before the sun rises the next morning, the cheese maker marches over to the hill to Turkey Hill Farm to scoop out the curd that has formed overnight and hang it in butter muslin to drain over the course of the day. By late afternoon, the whey has dripped out and the chèvre is ready. We spend the afternoon whipping up our wonderful variety of fresh goat cheeses that are then packaged and delivered to stores the next day.

	It all starts will our lovely ladies who dutifully spend their days grazing on pasture. We rotate the goats to fresh pasture every 5 hours. Though labor intensive, this practice keeps the land and the goats healthy.
	We milk our 65 goats early in the morning and late in the afternoon. Hours ago, energy was harvested from the sun by the soil and into grass and has now been turned into fresh milk.
	The fresh milk is then chilled in bulk tanks to be used almost immediately to make either caramel or cheese.
	The cheese is hung at 5:30 in the morning and spends all day releasing whey that will later be fed to the pigs.
	In the afternoon, the cheese is salted, flavored and packaged to be delivered the next day to Vermont stores.
	Our cheese is great served at parties and special occasions. Here it is served on a cheese plate at a wedding.