This is my first blog. Why diary and not dairy? Well the two go hand in hand. One tends to a diary each day as does one to a dairy. You see, each and every day animals that are lactating must be milked. Twice a day. That means Saturday and yes Sunday too. Through beautiful summer days and awful snow storms in January and February, like here in Northern Vermont. Unless of course you are milking what they call 'seasonally' based on certain seasons, or in our case because sheep don't lactate (milk) for that long. A typical sheep milking season lasts in our climate from May thru the third week of October. It is getting into the second week in October so the sheep are drying off and sheep cheese making will soon cease, for me, until the cycle begins again in May. We do milk cows as well, on a very small scale, and so I will be able to continue making the cow's milk cheeses for a while longer.
One thing we have been very busy doing over the last two and a half years is building a new cheese house. We outgrew our old cheese room in our milking barn several years ago. We still need to finish some things on the new facility but are now open to visitors. Finally! For a long time folks would drive to the farm wondering where they could purchase our cheeses right here on the farm. It was not possible. We had no retail space and no extra bodies to avail themselves to help. One thing has changed. We now have a small space, but it is a self-serve sort of thing like many in Vermont. This might be a Vermont thing. Like an honor system at a vegetable farmstand.
So join us if you are ever in the neighborhood and love cheese. Cheese types we make are described on our site www.sheepcheese.com
Well as Willem Lang says, "gotta get back to work!"
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