Goat cheese from a turkey foot?

By NORRIS LEDYARD

exponews@ohcommedia.com

2012 marked the begin­ning of Wauseon’s newest busi­ness — Turkey­foot Creek Cream­ery. Located at 11313 County Road D, Del and Linda Burk­holder have launched a busi­ness truly unique in north­west Ohio. Through their family-owned and sustainable-farmed herd of dairy goats, they are pro­duc­ing artisan-crafted, Euro­pean method goat cheese.

“I have had an abid­ing inter­est in goats for most of my life,” said Del. “I had Saa­nen goats as agri­cul­tural projects since mid­dle school. Now, we are start­ing an ongo­ing busi­ness in mak­ing goat cheese.

“There has been con­sid­er­able study in books and online,” added Del. “I was able to study two other oper­a­tions in Defi­ance (80 head dairy cow cream­ery) and in Belle­fontaine (they pur­chase goat milk for their cheese oper­a­tion). Our oper­a­tion is the only one, to my knowl­edge, in north­west Ohio that raises a herd of dairy goats, col­lects the milk, pas­teur­izes and crafts goat cheese.”

The 40-head herd of dairy goats are a blend of Saa­nen and LaMan­cha breeds of nanny goats. Where the LaMan­cha nanny’s milk has a richer but­ter fat con­tent, like a Guernsey dairy cow, the Saa­nen nanny pro­duces a higher vol­ume of milk, sim­i­lar to the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a Hol­stein. The blend makes for a won­der­ful array of cheeses.

“I have a fond­ness for the Saa­nen goats as they have a calmer dis­po­si­tion. In my expe­ri­ence,” added Del, “the LaMan­cha (goat) can be a bit more ornery.”

In man­ag­ing the herd he has four billy goats which are housed at the other end of the prop­erty, down­wind. There are two Saa­nen and two LaMan­cha billy goats. There is care to track the breed­ing and to rotate the billy goats with other goat own­ers to keep the blood­lines healthy. The Burkholder’s refrain from inbreed­ing their nanny goats.

Like clock­work, it’s time to milk

Before Del begins the milk­ing, he per­forms the rou­tine main­te­nance on the plumb­ing from the milk house which trav­els even­tu­ally to his cream­ery. It is a process of cer­tain chem­i­cals, tem­per­a­tures and fresh water. Once the equip­ment is pre­pared, they do the eas­i­est part of the process — open the doors for the nanny goats to enter the milk­ing parlor.

Every day at 6:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m., the nanny goats com­pete to see if they can be milked first. Of the 40 nanny goats, 16 are brought in and in posi­tion to begin to eat some spe­cial food and get hooked up to the milk­ing machines. There, Del and his sons, Seth and Chad, are busy mov­ing the goats into the stalls, san­i­tiz­ing the udder on eight of the nanny goats, attach­ing the equip­ment to the goat’s freshly cleansed udder and the milk­ing begins.

The milk trav­els by plumb­ing to a col­lec­tion vat. With each giv­ing an aver­age of half-gallon of milk, the 20 gal­lons col­lected are pas­teur­ized at 145 to 147 degrees for 30– 35 min­utes to elim­i­nate all bad bac­te­ria. Goat milk is nat­u­rally homogenized.

It’s all part of the rea­son that goat milk so closely resem­bles human milk. Goat milk con­tains less lac­tose than cow’s milk and is less likely to trig­ger lac­tose intolerance.

Goat milk, on the aver­age, has more vit­a­min A than cow’s milk (39 OSU/gram vs. 21), vit­a­min B1, also known as thi­amine (68 vs. 45), riboflavin (210 vs. 159) and is lower in cho­les­terol (12 vs. 15).

‘The cheese stands alone’

With a man­aged herd of goats, each receiv­ing nat­ural feed, clean water, no hor­mones and a min­i­mum of med­i­cines, the bright, white milk is made into a vari­ety of cheeses: fresh dry curds, a young spread­able cheese vari­ety called chevre, 90-day aged Gouda and the newest vari­ety, feta cheese.

Del’s niece, Jill Proud­foot, plays a large role in cheese–making process at the cream­ery. Proud­foot also does some cus­tomer con­tacts, man­ages the web­site and all things in-between.

The chevre is cur­rently avail­able in plain, gar­lic, pep­per­corn, honey, pineap­ple and ranch fla­vors. The cheese is pack­aged in eight ounce tubs and is priced com­pet­i­tively to mass pro­duced goat cheese.

The Gouda wheels are brined as a preser­v­a­tive mea­sure and are aged on premise in their cheese cave. With tightly con­trolled tem­per­a­ture and humid­ity lev­els, these wheels are aged for a min­i­mum of 90 days. Del does have a wheel or two that he wants to age longer, just to see the results. One of the jobs in the cheese cave is to flip the wheels every day, so each side of the wheel has equal expo­sure to the ele­ments. One of the next options Turkey­foot Creek Cream­ery is explor­ing is to make an aged, smoked Gouda.

“We have capac­ity in the cave for approx­i­mately 6,000 pounds of cheese,” explained Del. “Cur­rently we have 2,500 pounds in var­i­ous stages of aging. From to start to fin­ish, there is a seven to 10 per­cent weight loss, due the mois­ture being released by the cheese. It’s all part of the aging process.”

When asked about the dis­tinc­tive odor in the cave, Del had a big grin. “I was tak­ing a chef on a tour of our oper­a­tion. When we stepped into the cave, he was very pleased with the scent. He knew our oper­a­tion would pro­duce a very high qual­ity Gouda for his kitchen. He has been a steady customer.”

There is a grow­ing mar­ket for the curds, which are vac­uum packed. Rev­o­lu­tion Grille in Toledo is offer­ing deep-fried curds as an appe­tizer. “I have eaten at Rev­o­lu­tion and they make an out­stand­ing burger,” said Del. “Of course, I had my sand­wich with goat cheese.”

The whole oper­a­tion is a labor-intensive process involv­ing ani­mal hus­bandry, clean­li­ness, main­tain­ing all the equip­ment, con­stantly achiev­ing the qual­ity of each dairy prod­uct and reach­ing the mar­ket through chan­nels of distribution.

Man­ag­ing the herd

Yet another Burk­holder involved in the fam­ily busi­ness is Linda Burk­holder, Del’s bet­ter half. She has a full-time job with the Ful­ton County Health Depart­ment as a nurse, plays piano and organ at their church, First Chris­t­ian Church (D of C) in Wauseon. She is very involved in trac­ing the blood­lines of the goats.

Yes, she can look at each goat, know their name and know the pair of goats who sired the young doe kid. She has a wide vari­ety of names which iden­tify the fam­ily trees of each nanny goat.

“While it is per­fectly accept­able to inbreed the goats, we choose not to fol­low that prac­tice,” said Linda. “The goats have won­der­ful per­son­al­i­ties and respond to their names. Over­all, we feel that the herd is more con­tented, the Saa­nen and LaMan­cha nanny goats seem to get along and their milk pro­duc­tion seems to be a pos­i­tive reflection.”

“I have been told that one of our four billy goats (two Saa­nen and two LaMan­cha) seem to pro­duce nanny goats with supe­rior milk pro­duc­tion,” said Del. “Within our herd, he has pro­duced a fine fam­ily and within a sea­son or two, we will try to trade him for a good replace­ment billy to con­tinue our diver­si­fied herd.”

Come sam­ple, taste the difference

Locally, the pub­lic is wel­come Mon­day through Sat­ur­day from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. to the cream­ery. While the goats are milked twice on Sun­day, the fam­ily feels the need to keep the Sab­bath and be thank­ful for their health, their busi­ness and fam­ily (in no cer­tain order.) Turkey­foot Creek Cream­ery cheeses are avail­able in Wauseon at a. k. a. Designs, 209 N. Ful­ton St.; Brookview Farms in Arch­bold; in Bryan at All Things Food, Stoneyridge Win­ery; the Maumee and Per­rys­burg loca­tions of Walt Churchill’s; the Syl­va­nia and Water­ville loca­tions of Sautter’s; in Toledo at Health Foods by Clau­dia, SoFo Foods, Bar 145 (restau­rant), Rev­o­lu­tion Grille (restau­rant), Phoenix Earth Food Co-op; in Colum­bus, Ohio at Weiland’s Gourmet Mar­ket and Huffman’s Mar­ket; as well as in Adrian, Michi­gan at By Nature. On your next trip to one of these stores, look for the round logo of Turkey­foot Creek Cream­ery. It is a locally grown food which is crafted in an Euro­pean method as opposed to a mass man­u­fac­tured prod­uct. After all, goat milk is the ”udder” white milk.

Nor­ris Led­yard is a reporter with the Ful­ton County Expositor.

Posted by Acres Admin on Oct 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.