When Monforte Dairy set out to build a dairy of our own we knew it would be difficult. Difficult because we had no equity, difficult because the banks thought it was too risky to loan money, risky because no one had built a dairy this way and difficult because, well, we’d never done it before. Quite simply, we had lots of experience making cheese but none building a dairy.
It’s been hard, oh my, it’s been hard. Ruth has promised to do a question and answer interview with me when we're settled, to get the whole story on the record. We'll publish it here.
But today was not such a hard day.
I arrived at the dairy for an update meeting. Soon after the fax machine started humming. Exciting news: we received our provincial dairy licensing. This means we can make cheese in the dairy and sell it in the province of Ontario. We expect to receive our federal licensing in a matter of days.
As if this weren’t enough, shortly afterward, Amos, an Amish farmer and longtime milk supplier to Monforte arrived with sheep milk.
The milk came from five farms in the Putnam area east of London.
Ruth climbed up onto the milk trailer, opened the hatch and everyon took a turn to smell the milk.
I can’t describe the delicious scent of the sheep’s milk in the air. It’s not a bit like goat. It’s very close in structure to human milk, and is very sweet and ... milky smelling... the way a newborn breast-fed baby smells.
George, who drove Amos and the milk to the dairy, backed up into the receiving bay. Don, a dairy engineer, directed Rachel, Daniel, Kelsey and Laura (our team of cheesemakers) on flushing and sanitizing the tanks.
Rachel, a slight young woman, hooked up the hose to the milk tank.
Switches were flipped and fast as anything the milk was emptied into the holding tank.
Then the tank on the trailer was washed out.
All this under Ruth’s watchful eye.
Rachel, Ruth and Amos discussed the next delivery of sheep milk for next Monday afternoon.
Afterward, around at the front of the diary, in the store, Ruth gave George a wedge of sheep cheese and Amos took a scoop of sheep ice cream.
This has been the most exciting day for me. I had tears in my eyes. Less exciting for Ruth though; she’s still got so many details to work out. And a delivery of goat milk was expected shortly.
So what will we make first? Well Ruth wasn’t sure. But she reckoned, if all goes well, there’ll be ricotta and curds by the weekend.