CHEESE FARMS: Summer is the ideal season to visit

BY SYLVIA CARTER | Sylvia Carter is a regular contributor to Newsday.

July 24, 2005

Brown-eyed cows amble placidly out of the milking barn at Hawthorne Valley Farm in Harlemville, N.Y., and graze on either side of the path as they meander out to pasture. Abe Madey turns some of the organic-certified milk from this herd into curds that will become cheese to sell at a farm store and at Greenmarkets, including Union Square in Manhattan.

At Sprout Creek Farm in Poughkeepsie, Brett Wasser offers a sample of his new goat's milk cheese, tangy, yet not at all funky. Soon it will be added to the list of cow's milk cheese that the farm sells on the premises, at such New York shops as Murray's and as far away as Chicago and California.

And at Old Chatham Sheepherding Co. in Old Chatham, N.Y., visitors can watch cheese being made in a glassed-in dairy, buy cheese on an honor system and pet baby lambs in the "nursery," a converted greenhouse.

Since the turn of the century, New York State farmstead cheese-making has burgeoned. About two dozen farms produce cheese to sell, according to Tracy Frisch, who was instrumental in organizing the New York State Farmstead and Artisan Cheese Makers Guild. (On Long Island, Mecox Bay Dairy in Bridgehampton and Catapano Dairy in Mattituck sell farm-made cheeses.) From the Southern Tier to the Hudson Valley and the Adirondack Mountains, artisanal cheeses abound. From New York City, a number of these farms are just two to three hours north on the Taconic State Parkway.

Planning the trip

The ideal season for a trip to cheese country is summer, when cows and other milk-giving animals are on fresh, green pasture and produce quantities of rich yellow milk because of the variety in their diets. Some of the milk will go into cheeses that will age for a year, but other soft cheeses are available now, fresh. Hawthorne Valley, Sprout Creek and Old Chatham Sheepherding all welcome visitors. Don't forget to take along a cooler for stashing your bounty.

On a recent sultry morning, Madey, the dairy manager, let me ladle curds out of a whirlpool-tub-size copper kettle with a big paddle that had agitated the heated milk into curds. These clumps of cheese went into molds, where they were weighted down with buckets filled with concrete. The curds were a pale golden color and so were the most recent rounds of cheese, stashed downstairs on rows of shelves in a ripening room, also called a cave. Even without the dates marked on them, it would have been easy to spot the lighter-colored cheeses that were made in winter.

What to look for

Bianca, a round of soft, creamy cheese, is much in demand at the Union Square Greenmarket, and Madey also makes Quark, Havarti, Alpine and Cheddar. Since May, he has been using whey from the making of hard cheeses to make ricotta; the whey he can't use goes to the pigs that live on the farm.

"The first time I did it, I tasted it," Madey said, and it was a eureka kind of experience. "I said, 'It's ricotta! Neat!'"

Madey's wife, Judith, is herd manager for about 60 cows, mostly Brown Swiss, that provide milk for the cheeses. Visitors who arrive about 3:30 p.m. can see Hyacinth, a gentle, belled 11-year-old cow, lead the herd into the shed for milking.

At the Hawthorne Valley farm store, items for sale include Madey's cheeses (as well as those from other local makers such as Nettle Meadow in Warrensburg), raw organic milk (this is one of the few farms authorized by the state to sell raw milk), lacto-fermented sauerkraut from the farm, and splendid rye and other breads from the farm's own bakery, as well as frozen grass-fed meats and an array of other organic foods. You might want to fill a plastic jug with organic maple syrup to take home.

Sprout Creek, the Poughkeepsie farm, also has a store that sells cheese, meat from farm animals and herbs; though bread is baked for the camp and school that are part of the operation, it is not yet for sale.

On the day I visited the dairy, Wasser let me sample his new goat cheese, the first he has developed at the farm. And Bryan Hudson, who cooks and bakes for youngsters who attend the farm camp and school run by the Order of the Sacred Heart, rushed up to the dairy's door to show Wasser a fragrant loaf of bread. "I made this with the wild yeast I caught in the hayloft," he said. "Look!"

At Sprout Creek, Brett Wasser makes three firm cheeses from the milk given by a small herd of Jersey, Guernsey and Brown Swiss: Ouray, Barat (named for the founder of the Religious of the Sacred Heart, which runs the farm) and my favorite, Toussainta buttery, flavorful aged cheese that is slightly crumbly. Wasser, who began making cheese at the farm while still attending the nearby Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, learned his craft in Austria and worked on a goat farm in the Ardennes mountains of Switzerland.

A farm that sustains itself

"Having cheese completes the cycle" of farm life, Sister Margot Morris, who founded the farm, said. She continued, "A farm isn't a real farm unless it supports itself somehow.... It exceeded our wildest expectations."

At Old Chatham Sheepherding Co., Alyc Kenney of Cropseyville, a lamb caregiver, was feeding week-old lambs with a bottle, and she gave me a turn. The lambs pushed eagerly against the nipple, vying to drink. Visitors may pat the lambs as long as they keep their hands away from the lambs' mouths, to prevent infection.

"I had no farm experience, but my boss took a chance," Kenney, a nurse, said. "You just have to have common sense." She enjoys working with her friendly charges and also likes the discount she gets on Camembert, her cheese of choice.

"This is my favorite place on Earth," said Barbara Lax, a visitor who lives in Chatham and Manhattan. "I've been here a lot of times when they're giving birth."