Madison Blue 2014

Green Mountain Blue Cheese - Madison Blue

We've been experimenting with a smaller size for extra-aged blues.  They are much easier to care for and cut than the 20-pound wheels.

Going forward, we will be trying batches of pasteurized cheeses for farmer's market - and bringing back Brother Laurent!

Burlington Farmer's Market 2012 #9: Overcast and Breezy

Boucher Family Farm

I thought for sure it would rain, but it held off all day.  The sun even broke through at the end of market.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Jewelry, scents, and the official start of tomato season -- it's BLT Time! And we have chickens for sale, too!

Burlington Farmers' Market 2012 #1: Beautiful!

Boucher Family Farm

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.


Yikes!  It just occurred to me that this slideshow will not show up on the IPad --- so here are some stills:

Cheese for Sale

Tired Doggie

Vermont Sunflower Oil

The New Set Up

The only thing that didn't go according to plan -- is that the Boucher Farm name printed on the tent is virtually impossible to see because we are flanked by other tents!  

Get Ready for Market:)

New Signage

 Almost ready for the first farmer's market of the summer season.  Check us out: new signs, new tent, new location on St. Paul Street!

Sunflower Oil

Oh, and a new product (though our newsletter subscribers are already in on it).  It's going to be a great year!

Cheesemaking: Almost too cold to make

Boucher  Blue Cheese

After two weeks off, we decided to make cheese, and then the temperature dropped below zero.  It's a challenge to keep the make-room 80f in that instance, and it really burns through the fuel oil.

Next cold snap, we'll just wait for a warmer day.

Cheesemaking: Connor Abbey

Tomme Cheeses

The aging rooms are filling up with cheeses for next year's farmer's market season.  Today I am prepping to do it all over again, after taking the holiday week off!

I'll be tweeting @boucherfarm during the cheesemake tomorrow.

Yesterday on The Farm

Righteous Snowman

This fella showed up at the cheeseplant!

Life on The Farm 112111: Shortest Story

I’ve met some people over the last twelve years (from out of state, mostly) that think cheesemaking in Vermont is some sexy, exciting, high profile endeavor involving celebrities; receiving glittering accolades with the occasional national morning show appearance.

It’s not. It’s really, really, not.

Mostly it is sitting around waiting for milk to fill a stainless steel vat, listening to the talk radio repeats from the previous evening, pounding down caffeinated drinks until I get jittery, and trying not to nod off sitting next to the window where people can see me.

There are always people driving trucks past my window in the morning.

Blue Cheeses in the Curing Room

We make cheese at 5:00 a.m., so I get to see a lot of sunrises through the steamed-up windows, which is a solid plus.   But, on the down side, it’s 5:00 a.m., for Pete’s sake!

There’s a lot of time to think, which I’ve mentioned before is a situation I try to avoid, because it usually winds up being either expensive or loads of hard work.

Is that is a dead bug or a live bug on the floor - or a clump of dirt? I probably need to see someone about getting prescription glasses, because there are a lot of out-of-focus objects these days.

Or maybe I’m just overly tired and need more sleep.

Is the willow tree on the lawn dead?  It didn’t seem to have many leaves this summer.   Probably ought to give it one more year, just in case it comes back.  No sense in digging it up prematurely.

You never know, it just might surprise me.

Cheesemaking: Packaging

Boucher Blue and Gore-Dawn-Zola

Blue cheeses ready for sale are wrapped in candy foil with a label and coding sticker, then bagged (see naked cheeses in the background).  They are now ready for shipping out - which is what I am doing today.  Heavy lifting!

Cheesemaking: Summer Cheese

Boucher Blue Cheese

We don't have electronically controlled curing rooms, so cheeses made during the summer have less moisture than cheeses made during the winter.  This is because running the compressors to maintain a cool temperature dries out the humidity in the rooms.

The lack of humidity also impedes the formation of the natural rind that forms around each wheel.

Getting to those procrastinated jobs...

Another one well done!  The winch that hauls the top off the cheese vat has needed replacing for two years, and is finally gone with a better, stronger, faster unit in its place. Yay!

"Cave-aged" Boucher Blue

This cheese was an experiment to see how our blue cheese would age under other conditions.  It grew no significant rind, was less blue than normal, waxy in texture, a bit salty and had a peppery finish with a lingering butteriness.

We will certainly be selling this variation at farmer's market next season - but are out of it until fall, since it ages twice as long as "normal" Boucher Blue and we did not commit any significant inventory to the project.

Cheesemaking: Who Cuts The Cheese?

Connor Abbey

One of the least glamorous jobs around here is cutting, wrapping, and pricing the farm's cheeses for farmers' market each week.  It takes 4 - 6 hours, depending on how many varieties are in production at any one time.

Cheesemaking: New Logo

Here's the Green Mountain Blue Cheese logo.  Distinctive, but hard to reproduce on banners and merchandise because of its complexity.

Back in February, we started coding the big cheeses.  This one is "B" for Boucher Blue, "3" for March, and "4" for forth week of the month.  We only make once a week, so we can tell at a glance how old each cheese is and which blue it is.

In April, I took some stylized flowers from the bouquet in our logo and made a new identity mark for our cheeses so that buyers can tell at a glance who made it, as well as when it was made.  At least, that's the plan.

Cheesemaking: Coding

It's an old tradition in the cheesemaking biz to code long aged cheeses on the surface.  That way you always know what you are looking at in the curing rooms.   "G" for Gore-Dawn-Zola is made in the 3rd month of the year on the 5th week on a wednesday (we only make cheese one day a week, if we can help it).

When you remove the food-grade letters/numbers there is an impression in the fresh cheese.

Once these have aged, the impression should be even more pronounced.  I am working on a logo to add, as other Vermont cheesemakers do, but since "moo cows" have been taken, it needs a bit of a think before doing.  Maybe a tractor?  Corn stalk? Mountain range?  The logo lady?

Cheesemaking: Madison

Blue Cheese Pizza

Madison Blue is ready for sale; samples were sent out to our distributors last week and our online provider, Artisan-Made Northeast has it on offer.  And this pizza? Disappeared way too fast to take a photo once the finished pie was out of the oven.

Cheesemaking: Cheese Sizes

Cheese Curds in Moulds

We make the majority of our blue cheeses (Madison, Boucher Blue, Gore-Dawn-Zola) in 3.4 lb. moulds.  Longer-aged versions are made in the sizes represented here: 6 lb. and 16 lb. wheels.  Soon we will be making 1 Kilo-size cheeses (Connor Abbey, Tomme Collins, Brother Laurent) for the summer farmer's market.

Cheesemaking: Doubling UP

Blue Cheese Curds in Moulds

This past week we made cheese back-to-back, effectively doubling production.  We'll be doing that on and off for the next few months, trying to find a schedule that fits in with all the other activities on the farm.  

Why the change?  I'll tell you a secret: Dan will be working at the cheeseplant full-time starting in March 2011.  No more daily milking chores - we are hiring someone to take over for him.

Cheesemaking: Tall Stacks

Dan "Vanna's" how tall a stack is - far too tall for me to heft a tray up over my head.  This stack has 370 pounds of Boucher Blue (one batch).

Each curing room holds 4 - 5 stacks, about one month's worth of cheese.

The Big Cheese

Boucher Blue aged 90-120 days

We made these larger, 20-pound cheeses to age out for farmer's market this year.  We hope to have continued success with them and offer them to our distributors over the winter; they are drier and more "cheddary" than the 3 1/2 pound size.