Big Week! Dreams are becoming a reality!
We are starting work on our own cheese making room. Lucky for us, there is an empty building next to our house with a concrete floor and working drain. Lucky me that I have a husband who loves building projects and has the summer off as teacher! When we moved in a year ago the property and this space was filled to the brim with trash. Wish I had taken pictures of it then. Just this week, we removed the last of the junk and now have a clean slate to work with. Chris can already see it finished and spent yesterday excitedly ripping out the insulation and wall board in 90+ degree heat! In the next few months we will turn the space into a small farm store and creamery! The creamery will be 18 x 17, a nice big space to grow into over the next 20 years! The farm store will be up front and about 18 x10. The dairy inspector has been by to take a look at our plans so now the fun begins. We will share pics of the process in case others who are considering taking cheese making out of the kitchen are interested. If any folks stumble across this blog who have built a creamery, PLEASE feel free to add comments sharing your wisdom!
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| creamery on left, house on right |
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| Farm store/creamery entrance |
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| Junk from previous owner almost clear |
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| first day of work gutting the space |
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| opening the doors for new possibilities! |
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| The farm store will be in front until just after door, then creamery will go to the back wall. |
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| lumber arrives for front wall! |
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| front wall of cheese kitchen with observation window and door are framed on Day 1 |
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| The roof will peak over creamery space with north facing sky lights, door at back leads to big storage room, maybe someday it will be classroom space for a farm school?! |
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| framing complete for roof and wall where sinks will be |
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Framing done for wall between shop and creamery
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3 windows and 3 skylights go in for natural light
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| Exciting! |
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Our goats passed their first state required test for dairy animals. When the report came back from the Maine Department of Agriculture we were very excited. Our herd tested negative to Brucellosis and CAE. The vet drew the blood this spring. CAE cost $15.50 and Brucellosis cost $20.00 per goat. We will need to test any new animals we add to our herd. I need to find out if this applies to kids born on our farm that we want to keep and milk. They will also need to be tested for Tuberculosis every 3 years.
Once we are in action, our heat treated milk, single service containers of value added products, and any multi-use containers will each need to be tested by the Department 4 times in each consecutive six months. There is an exception that states:
Milk and milk products not produced continuously throughout the year are exempt from being sampled 4 times in any consecutive months which may very well apply to us since we will be seasonal until we are making a good enough profit to retire from teaching!
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| And getting into Dairy means many hours spent like this! |
so exciting, Hope!
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