​How long have you been farming and how did you get into it? When did you establish North Country Creamery?

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I started farming about 20 years ago at small scale educational farms as kind of a side gig while at college. Through learning and teaching, I got exposed to all the different farming that there was, and I really fell in love with cows and milking cows. From there I pursued working in dairies at more of a commercial scale, and at organic dairies since then. We started North Country Creamery in 2013 - 13 years ago now! 

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Are you from Keeseville originally? If not, how did you know you wanted to start a farm there? 

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I'm not, but when I was working at Essex Farm, a couple of different people told me about this farm for sale up in Keeseville. It was called Clover Mead Farm then, and the owners really paved the way for small farms in the area by starting farmer's markets and just being super supportive farm community members. The farm was set up for cheesemaking. I didn't necessarily set off to make cheese in particular, or even process milk, but it really is the only way to have a small scale dairy farm nowadays, you have to process your own milk or maybe sell to a processor, otherwise you have to milk a lot of cows to get by.

 

How many cows are in your herd? What breeds are they?

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We've grown close to our ideal size with about 30 cows. The first year we milked 10 or 12, and you know, cows make more cows, so here we are! We've got a bit of a mix. We have a bunch of Jerseys. Then we started to breed in some New Zealand Friesian, which look like the classic black and white Holstein cow, but they're hardier and they're meant for grazing with their New Zealand tooth-based genetics. We’ve also got some Normadies, which have similar heartiness and grass-fed qualities. Those are from the Normandy, France area. 

 

How many acres of pasture do you own/rent?

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We own about 45 acres of pasture, and about 60 acres of woods, and we currently have plans to convert our pasture and our woods to silvopasture, so that the cows can graze in the woods. So far, we’ve planted around 250 trees but eventually we would like to put in a couple thousand trees for cows to have shade and wind protection in our pasture. So it's going to look really different eventually; more like a savannah or - I don't know if you've been to Central California or other places that have like, spotted oak trees among the grasslands? So cows can take their shade and their rest and not get so hot in the summer. 

 

How many people work on your farm? What different roles do they fulfill? 

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Besides Steven and I, we've got around 5 people right now and are hiring for a 6th*. They fulfill all kinds of roles from cheesemaking, yogurt making, attending farmer's markets, milking, and cow herd management. We've got a solid, wonderful crew.

 

*View Job Description here:  tinyurl.com/NorthCountryCreameryJob

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What do you love most about farming and what are your biggest challenges?

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The 100% grass fed aspect adds so many dimensions to our farm and so many opportunities for innovation and research. It's still kind of a new thing – well it's not new historically - people obviously didn't feed grain to cows way back, but it's kind of a newer movement while keeping up with current dairying and production goals. So, it's really based on soil health and managing healthy gut biome for milking animals. It all starts with the soil, so I'm super passionate about grazing soil health. I mentioned the trees; those are a big part of the plan towards a higher fungal to bacteria ratio in the soil. This will increase microbiome activity and contribute to more quality grass and forage production in the pasture. There’s just so many layers of exciting stuff in being 100% grass fed. It's really hard and it's really exciting and the continuous research is inspiring. We're also really into alternative pasture management. Like feeding different kinds of grasses and intensive rotational grazing, planting trees, and this year we're building a pond to irrigate the soil. 

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It's like its own ecosystem when you break it down like that. When we create more bird habitat with the trees, we've got more biodiversity, and then some birds eat a lot of flies, and that helps the cows - the benefits of more biodiversity just go on and on. Now that it’s winter, it doesn’t seem like there’s much happening but deep down in the soil there is.

 

Tell us a little bit about the different varieties of yogurts and cheese you make. 

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We make 4 types of yogurts. They're all cream lined, so that means the cream rises and is at the top of the yogurt cups or pails; we do 5-gallon pails for schools and hospitals. We've got plain, maple, vanilla, and lemon, the vanilla and lemon are sweetened with maple syrup too. That’s it - the yogurt is just milk and cultures plus, of course their flavorings, but it's a very basic recipe. There are no stabilizers or thickeners. It’s just as thick as it is all on its own. 

We also make a lot of different cheeses right now. Some of the cheeses we've made since the beginning that the previous owner taught us, like the Havarti. Then we introduced the Dill Havarti, which is made with fresh dill, which is very special because dried herbs are of course, way more common for a cheese. We only make it spring through fall, whenever dill is available and fresh, but we age it all year, so it's usually available all year unless we run out. We sometimes supplement was a little dried dill, but there's always fresh dill in each batch, it's just such a different flavor.​ From there, we spun off with Pepper Jack. It's similar to the Havarti recipe, but it's made with dried peppers and an organic spice mix - fresh peppers are too wet. 

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We’ve also got cow's milk feta, which is really different from a sheep or goat milk feta. It’s way less tangy, more mild, it melts more than usual feta, and doesn't crumble as much. The previous owner taught us that one too. He also taught us how to make Camembert, which is a seasonal cheese we mostly make in the summer months and is similar to brie. 

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Then, we've got some really fun aged cheeses that our cheesemaker, Nico, has either totally innovated or improved the recipes for. We were making the cheese called Highland before she arrived, but she's really improved the recipe by doing a lot of different things and aging it longer. It’s kind of like a cheddar, but very buttery in texture. Then she's been playing with giving it a natural rind, so bringing it down to the cheese cave, and letting it develop a rind, and that has just added such a different flavor to it. We do hope to scale that up for wholesale this year. We've only done it on a retail scale before, so you may look forward to that if we pull it together. 

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Nico also innovated a cheese called Wild Muse, which is a wash rind cheese. She uses Cherry Bret beer from Ausable Brewing Company just down the road. They make the Cherry Bret with cherries from cherry trees right from our farm. So, as the cheese is aging, down in the cave, she's wiping it and flipping it with a cherry bret brine mixture, to develop a really pretty pinkish rind and a really nice flavor. That one's now available wholesale. It didn't used to be, but we've scaled it a bit.

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At this point, we've kind of got our systems down. We've got infrastructure for certain cheeses, so we're kind of sticking with the types that fit within the infrastructure that we have, because we have very limited creamery space. We very quickly outgrew it and have plans to renovate and expand, but all that takes time, of course.

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Is there anything new and exciting you'd like to share with us?​

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We do have some funding to expand the creamery and move the milking parlor. We got a grant through NYS Grown & Certified Infrastructure, Technology, Research and Development Grant Program to fund a mobile milking parlor. This will allow us to meet the cows out on pasture in the summer, park it in, and milk out on the fields and we’ll bring it into the barn for winter. These are really common units overseas and it’s one of our techniques for innovation. They do it in New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, and so we figured, “why not” for grass-fed dairies in this country? So that’s the goal, to pursue that. We have two years to build it so we can meet the cows where they want to be. 

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Where can we find your products?

 

Right now we sell through two distributors, Essex Food Hub, and Regional Access. Essex Food Hub does all the Adirondack-based deliveries, and the Ti Food Co-op has been buying our products since its inception which we’re very grateful for. Then it’s mostly natural food stores like Nori’s in Saranac Lake, Green Goddess in Lake Placid, and if you come up to Keeseville you can come to our very own farm store. While you’re up here you can also hit up Ausable Brewing Company, Mace Chasm Farm, & Moss Brook Flower Farm, so it’s a great little road up here that makes for a lovely little road trip. We’re open year-round but it’s so pretty in the summer. You can also visit the store locator on our website to get a sense of our scope, although it may not capture all the store where our products are sold. 

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How is the Ticonderoga Food Co-op important to your operation? 

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Food Co-op’s are a huge part of our business. They're one of - if not our biggest - buyer sector. Certainly over the years, it seems like more and more people are doing the bulk of the shopping at food co-ops, which makes it such a consistent sale too. So, it's been really great to sell to stores like Ti.

 

It’s great that it's local and it's nice that people value that. Co-ops are such a good fit because people are already looking for local and sustainable, so when they see products like ours, it's a real match.