Farmstead First- A Dairy Processing Facility

Farmstead First- A Dairy Processing Facility

Summary

PROJECT BACKGROUND
• October 2004 We were awarded a USDA Value Added Producer grant in the amount of $13,315.

• October 2004 We attended the UNL Food Entrepreneur Assistance Program

• October 2004 With the help of the Nebraska Cooperative Development Center, we developed our business structure and formed a LLC under the name, Farmstead First.

• October 2004 - December 2005 We completed extensive literature and internet searches to learn about other farmstead operations, as well as the history of farmstead cheese in this country and the rest of the world. We gained the most useful information from visiting, in person, other on-farm cheese facilities and talking to cheese makers/farmers about the work they do.

• January 15, 2005 Heather Martin, our third partner, moved to Arkansas and resigned from the project. Her grant funds and in-kind contributions have been reallocated to the remaining Farmstead First partners.

• January 15, 2005 Two major decisions were made: 1) to build a stationary processing facility (used by multiple producers) rather than a mobile facility, and 2) to initially produce only cheese. This will minimize our initial equipment needs and to allow us to keep our start-up costs within our budget.

• March 2005 Rather than using a cooperative business structure we have formed a LLC. Farmstead First will own the dairy processing equipment in our leased space, which will be rented to small dairy farmers wanting to develop their cheese making skills and products.

• May 2005 We completed the EDGE, NxT Level Entrepreneurs course offered through the Center for Applied Rural Innovation and completed our Farmstead First business plan.

• July 2005- December 2005 We began working with Joan Scheele and the staff at the UNL Food Processing Center on the feasibility study and market analysis for Farmstead First.

• July 2005 –December 2005 We began the second phase of the UNL Food Entrepreneur Assistance Program, From Recipe to Reality. This program focuses on individualized product development.

• April 23, 2005 Krista Dittman traveled to Siler City, North Carolina and toured the Celebrity Dairy, a goat cheese business. She researched their processing facility, whey management, and waste water system.

• May 16-25, 2005 Continuing the educational process, Krista attended two dairy short courses at the UW Madison. She visited eight dairy processing facilities, attended the Madison Farmers Market were she sold the cheese curd which she made and packaged the day before, and interacted with four farmstead cheese makers. Additionally, she visited two dairy equipment dealers.

• August 2005 Charuth vanBeuzekom Loth traveled to the Netherlands and visited two families producing farmstead cheese. One was a forty-cow operation making raw milk Gouda-style cheese. The other was a goat dairy, milking four hundred animals and making farmstead goat cheese. Charuth spend two days making cheese and getting hands-on experience on cheese production which included making, shaping into molds, pressing, salt brining, coating, and aging of the cheese. She researched the equipment and facilities these farms were using to make their traditional Dutch cheeses. Cheese making in Holland has a history of farmstead cheese production that has been ongoing for hundreds of years and has remained popular right through the movement to modernize and the development of commodity cheese in the Netherlands.

• September 26-October 3, 2005 Charuth and Krista attended the Cal Poly Dairy Science and Technology Basics for the Farmstead/Artisan Cheese Maker short course in San Luis Obispo, CA. Travel and tuition scholarships from the Nebraska Cooperative Development Center enabled them to take part in this very comprehensive four-day course. Topics covered in the course included, the biochemistry of milk and cheese, basic steps in cheese making, cheese tasting and evaluation, business planning, marketing, licensing and legal requirements, sanitation, a bused field trip to the Rinconada sheep dairy, and twelve hours of hands-on cheese making. This course was exactly geared towards the small on-farm operation wanting to make artisan-style cheese.

• November 2005 We hosted, in collaboration with the UNL Food Processing Center and The Nebraska Sustainable Agriculture Society, a cheese making workshop. Larry and Linda Faillace, owners of Three Shepherds’ Farm near Warren, Vermont taught a three-day hands-on cheese making workshop at the UNL dairy plant that covered the making of hard, semi-hard, soft-ripened cheeses, quark, and yogurt. Tuition of $375 for the fifteen participants of the course also included a locally produced meal, a tour of Jisa’s farmstead cheese facility near Valparaiso, NE, and a wine and cheese tasting event at James Arthur Vineyard attended by over seventy people.

• October 2004 - December 2005 We have been working with the Nebraska Department of Agriculture Bureau of Dairy foods to develop floor plans and equipment specifications for our processing plant. We are in correspondence with the dairy inspectors on what will be needed to license our facility. Dan Boer, director of the Nebraska Bureau of Dairy Foods, came and spoke to the participants of the cheese making course in November, and answered legal/technical questions related to cheese making facilities.

RESULTS
As a result of this extensive learning process, spanning fifteen months, we have reached two major conclusions that will shape the future of our endeavors.

1. On determining whether to build a mobile processing facility verses a stationary processing facility, we came to the conclusion that the pasture-based, seasonal farmstead model that we have been studying poses a potential problem for the mobile processing facility concept. The problem is that producers would need to use the facility at the same time, during the same short grazing season. Also, most cheese being made would take more than twenty four hours of processing, (making, draining, pressing, and aging) which would create a scheduling problem.

To ameliorate these concerns, we will build a stationary processing facility at Branched Oak Farm on the Dittman property. This will allow processing by more than one producer at a time. Producers will transport their milk to the processing facility. We are considering appropriate equipment needs for many different cheeses and the potential for overlap of processing occurring on a given day. For example, a vat-pasteurizer will be necessary for the production of fresh cheese, but not for the production of raw milk aged cheese. By having a second cheese vat, these two cheeses could be made in the same facility at the same time.

2. By visiting many on-farm cheese processing facilities and comparing these to the much larger facilities at the institutions where we have taken part in cheese making courses, we have made the following observations:

Comparing the state-of–the–art dairy plants at institutions such as The Cal Poly Dairy Science and Tech Department, to the very small and simple on-farm processing facility we have seen, we were made aware that the scale of investment directly correlates to the scale of production. Although this would seem logical, this information is not readily available to the small scale producer. Currently the UNL Food Processing Center is providing potential producers with plans for a ‘Micro’ dairy processing plant. These plans are for the development of a facility that produces commodity products for the whole sale market using milk pooled from one or more sources.

There is no model in the state of Nebraska for an on-farm small-scale facility using the milk of a single dairy herd to produce an artisan product (one that distinguishes itself from the commodity market place). The California Rinconada sheep dairy uses one piece of equipment, a seventy gallon triple walled Dutch-made cheese vat. Rather than using a boiler, they use a hot water heater to heat the vat. The cheeses made at Rinconada are made from raw sheep’s milk and aged for a minimum of sixty days as is mandated by federal guidelines for raw milk cheese. By choosing to make raw milk cheese, Rinconada dairy did not need to purchase equipment for pasteurization. All the milk that is seasonally produced by thirty ewes is turned into cheese and sold direct, or to retail outlets, for an average price of $19.00 per pound. The simplicity of this operation, inspected and licensed by the State of California, is an example that can be used for small producers in other states.

The small scale equipment used at the simple operations we have visited have shown us that the cost associated with building an on-farm processing facility does not have to be out of reach for farmstead producers. We will be the first two producers to use our pilot facility with the goal of offering our experience and research to other small-scale producers/farmers and entrepreneurs in our state.

WORK PLAN FOR 2006
• January 2006. A trip to Vermont in January of 2006 will finalize our facility layout and design. When we tour farmstead cheese facilities we will focus on aging caves and their construction. We will also continue researching small scale equipment options.

• February 2006. We will offer a workshop in cooperation with the Nebraska Cooperative Development Center for The Nebraska Sustainable Agriculture Society Annual Conference being held February 3, 2006 in Nebraska City. The title of our workshop will be Woman in Agriculture: From grass to cheese, two women tell the story of developing a farmstead dairy business.

• On-going. We will continue working with Joan Scheele and the UNL Food Processing Center on our feasibility study and market analysis. We received an extension of our USDA value added producer grant time line to allow us more time for product development. During the spring and summer of 2006 we plan to lease space in the UNL cheese plant for recipe development and will be working at the cheese plant and Food Processing Center lab with Laurie Keeler and dairy plant staff as consultants. We plan to have completed our feasibility study and product development by the August of 2006.

• Fall 2006. We will continue developing the plans for our processing facility and begin building in the fall of 2006. During this time we will continue purchasing our processing equipment as well as begin fabrication of equipment we plan to have made locally. We hope to begin selling our first cheese in the summer of 2007.

• December 2006. We will write our final report, develop our Farmstead First web-site, and write an article about our project for inclusion in such publications as Practical Farmers of Iowa, Center for Rural Affairs, and publications from The Kansas Rural Center, and the Nebraska Sustainable Agriculture Society to share our experiences with other producers.

OUTREACH
November 1-3, 2005. We hosted two events, the first of which was a three day hands-on artisan cheese making course taught by Larry and Linda Faillace of Three Shepherd farm near Warren Vermont. This course was held at the UNL dairy plant and was sponsored in cooperation with the UNL Food Processing Center. The cheese making workshop was geared for the serious cheese maker or producer wanting to begin commercial farmstead cheese production. Our cheese makers had requested that we keep the attendees to fifteen to keep the class intimate. Attendees came from four states to take part in this course. In conjunction to the cheese making course, we also held a wine and cheese tasting event at James Arthur Vineyard on November 2, 2005. We advertised the class and wine tasting events through the UNL list serve as well as other cheese sites on line. We had a press release that was aired on a local radio show as well as in the Journal Star calendar. We also printed and handed out flyers at the Lincoln and Omaha farmers markets.

We wanted to offer the community with a chance to learn about our project and to meet the visiting cheese makers. The evening’s itinerary began with a welcome and thanks to everyone for coming to Farmstead First’s premiere educational event. We gave an overview of our project’s mission, sharing the story of how Farmstead First was an idea that was born over a meal with friends. Linda and Larry Faillace spoke about their farm in Vermont and their history of becoming artisan/farmstead cheese makers. Elaine Cranford of the Nebraska Cooperative Development Center spoke about that organizations work on helping people with legal counsel and rural business development. Paul Rorhbaugh of the Nebraska Sustainable Agriculture Society shared with the audience the importance of a sustainable regional food system. We enjoyed sampling artisan/farmstead cheese from around the country and the world. We also served locally grown baby greens, apples, black walnuts, and a selection of Nebraska produced cheeses made by Diana MCcown and Jisa’s farmstead cheese. Seventy people attend the cheese and wine tasting event.

Community outreach plans for next year (2006) include:

1. A workshop in cooperation with the Nebraska Cooperative Development Center for The Nebraska Sustainable Agriculture Society Annual Conference being held February 3, 2006 in Nebraska City.

2. Writing articles out lining our project for publications such as the Practical Farmers of Iowa, The Center for Rural Affairs, and the Kansas Rural Center.

3. Begin developing our Farmstead First web-site.

Objectives/Performance Targets

To establish value-added farmstead cheese and dairy production capacity, with emphasis on cheese, butter, and yogurt, by creating a model dairy processing facility that will provide environmentally sound, safe, and superior products for the local consumer.