A Tale of Two Creameries - Part One - Grafton Village Cheese


Grafton Village Creamery and Storefront

Weekend of Cheese

We’re up in Vermont for a three-day, cheese-filled weekend, who could ask for more?

Sweetbreads is attending a cheesemaking workshop with Peter Dixon, the man behind Consider Bardwell's glorious cheeses, and consultant to many others. Saturday through Monday, Sweetbreads' sessions are 9am to 4pm, and about an hour and half from where her Mom lives, so that means I end up spending a fair amount of time in the parking lot writing blog posts and catching up on stuff. It also means I have plenty of time to visit local creameries. I don't know who got the better end of the stick, but it's all about cheese and we're loving it.

On Saturday I visited Grafton Village Cheese (Part One) and Sunday I headed over to Taylor Farm (soon to be Part Two). Vermont cheesemakers in general are a really kind and supportive group of people and we’ve been fortunate enough to visit a number of different creameries in the area. We love VT. It's such a fantastic community for local farmers and artisans of all kinds, hopefully it's something that will be replicated throughout the country.

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Small Farm Operating Expenses

One thing we haven’t found a lot of information about online is the operating costs of running a small, homestead farm. Instead, we’ve visited a bunch of farms, thought long and hard about what we spend money on and slowly put together our own operating expense budget. We thought it would be helpful to share some of our findings and maybe provide some clarity for other beginning farmers. This is a long post, but there's no other way around it, it's not a simple subject to tackle.
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Homemade Toothpaste


Our Sweet Birch Homemade ToothpasteI may have crossed the line this time. We were in the drugstore and remembered we were almost out of toothpaste. I bent down to grab some AIM (cheap and effective) when something clicked and I decided to take a look at the ingredients. When I stood back up, empty handed, Scrapple gave me his best “what is it crazy lady” look. Then I checked out the Toms of Maine tube...They both had some of the “moderate hazard” ingredients from the The Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep Database and I still had the bitter taste in my mouth from my last creepy cosmetics experience. I turned back to Scrapple, “I’ll just make some.” Scrapple’s look intensified, “Ooooooh kay?”.
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