Judy Schad is in her third vocation—teacher, mother, and now, cheese maker. Growing up in the summers on her grandparent’s southern Indiana farm, she learned to cook and appreciate fresh, wonderful food, simply but lovingly prepared. After marrying her husband Larry, a southern Indiana attorney, she taught English for several years before having three children and going back to school to work on a PhD in Renaissance Literature. At University of Louisville she was both fiction and general editor of the Louisville Review. In 1977 the family moved to a hill farm just north of Louisville. Judy is now cheesemaker/co-owner of Capriole Farms in southern Indiana and has been making farmstead cheeses and managing her herd of 500 goats for over 25 years. She’s been both a speaker and cheese judge at several international conferences and events in Italy and France, served as board member, conference chair, and vice-president of the American Cheese Society, board member of the American Dairy Goat Association, member of Women Chefs and Restauranteurs and recipient of their ‘Outstanding in Her Field Award’, and has achieved the status of prudhomme in France’s La Guilde de Fromagers. She’s a long time advocate and producer of raw milk, as well as pasteurized, cheeses, and was active on the steering committee of Slow Foods American Raw Milk Cheese Presidia and founding the Raw Milk Cheesemaker’s Association.

Along with her friends Mary Keehn of Cypress Grove, Paula Lambert of the Mozzarella Co., and Allison Hooper of Vermont Butter and Cheese, Judy began cheesemaking in her kitchen. It was this group of women who began making goat cheeses in the 1980s and started a movement of artisan cheeses that has grown quickly over the years. “When we went to the early ACS conferences in the 80s there were maybe a hundred cheeses at our festivals. Now” she says “there are 1,400. All of us who were there in the beginning are proud that by supporting each other, we helped make this happen.”