Posts about Workshops, Meetings, Festivals and conferences with a focus on cheese, dairy and agriculture.
This year the Breakfast of Champions — when they present all the award winning cottage cheeses, ricottas, yogurts, and all other dairy products that were judged in competition but are awkward to eat during the Festival of Cheese — has become the Brunch of Champions AFTER the first round of sessions. Therefore I headed straight to…
SO YOU WANT TO BUILD A CHEESE CAVE?
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I have always avoided the pre-conference tours offered by the American Cheese Society, probably simply to save me the cost of the extra night in a hotel necessary to take advantage of it. However this year I would be traveling to a City (San Francisco) where I have family to bunk with AND the tour would also double as cheap transportation to the destination city (Sacramento), so I had no real reason to poo-poo the opportunity. I signed up for the “Farmstead Life: Sheep, Cow, and Goat” tour, and I’m glad I did.
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.
