Author Archives: President

Meeting: June 16 at Appleton Creamery

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Our next meeting will be held on June 16th at Appleton Creamery in Appleton, Maine. Caitlin Hunter is the founding President of the Guild and has been making and selling cheese in Maine for over twenty years, and what is more amazing is how she manages an entire milking herd of Alpine goats, has been training many young cheese makers many of whom go on to be hired by major US artisan cheese companies or they start their own award winning creameries, AND she continues to make award winning cheeses in a very tiny (but efficient) space on her small farm in the hills of Appleton. There is much to learn from her efforts, and from the cheese-driven life that she has created.

Caitlin adds: “the Maine AgraAbility folks coming to give a presentation about farming smart as we age. Just got my new hydraulic lift table to help move those pesky full buckets around. We will also have the pizza oven fired!”

Directions:

From the North:
Get on to Maine Rt. 131 heading south from Searsmont Village. After you pass the intersection with Rt. 105, drive another mile or two to the next left on Sennebec Rd. About a mile later continue straight-ish onto Sleepy Hollow Rd., go down across a small bridge then up and take your first right onto Gurneytown Rd. Appleton Creamery is less than a mile down the road on your right, clearly marked.

From the South:
Find Sennebec Rd. heading north off of Route 17 directly across from the intersection with Route 235. Drive north about three miles then take the RIGHT fork to get onto Gurneytown Rd. Appleton Creamery is a little more than a mile farther north on the left, clearly marked

I hope to see you there.

LD1786 “Died” in ME House and Senate?

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May 10th: I have heard reports that LD1786, An Act To Allow the Sale of Unregulated Farm-produced Dairy Products at the Site of Production, has “died” in the legislature. However due to the completely opaque and asynchronous nature of the Maine Legislature’s bill tracking web tool and that nothing appears to have been reported on it’s status in the press it is difficult to tell exactly what happened and when. When I have found something definitive regarding its status, I’ll update that in this space. If you have links to official information regarding the bill’s status, please post a comment with that link.

Meeting: May 5 at Little Falls Farm in Harrison

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Our May meeting was held at Little Falls Farm in Harrison. Although they are tucked away in the foothills of Western Maine this is a unique dairy that is well worth any length of drive to visit. Mary and John Belding raise a small herd of certified organic dairy goats on their little patch of fields and woods along the Crooked River. They make a *truly* farmstead product — a single variety of hard aged goat cheese called Riffle that is certified 100% organic because all ingredients besides the salt come from their farm, an excellent example of the breadth of varieties of cheeses made in Maine.

There was a presentation from David Mathieu (www.cheesesociety.org/david-mathieu-clauger-north-america), representative of Clauger North America. They are a French company recommended to us by Michael Kalish. They are involved in atmospheric controls at a new cheese cave in Crown Heights, NY.

We also had a presentation for a web site redesign that we will be considering for 2014.