Showing an archived news item from 2006-01-03:
This year may go down in dairy history as the Year of the Small Cheesemaker, if all the plans now on drawing boards get translated into curds and wheels and blocks.
There are nearly a half dozen plans for cheese plants maturing across the province.
In the southwest, in Windsor, Mike and Charmaine Colombe and their mother, Sonja, have a green light from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food to proceed with their plans to lease a building which will become Dove Creek Cheese Factory Ltd.
Colombe told Ontario Farmer they'll be making curds, cheddar, feta and ricotta.
"We're going to be using cow's milk and goat's milk and at some point, sheep's milk as well," enthused Colombe. The cow's milk will be coming in 20 litre totes from Lakeside Jersey Dairy Ltd., in Leamington.
Because Dove Creek is buying fluid milk, Colombe won't need plant supply quota for the cow's milk cheese, but he'll be paying the full price for Class 1a, unhomogenized, unstandardized milk, which is about 80 cents a litre plus processing and transportation.
Wray Krompart, the marketing manager for Dairy Farmers of Ontario said the option to purchase milk in 20 litre containers was written into the regulations years ago "to allow consumers to purchase small quantities of milk to make cheese in a home or commercial kitchen. It was never really designed for an on-going cheese operation."
Yet, if Colombe can make this work, his sales won't be limited by plant supply quota. Dove Creek will have to be federally licensed because Colombe said, "we're going to be growing all our sales, especially feta, stateside. We've got contracts in place on both sides of the border, as soon as we're ready to deliver."
Further east, near Freelton, Ute Zell has made application to OMAFRA to license a small on-farm cheese plant to process some of her goat's milk.
Zell and her partner Tom Greenall milk 200 goats and ship most of their production to Hewitt's Dairy Ltd. in Hagersville. But they also raise wild boar and sell the meat at markets in Hamilton and Toronto, so they already have an established direct-to-customer base.
"I asked for cheese, yogurt and fluid milk," production said Zell, thinking she can make cheese six or seven days before the market, yogurt four days ahead, and bottle fluid within 48 hours of marketing, so it will be delivered fresh.
Zell applied to process 20,000 litres of milk a year - less than 400 litres a week. The building is in place, so she hopes to have the equipment installed and operational by May 2006.
Up north, in Sault Ste. Marie, Catherine and Roger Maheu are planning to make cheese curds like Roger grew up with in Quebec. Whether they went back to Sherbrooke, the Maheus returned home with orders for the cheese, from the French community in the Sault. So they know there is demand for the soft, white unripened cheese and are trying to fill it locally.
There is "absolutely nothing" like it here in Northern Ontario, Catherine told Ontario Farmer. But, in order to get free plant supply quota for the cow's milk, through the Domestic Dairy Product Innovation Program (DDPIP) they had to prove the product wasn't available elsewhere in Canada.
In the end, CRM Cheese Factory will be buying unstandardized, but pasteurized milk in 1100 litre totes, from Farquhar Dairy in Espanola, about 300 km away, for about $1.05 a litre. They'll be getting 2000 litres of milk every second day, and plan to produce 300 pounds of cheese curds daily.
"The curds should be consumed before they're refrigerated, within 24 hours, because that's when they're the best tasting," said Maheu.
The Maheus are planning to have a retail outlet at the plant, but have not yet settled on a location to lease. Still, they hope to be operational by the middle of February.
South again, in Prince Edward County, Petra Cooper hopes to begin construction this spring of an artisan cheese plant on her 20 acre property in this trendy, "escape from Toronto" country. The Fifth Town Artisan Cheese Co. will have a small plant, just 3400 square feet, including 500 square feet of retail space, with an outdoor patio.
"We've been working on the design," says Cooper, by cell phone en route to the architect. "We decided to take it down the green path."
So the Fifth Town plant will be built to achieve LEEDS standards, for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. "You can consider us the Stratus winery of cheese. The architecture of the building will be part of the cache," said Cooper.
Cooper's current plans includes using underground caves for the ripening rooms - which would be unique to Ontario. She hopes that working underground will not only save cooling costs, but create a more stable environment and result in a more stable product and less inventory loss. Fifth Town cheese will be made only from the milk of sheep and goats in Prince Edward County, "as part of the building of the terroir."
Cooper plans to hire a cheesemaker and will start by making "just four or five cheeses. I'm a big fan of Crotin." So, "we will start out with a Crotin-like cheese and some chevre - which is a basic staple - and several bloomy-rind, soft-ripened cheeses."
Cooper doesn't expect to produce any cheese until the spring of 2007, so she'll be ready for an official opening by summer.
Margaret Morris, of Alexandria, is on a similar timeline as Cooper. She has plans to build a cheese plant in the style of a Pennsylvania-Dutch barn on a commercial lot in town starting this spring, and begin cheese production by late 2006. But Morris will be working with cow's milk. The federally-licensed plant will be a showcase for Morris' other business, Glengarry Cheesemaking, which supplies equipment for small cheese makers across North America, as well as a training centre of cheese makers. It will feature a retail store and a viewing platform that's visible from the street.
Because Morris plans to make cheeses that are unique in Canada, she can access cow's milk through the Domestic Dairy Product Innovation Program.
Glengarry cheese will offer seven different cheeses: a fresh cow's milk cheese, Figaro; a young, soft, spreadable Celtic Blue; Alexandrin, which is modeled on a whole raw milk cheese called Reblochon; a Gouda-style cheese pressed into a seven pound loaf, she's calling Boerderijkaas; a Caerfilly-style young cheddar, Glengarry Fenn; Fleur de Lit, a washed rind Trappist style cheese in a five pound wheel, and a hard cheese, with a washed, natural rind, St. Raphael, which is modeled on a Beaufort cheese.
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