Caitlin Hunter, former owner of Appleton Creamery, has announced her spring lineup of classes, held in Belfast Maine. She has decades of experience as a cheesemaker operating a farm and creamery in Appleton Maine until several years ago. Tody she offers consulting as Capercaillie Consulting, consulting and cheesemaking classes as well as working for Springdale Farm/State of Maine Cheese in Waldo Maine. Caitlin envisioned and was a founder of the Maine Cheese Guild in 2003.
Since 2013, Peter Dixon & Rachel Fritz Schaal have been making natural cheese at https://www.parishhillcreamery.com/. These cheeses are a unique reflection of southern Vermont pastures and the cheese making heritage of that state. As they say, “From breed and feed, range and bedding, handling, pumping, filtering, hauling and storage — every choice changes the result.” More recently they have extended this philosophy to a collective effort: Cornerstone, a cheese made the exact same way by three cheese makers in three different regions. Each Cornerstone cheese embodies that region and cheesemaker.
Every good cheese maker creates cheese that is specific to their own skill, environment, and passion for dairy. Without external labeling — such as the European ‘Protected Domain of Origin’ scheme — available to a cheese maker, how do we tell our current and future customers what makes our cheese special? Peter and Rachel will spend a day with Maine cheese makers to explain how they have done it — for instance, what is ‘Natural Cheese’? — as well as offer other examples from other cheese makers and regions who have successfully defined the Taste of their Place, convincing cheese lovers to seek out their cheeses.
A six hour lecture course, plus a one hour lunch and tasting break. Attendees are encouraged to bring samples of their own special cheeses and marketing materials for evaluation and feedback.”
The Northeast Dairy Business Innovation Center (NE-DBIC) is excited to kick off the second round of the Dairy Food Safety and Certification Grant. This round comes after the success of the 2022 Dairy Food Safety and Certification Grant in which we funded close to $300k for 12 projects across the Northeast.
Applicants eligible for these funds must fall into at least one of the following categories:
1. Dairy farmer (producer) of milk that is headquartered or based in the Northeast and sources or produces milk within the Northeast.
2. Dairy processors that are headquartered in the Northeast that transform raw milk into an edible product with milk sourced from the Northeast region. Processors must be licensed in a way that their product can be sold across state lines OR are a processor whose grant project will help their business move toward getting licensed in a way that will allow them to sell their product across state lines.
3. Dairy producer association/dairy council which represents and promotes dairy products/dairy businesses of the Northeast.
Learn more here.