>>In fact, for all the romantic cheese talk that we do – describing flavor profiles, aromatic qualities, how luscious or come-hither a cheese is looking today, the number one component in good milk (and therefore good cheese) is GRASS. It might not be as sexy a topic of conversation, but many of our cheesemakers joke that they are grass farmers first and cheesemakers second.

Jasper Hill Farm is located in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, a notoriously rainy and unpredictable part of the state weather-wise… Making hay was always an issue, and with terroir being a core component of their cheesemaking mission, buying hay from elsewhere seemed incongruous with Jasper Hill’s ideals. Mateo Kehler and Andy Kehler, brothers and co-owners of the farm, decided to invest in a hay drying machine (the first of its kind in the United States!) and create the Eureka Cropping Center to make the haying process easier, faster, and less dependent upon the weather.

The hay dryer allows the team at Eureka to extract all moisture from the hay in just six hours, preserving the aroma, color, and nutrients of the hay. In addition to making hay, the Eureka Cropping Center was built to capture an immense amount of solar power, and now offsets nearly half of Jasper Hill Farm’s power usage. <<

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by Saxelby Cheesemongers - thank you!

>> "It's an investment in quality," Andy Kehler said. "We're basically trying to manage microbial communities, and dry hay promotes a very distinct microbial community as compared to fermented feeds."

"It's available locally sometimes when you have a good year like this, but it's really hard to put up dry hay in a typical season here in the Northeast," Andy Kehler said. "When you're talking about feeding several hundred animals you're pretty much at the mercy of the market as far as quality is concerned. This is an investment in having more control over our supply chain."

"It's at zero percent," he said, digging down into the bale with his hand to show the grass was dried beneath the surface as well.
"They're eating gourmet and they love it," Coe said. <<

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on Burlington Free Press by Dan D'Ambrosio - thank you!