 
we make our fresh, ripened, and aged chevres by hand, right here, using only the milk of our own herd. This is a way of life in which the land, the animals, and the cheese manage us. Fortune (or the lack of it) has given us a sense of who we are in relation to a place and the wildness around us, respect for the animals that give us so much, and for the demanding craft of cheese making. In 1976 we moved with our 3 young children from the suburbs to this hill farm in southern Indiana. We wanted a sustainable life style, a milk cow, and lots of gardens. When we ran the title on our new farm we discovered that it had belonged to my husband's great, great grandfather in the 1870s. Over the years, the suburbs have followed us and we are now the last working dairy in our county. I think our city-folk roots have served us well, kept us in awe of this very special place that we, our children, and our grandchildren call home.
Words like "sustainable", "natural," "value-added", "humane animal management", "free-farmed", "terroir" and "artisan" were the realities on which we founded our farm over 30  years ago, and ones we continue to live daily. We wanted to build a working model here that others could follow, but there were no guidelines for commercial goat dairying, so we based that model through trial and error on an older, more traditional dairy, one centered on herd health, longevity, and productivity and on animals who are born, live, and die on the same farm. We did this because it worked, the same reason we raise much of our own hay, browse our animals in rotating woodland paddocks, and carefully observe what the goat tells us they need. We make our cheese in much the same way, through observation and, always through the vehicle of taste, for without taste, the rest becomes trivial.
|