Valley Shepherd Creamery, Long Valley, NJ

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Yesterday my husband, Ben, took a personal day from the office so that we could go on a little autumn excursion. After lunch in historic Lambertville, NJ, we headed for the Valley Shepherd Creamery, where we had heard that very good cheese was to be had.

Some of Valley Shepherd’s cheeses are in fact available through Williams-Sonoma, and they’re all available at the farm, which also hosts educational farm tours tailored for ages K-4 and all the way up to college level, featuring specific tours in food sciences, entrepreneurship, animal management and biology. Valley Shepherd’s cheeses are East Friesian sheep and Jersey cow milk cheeses, some mixed milk, some pure. The farm will continue to make cheeses over the next few weeks into November, when the cheesemaking stops for the winter, but cheeses aging now in the farm’s hillside cave will still be sold through the farm’s shop. (Fresh lamb meat begins to become available in the shop right around the time of year when cheese production ceases.)

We purchased a mixed-milk blue, a very sharp Provolone-like cheese called Fairmount, a ball of ricotta, and a wedge of a soft, orange-rinded wheel that I pulled indiscriminately out of the back of a refrigerator. We were sorry that no cream cheese was available that day, and Ben drew the line at the cheese with the stinging nettles in it—both of these, I will perhaps get another shot at on a future visit. In addition to cheese, sheep’s yogurt, and aracauna eggs (naturally light blue in color and naturally lower in cholesterol than white or brown eggs), the shop features many sheep-themed gifts (I actually got some sheep chopsticks) and fiber items. I also purchased yarn from the farm’s alpacas, and for those who are not knitters, blankets woven from the farm’s fibers are also for sale.

In the time we were shopping, someone came in and asked if any raw milk was for sale; they were, of course, told that it was not, but Valley Shepherd supports Garden State Raw Milk, a grassroots campaign to legalize the sale of raw milk in New Jersey. Tours of the cheese caves are only available on weekends, so we did not get to see the caves this time around… but we will be back, for sure, and not only for the cave tour—for the day-long artisan cheesemaking class that is offered, where participants can make their own wheel of artisan sheep’s milk cheese and leave it to age in the hillside cave, then return for it when it is at its best. What an amazing gift! (The classes, or a wheel of handmade cheese!)

Regular weekend tours include, in addition to the visit to the cave, the Ewe Barn (where, depending on the calendar, baby lambs may be seen), and North America’s only rotary milking platform, which can milk over 300 sheep an hour.

Ben and I left the farm armed for the long drive home with a lot of very earthy-smelling cheeses. Our ride was blindingly bucolic—the Garden State is awash in color right now, and it was a windy, blustery day. We tried all of our cheeses except the ricotta on the ride home, at least one of which—that orange-rinded devil—was not meant to be opened in a damp, closed car under any circumstances. All things being equal, however, it was one of the most enjoyable “stinky cheeses” I have ever had, and the Fairmount—the sharp Provolone-like hard cheese—was the clear winner of the day.

(guest posting by Amber Dorko Stopper)