Plus there was the work of packing little boxes with individual orders for dozens of individual shops and restaurants - and then chasing down all the invoices weeks later. Cows needed to be pastured and milked every day, and cheeses had to be made and tended to in ripening every day.
They didn't have a bulk tank or relief milker in the early days. All in all, it took about 5 years of building structures and skills before they sent their first cheeses to market in 2003. They worked on the pasture and made places for their young families to live. And because the highest value cheeses in the market were imported, European styles, they also created a cave aging space beneath for cultivating natural rinds. The concept was called value-added agriculture: the practice of transforming a raw material like milk into something more valuable before it leaves the farm.Īs the old barn got fixed up, they built a creamery next door. They set out to create a model for small-scale dairy farming that could offer more opportunities for Vermont's working landscape. So from the start, Andy and Mateo realized their farm would have to be different.
