Category Archives: Events

Posts about Workshops, Meetings, Festivals and conferences with a focus on cheese, dairy and agriculture.

Help Fuzzy Udder Creamery’s make their big move!

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Help Fuzzy Udder Creamery get ready to make cheese at their new home in Whitefield!

Check out Fuzzy Udder’s IndieGogo Campaign

Fuzzy Udder Cheese!

In 2011, I started my own business, Fuzzy Udder Creamery with my two favorites: fresh hand-stretched mozzarella made from buttery jersey cow milk and sheep’s milk yogurt. If you haven’t had sheep’s milk yogurt, you have no idea what you are missing! I built a cheeseroom in Unity Maine in 2012 and had two successful seasons making all kinds of cheeses from both sheep and cow’s milk, including: fresh mozzarella, sheep’s milk yogurt, fresh sheep cheese, brie, ashed-layered soft-ripened cheese, washed rinds, gouda, swiss, tomme and baby provolone. I have also spent the last few years building up a small herd of well-cared for and very happy sheep and goats.

This summer, I had a severe allergic reaction to the house I lived in a the farm in Unity where I had built my creamery, so I had to find a new home for myself, my creamery and my animals before the winter. Luckily through the generous support of so many people in our farming community here in Maine, including Slow Money Maine and Maine Farmland Trust, I was able to purchase an old farmhouse with a barn and a creamery here in Whitefield Maine, the former home of Townhouse Creamery.

Now that I have moved, I need help getting my new creamery up and running. I am looking to raise enough funds to install my cheesemaking equipment in my new cheeseroom, build a walk-in cooler to age my cheese and get a milking parlor set up to milk my sheep and goats this spring.

With your help, I can start my 3rd season as Fuzzy Udder Creamery out right!

I am looking to raise $10,000 from this campaign so I can start making cheese again. With these funds, I will be hiring a plumber, an electrician, and several builders to get my cheeseroom and milking parlor ready for licensing.

Once I start making cheese again, I will host an open house and creamery/farm tour for those who contributed $25 or more. I will be serving a feast of local food, featuring all of Fuzzy Udder’s wide variety of cheeses. In addition, anyone who donates $50 or more will receive a cheesy gift in the mail!

Please help me publicize this campaign by telling all of your friends.

Thanks for reading about me and for supporting small farmers in Maine! To find out more about Fuzzy Udder Creamery, please visit my website: http://www.fuzzyudder.com

Meeting: Monday, Feb 17th in Winthrop

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The Guild met at Wholesome Holmstead Farm in Winthrop on February 17th between 10am and 2pm.

After a tour of the cheese retail and production facility, followed by a tour of the dairy barn, milking parlor, and milk room, Jessica Nixon and John Harker discussed various State efforts to help Maine farms better market themselves, as well as for consumers to find specific farm products.

Thank you to the Whole Trenholm family for hosting us!

Workshops 2014: Mastering Artisan Cheese Making

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DATES: This is a two-day workshop, April 26 and 27th (Saturday and Sunday)

In her 2012 book, Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking (Chelsea Green Publishing) Gianaclis Caldwell explains the art and science that allow milk to be transformed into epicurean masterpieces- with an emphasis on developing intuition through knowledge. Caldwell offers a deep look at the history, science, culture, and art of making artisan cheese as a small-scale creamery. Her first book, The Farmstead Creamery Advisor, (republished in 2014 as The Small Scale Cheese Business) has helped many farmstead cheesemakers get their start. Her most recent book The Small Scale Dairy (also by Chelsea Green) provides similar wisdom for the small raw milk producer.

In this two day session Gianaclis will offer the artisan cheesemaker some hands-on, qualitative and quantitative skills practice for assessing milk’s readiness and appropriatenes, for cheesemaking and environmental practices that effect milk quality. From doing your own standard plate counts and coliform counts, to lacto-fermentation tests; the effect of heat and cold on the availability of calcium and how this affects flocculation; and in house listeria testing prepare to take charge of your cheesemaking in a new way!

Bring an equipment and or milk/brine sample for plate counts, or about 100 ml of fresh, chilled milk in a santized container for a lacto fermentation test. Bring your pH and all other questions as well.

SITE: State of Maine Cheese Co., Rockport

FEE: $175 for Guild Members, $200 for non-members (includes a Guild membership). Registration will be set when deposits are received. Deposits will be refunded for cancellations up to a week before the class begins, after which they are not refundable. If there are more registrations than space available, later registrations will be notified and a waiting list will be started — deposits will be returned for those on the waiting list who cannot be accommodated.

THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL AND HAS A FILLED WAIT LIST; we are looking into the possibility of bringing Ms. Caldwell back to Maine, possibly this fall or next spring, so stay tuned to the Guild web site for an announcement for this.

Maine Cheese Guild
c/o Mark Whitney, Treasurer
Pineland Farms Creamery
92 Creamery Lane
New Gloucester, ME 04260