![]() The dairy was established with 100 goats and now has over 1,400. We sent our new herd manager to Europe to learn about dairies there before he started here. There were no medicines specifically tested or made for goats. We purchased equipment from several European countries. A lot of the challenge was about figuring out a good system that would work with the goats. When we started, there wasn’t any infrastructure. Creating the dairy was about making a difference in the availability of milk but also the farmer’s ability to be profitable. Taking this route was more expensive but we knew we had healthy animals. We struggled for years getting enough milk before making the decision to start our own dairy.īecause certain diseases run through goats and affect them as they age, we bought vet-checked healthy baby goats and raised them for a year. Plus, it takes between eight and nine goats to provide the same amount of milk as one cow. Getting goat milk is difficult, since it’s not the milk people typically use in this country. Goats need milking twice a day and a lot of care, so I sold my herd and started outsourcing the milk. M.K.: When I first started, I had my own herd, which is why I started making cheese. And when you have a business, you realize how important doing that one thing for someone really is you can pay it forward.ĬC: Cypress Grove started its own dairy in 2010. I think every successful business has something like that happen. When someone takes you under their wing at the beginning, it makes all the difference. I don’t know why they took it, but they did. I handed them my cheese, which was wrapped in three layers of plastic wrap. A girlfriend introduced me to Columbus Distributing. I went into San Francisco with cheese in my purse and the idea that I’d meet someone there who would like my cheese. At my first Fancy Food Show, I didn’t even have a booth. ![]() In the beginning, our customers were mainly the more cutting edge restaurants. Our equipment was all used, and we started with a 50-gallon vat pasteurizer. There was a lot of education necessary, not just for consumers, but also for cheesemakers. People would literally back up when I offered them goat cheese. At that time, Brie was not only the rage in specialty cheese it was the one and only type. It was a different situation back then there was no way to market or sell it. The American Cheese Society conference my first year consisted of labeled cheese on three little folding tables. M.K.: There was no support for small cheesemakers. It keeps the mind occupied, and it was fun working from home.ĬC: What challenges did you face along the way? This was a good way to use my milk and make a living with flexible hours. I had goats and friends with restaurants who needed cheese. I started a company as a single mom with four kids, necessity being the mother of invention. M.K.: Really there was no plan of pioneering anything. At the time, it was about using up our milk and going with the flow, no pun intended!ĬC: Talk about how Cypress Grove pioneered the artisan goat cheese movement. I didn’t have a big plan to start a business at the time, I just followed the path as it presented itself. ![]() With my four daughters and their friends, we learned to make goat milk cheese and soap at home. At the time, I had a lot of goats and so much milk that I started a 4H dairy group. It takes quite a few animals to have a genetically-diverse herd, which translated to much more milk than we could consume. We’d go into the ring to show our goats but this was about conformation, rather than production based. My goats actually set national production records, which was unusual in the show circuit. I had national champions of Alpine for several years. In the 70s and early 80s, I focused on production and showing goats nationally. M.K.: I was a marine biology major at the University of California at Santa Barbara but I later became more interested in genetics. Cheese Connoisseur spoke with Keehn about her foray into the cheese world, the evolution of Cypress Grove and the creation of the company’s award-winning cheeses.ĬC: Tell me about your journey into cheese.
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