www.JackrabbitCheese.com
The United Nations FAO offers this analysis of solar-powered dairy projects. Their conclusion: It’s feasible, but not cheap. Note that, in 1981 dollars, a cheese facility of the size we’re building would cost over $150,000. That’s over $355,000 in 2008 dollars.
Using innovation, used equipment, comparison shopping, and just plain Yankee frugality, we’re putting ours together [...]
Dairying has a long and distinguished history. The passage above comes from J. Twaley, Dairying Exemplified, or The Business of Cheesemaking (London, 1784) p. 18, courtesy of Google Books.
Note the assumption that daries were run by women. Historically, milking cows and the associated dairy production was considered “women’s work,” inappropriate for men. Thus well into the [...]
As part of our expansion, we want to buy milk from a local dairy farm. That’s not as easy as it sounds. Almost all the farmers in this area contract with the local dairy co-op, and their contract says they can’t sell to anyone else. So even though they’re losing money because the wholesale milk [...]
We’ve been selling our cheese as fast as we can make it (and age it), so it’s pretty clear we could make and sell more. But making it in 8 gallon batches is labor intensive. The yield is about 7 pounds. It takes the same amount of work no matter how big your batch is: 1 [...]
Located outside Greensboro, VT, Jasper Hill Farm not only makes cheese, they operate the largest cheese cave in the region– an amazing underground structure with seven climate-controlled vaults.
During a recent trip to New England, I visited several artisan cheesemakers who graciously showed me their operations. Each was different in history, motivation, and operation– so I decided to make a short video profile of each one. This is the first.