THE CREAMERIES
Jasper Hill Farm operates two cheese houses—our recently expanded on-site facility in Greensboro, and our creamery in Hardwick at the Vermont Food Venture Center.
The original Jasper Hill Creamery has been in operation since 2003. Adjacent to our barns and 100 yards from the Cellars, this facility produces all of the raw milk cheeses. In 2020, renovations to this facility brought in capabilities and equipment from the Comté region.
Our Pasteurized cheeses begin life at the Food Venture Center, a shared-use facility that incubates new value-added agriculture businesses in the Northeast Kingdom.
In 2003 Andy and Mateo Kehler began selling farmstead cheese made in their new creamery, built adjacent to a barn of Ayrshire cows. Their intent was to serve as a model for value-added production so that other small-scale dairies could be revitalized, and Vermont's working landscape sustained. The creamery continues to develop cheeses designed to serve the landscape from which they are made.
In 2020, we purchased two copper vats from the Comté region in France along with a GSV system—a network of vacuum bells that siphon out excess whey from the curd, ideal for making smoothly textured alpine-style cheeses.
THE CHEESE
Milk is sourced directly from our own herd at Andersonville Farm in Glover, Vermont. Jasper Hill manages milk production at this nearby farm in order to create milk specifically for cheesemaking. We aim to maximize the new technical innovations of our creamery space by producing batches from a single herd.
Our raw milk cheeses—Alpha Tolman, Bayley Hazen Blue, Whitney, and Winnimere—are produced at this creamery. These cheeses require great care and attention; their ripening trajectories call for precision in the creamery, which our newly implemented technical capabilities make possible.
NATIVE CULTURES
One of our newest programs is focused on capturing and propagating native cheese-ripening cultures found in our working landscape. The microorganisms responsible for acidifying the milk and—later on—developing the rind of the cheese are isolated and carried from one batch to the next in order to produce a true Taste of Place.
In addition to our carry-over cultures, we are producing our very own rennet. Affectionately named Sax Rennet after our dear friend Anne Saxelby who passed suddenly in 2021. We create a de-albuminized whey known as Recuitte that then is mixed with calf vells—strips of a cow’s fourth stomach or abomasum. The result is a coagulant that deepens the umami characteristics of our raw milk cheeses.
THE FOOD VENTURE CENTER
The VT Food Venture Center is a shared-use facility designed to support new businesses that contribute to Vermont's working landscape. Jasper Hill is the core tenant of this facility, makes cheese in a small, private creamery within. The intent of this space is to incubate new cheeses and their makers so that they may be moved to a revitalized dairy farm as opportunities arise.
THE CHEESE
Cheese made at this creamery is sourced from our own herd as well as from several partner farms in our community. The Food Venture Center Creamery produces all of our pasteurized cheeses: Harbison, Willoughby, Eligo, Little Hosmer, and Sherry Gray.
The cheese cell here may be small, but it is mighty: at its busiest, the creamery is cranking from before sunrise until after sunset. The team that runs this creamery is tight-knit and lives for the long, steamy days. Their motto? Drive fast, drink milk.
