Three years ago, Julia and Frank McKeon bought a house and some land and moved from Albany to Danby, Vermont. Their goal was to have a farm where they could grow their own food and raise their own livestock.
They make their living doing consulting work to train businesses in environmental health and safety – Tortuga Solutions, so they just wanted their farm to be a labor of love. Of course, it became a second full time job for both of them and now it’s a “hard labor” of love!
They raise all kinds of farmyard animals – chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, guinea fowl, pea fowl, hogs, Icelandic sheep, and rabbits. And, for their efforts, they have their own meat, fiber, milk, and fresh eggs. They sell shares of their pigs and they recently opened an Etsy shop to sell socks and hats made from their wool (click here)
Icelandic Sheep
They have 10 sheep right now, and they are growing their flock (so they are not currently milking them in order to prepare for the breeding season). In the spring, 8 of them will be giving milk and their lambs will be available for sale.
Hogs
They are selling pasture-raised pork, Berkshire pigs or piglets and whole or half shares of their hogs. At some point, soon, they will be selling sausage and bacon.
Chickens
A main source of income for the farm is the eggs from their laying flock of free range hens, fed non-gmo grain.
Turkeys
They sell heritage breed Turkey poults from their flocks of Bourbon Red and Beltsville small white turkeys.
Guinea Fowl
Rabbits
Pete
(He’s one of a kind!)
Julia’s Cheese
When they were still living in Albany, Julia and Frank attended the annual Washington County Cheese Tour. Julia tasted a sheep’s milk ricotta and became completely enamored with the “symphony of flavors.” They were handing out recipes, and she thought to herself, “This is easy!” So, she bought Ricki’s 30 Minute Mozzarella Kit (from us!) and began making cheese.
Now, she makes a wide variety of sheep’s milk cheeses and she sometimes combines her milk with raw goat’s milk from a nearby farm. She has made Greek style feta with 75/25 sheep/goat milk, as well as Iberico and Gouda.
Julia rarely drinks the sheep’s milk, because, as she told us, it’s so thick, it’s like drinking cream. (Sheep’s milk has twice the solids as cow’s milk.) For most cooking purposes, she makes quark with both a yogurty consistency and a drained, cream cheesy consistency. She prefers quark to yogurt because the milk is only heated to 86F, thus preserving the beneficial bacteria.
Feta
Gouda
Iberico
Iberico is a Spanish cheese that is made like Manchego, except Manchego is made with 100% ewe’s milk, and Iberico is made with a combination of ewe and goat’s milk. Julia’s Iberico is 75% ewe and 25% goat milk. Julia said it is “monstrous weight!” and she loves the yield of the sheep’s milk.
Caciotta
Julia has made two different kinds of 100% sheep milk Caciotta; one with crushed red peppers (and the rind rubbed with marc from making red wine vinegar), the other with crushed black peppercorns.
Mozzarella
Using our 30 minute recipe, Julia gets close to 2 lbs of cheese from a gallon of milk.
Butter
Her Equipment
Julia has not yet invested in a press, so she is using gym weights with her M3 and M2 molds. (This, of course, can be tricky because the weights want to fall over when the curd goes down).
Her aging room is also their wine aging room, egg storage room (for incubating eggs) and a root cellar.
She has turned a mini fridge into an aging room for her mold ripened cheeses.
She ages her cheeses in different sized Tupperware tubs and it seems to work well.
Using Her Whey
Nothing is wasted at Otter Creek. Julia uses her sweet whey (from the hard cheeses) to make ricotta and ricotta salata. She uses her acid whey (from the soft cheeses) in smoothies, in pasta and rice, and for the dogs and pigs.
Contacting Otter Creek
For more information:
Russell says
Does Vermont have reasonable exemptions for farm-processed foods? I’m in Kansas
I cure a lot of my own meats, make cheeses, grind grains for breads, and preserve garden produce. All of that is for home consumption, because selling any of it isn’t worth the effort to keep the state at bay.
Bob Albers says
While state regulations on food preparation may be perceived as a burden by some, it is a fact that as the volume of production increases from “family size” to commercially viable, so do the complexities of keeping things sanitary. A gallon of milk weighs about 8.5 pounds and can be easily handled by one person with one hand tied behind his/her back. To process any dairy product on a gallon by gallon basis isn’t commercially feasible. 100 gallons of milk may be a more viable basis for commerce. I can’t lift 850 lbs. even with both hands. Now machinery must be employed for handling & processing. That machinery must be sanitized periodically. Intermediate sized production facilities have intermediate levels of sanitation complexity but still managible by the small production staff. The bigger the facility, the more nooks & crannies that germs, molds & other contaminants can hide in. History has shown us that it really is necessary to have scientifically proven cleaning & handling techniques administered/enforced by an external (governmental) body. Even then, through no malice on anyone’s part, things happen. Most recently was the case of Blue Bell Ice Cream. Listeria caused the whole company to shut down. To this day, no one knows how it happened. Tons of equipment had to be replaced before the company could restart operations after more than a year and then only because of an angel investor.
Excuse me for replying to my own comment. I didn’t mean to suggest that small enterprises without government oversight were bad. Indeed, all suppliers I have seen at farmer’s markets, roadside stands and so on are very well self disciplined. I only meant to say that a small scale food purveyor will have a great deal of difficulty walking the tightrope between profitability and great production. I know that I pay a premium at the farmer’s market. I am happy to do it in order to get a product handcrafted with the “amateur” touch. “Amateur” Do you know the origin of the word? Its from the Latin word for “love”. An amateur is one who does something for love. Is there any greater/better human quality?
Hi Russell, it depends on the animal. We are allowed by law to process poultry on farm and sell directly to consumers and also to restaurants. If restaurants are using farm-processed poultry, they are required by law to make some statement on their menu to inform their customers that the meat was not processed under inspection and such. We are allowed to sell up to 1000 birds per year from on-farm slaughter, beyond that I think you have to be VT-state inspected or have your birds USDA processed. People are trying to increase the number of birds you can sell from on-farm processing to I believe 3000-5000 birds.
As for other livestock, you can sell whole and half animals directly to consumers who wish to buy such quantities, and do on-farm slaughter for them. I think you can sell up to 10 pigs per year (which I think is absolutely ridiculous, there should be no limit in my opinion) and I am not sure how many other animals you can sell from the farm and stay within the legal limits the State has set. We absolutely prefer that our customers purchase whole and half cuts of animals so we can do on-farm slaughter as it is much less stressful on the animal not to haul them to a slaughterhouse and have to deal with the psychological aspect of their impending death.
We cure our own meats- I have made prosciutto, pancetta, and the cheeses- none of which are allowed to be sold to the public due to the laws that currently exist. Fortunately for our friends and family, we share these goods with them. It’s good to be friends with farmers 🙂 Cheers! Julia McKeon
It sounds like Vermont is more progressive about these laws than many other states. Thanks for explaining it to us. I wish I lived closer to you so I could purchase your meat. I hadn’t thought about the benefits to on-site slaughter-I admire that greatly.
When you need a larger cave, consider a freezer. Mine is an upright, set at 55 degrees with an external thermostat. It’s so well insulated, it’s energy efficient and seldom has to cycle to cool.
Yes, that is a great cave and we sell the refrigerator thermostats. Thanks for sharing.
Wish I could live the homestead life.
I think a lot of us feel that whey!
You CAN! What’s stopping you? I have relatives that live outside the US on a farm. If they don’t kill it, well they can’t eat it. I visited there and stayed a while. They JUST got electricity in. Still no plumbing. When I was there, I never once felt dirty, unwashed, I bathed using the well water that was schlepped from a well not far from the home. The home was handbuilt by family. There was no electricity wired in, not even in the village but the entire time I felt as if I were in a castle. Oriental rugs that didn’t have one speck of dirt. Walls clean, no odors except for the delicious food being cooked on a propane stove. Lighting came also from propane lamps or as they called it “bottle gas”. I never once was ill there, no stomach problems, not even a common cold. Reason I bring this up is we might assume we’d get some kind of sickness being in an area without running water or electricity. I never lacked proper handwashing, all water as I said was hand carried in and often. Now, this is outside the US in a mountainous area that is very fresh, has a lot of flora but not a lot of wild creatures. We had chickens, one cow, many sheep and goats.
The main problem there was and is the health of the sheep. This is in ALL places not just the place I was in- I am speaking for all who have sheep in any country. This is NOT to say it was a large problem, what I mean is, the only problem one needed to watch was various things that sheep require for proper health: possible parasitic infestations, nutrition of ungulates such as lacking in one nutrient or mineral, and fresh feed. Hay is easy and cheap to acquire. One note about sheep: they are MAGNETS for any kind of illness they are capable of getting. This does not mean your sheep will get sick, or are often ill, I say if there is something your sheep can “get” it is not unlikely they WILL get “something” That “something” could be milk sickness before or after lambing. Eclampsia. Lack of some vitamin, or too MUCH of a vitamin that might prevent pregnancy. If you pasture your sheep, they might get parasites. Or, they might eat something funny that depletes a mineral, or causes some upset. Then there is the feeding of too much of one thing, or not enough of another, then you have to open up the sheep and remove some thing that’s stuck in its stomach. If it is not one thing it is another. Maybe one year you have no problems at all, and everything works like clockwork. Next year it might be everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. You might go out one morning to water and find all of your sheep’s eyes are infected! First one, then all of them. Oh No NOW what?? Do I call the vet, do I just go buy some antibiotics, if so what kind- and so on. OH by the way, if they haven’t passed this new law already, they are making it impossible for home farmers to go buy antibiotics from the feed store!! This is deadly to home farming!!
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But!! It is not working slaving from dawn til dusk. It was a life of relaxation and pleasure, interrupted throughout the day with farm chores: feeding. Mucking out. Tying out or taking out to pasture. Bringing them back in. Watering. Feeding. Milking, whatever.
All the things you thought you could manage without suddenly become things you find you really DO need: Sheep dog. Automatic this, self watering that.
You will come to realize why farm families have many children. It gets tiring never getting a chance to take a day off, because someone HAS to be at the farm to do specific tasks that cannot be left for another day, in other words, you HAVE to stay home unless you have a family member or worker that knows the ins and outs of the entire farm and that is no easy thing to teach some stranger you hire to watch things while you go to your cousin’s wedding in Philadelphia for the weekend. You find you cannot leave!
Another BUT
shall I quit my job, cash in my investments and buy the farm? Why not! What is stopping you?? If it the fear of moving to another state, don’t fear it, do it. Is it the fear the farm will “fail”? It’s possible- but are you using it to make money? Don’t do it! Do it to LIVE. If it is profit you are looking for, I feel for you. Unless you are growing money trees forget buying one for investment. Do it for life, for love- but do it.
You reminded me of the intro to a book I read about sheep. It begins with, “Sheep are born looking for a way to die.” Thank you for your thoughtful response to the previous comment. One question- where was the farm you visited outside the US?
I’m getting hungry just looking at all those cheeses. let’s see now, its 10:20 now. Is that too early for lunch?