Granville’s Three Owls Farm

A Stop on Vt.’s ‘Cheese Trail’

The biggest investment Daniel Hewitt of Granville made in his sheep farm was building the cheese plant, and a tasting room with a view of the cheesemaking room so people could sample his European-style tommes and blue cheeses.

Hewitt’s Three Owls Farm is one of dozens of farms along the 18-stop Vermont cheese trail, where artisan cheesemakers welcome visitors to their dairy farms in hopes of educating customers about their craft and drumming up business.

"It’s important having people know where their food and local cheeses are coming from," Hewitt said. "The more educated people become about their sources of food, the more likely we’ll get good food, I believe."

Visitors drop in from Boston, Quebec and New York. Some have downloaded the cheese trail map, which lists the farms and phone numbers; others wander in. When they time it right, they get to see cheesemaking. Other days, they can see the animals and sample the cheeses.

At Three Owls Farm, you can pay $250 to be a cheesemaker for a day, milking the sheep and making cheese as artisan cheese.

Before the cheesemakers developed the trail, Vermont already was on the map in the cheese world. The state has the highest number of cheesemakers per capita, said Catherine Donnelly, co-director of the Vermont Institute of Artisan Cheese in Burlington. They produce more than 100 kinds of soft and aged hard cheeses using milk from cows, goats, sheep and water buffalos. Most are made from raw milk rather than pasteurized milk, which cheesemakers say is more flavorful. And from farm to farm, the flavors and textures vary like wine.

"Taste can be altered by the temperature of the room in which you’re working, the size of the holes in the mold in which you drain the cheeses, just the bacteria that are in the milk from your farm," Hewitt said.

This year, Hewitt is focusing on a Pyrenean-style tomme, which is a cooked, pressed, slightly rubbed rind cheese. The cheese has been aging since May, when the sheep were first milked after grazing on grass. He will sell the cheese for $16 a pound at farmers’ markets, at the farm and over the Internet.

At his farm, Hewitt heats the milk in a large vat, adds a starter culture of bacterias, and a rennet, which causes the milk to coagulate. Then he cuts and heats the curd until the moisture is removed, leaving behind the solids.

"It’s a touch and feel thing," he said.

He then places the curd in molds and on weights. When it hits a certain acidity, the curd is submerged in brine for one to two days and placed in a cooler to age, for four to five months.

There’s still more to the job. Hewitt rubs the cheese with a light brine concentration twice a week while it ages to keep the molds in check, he said.

Sometimes, it’s a matter of trial and error.

"Basically, you try something one year, see how it worked, try something the next year and see how it worked," Hewitt said.

For more information about Three Owls Farm call 767-4127.

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