Customers can order online or by telephone, or just drop by the tidy property - although a personal welcome can't be absolutely guaranteed. "If I'm working, I may have to turn people away," Weinberg says. "The cheese doesn't wait."
Neither do milk-heavy ewes. Between April and September when lactation is vigorous, the day starts early with Borghard, a retired GE Capital executive with degrees in law and business, setting up for the first of the day's two milkings. Ewes, avidly grazing since sunup, come down from pasture and file into the milking parlor. During the hour and a half it takes to milk them, the electric fencing that will define their range for the remainder of the day is moved onto a fresh patch of field. The system of rapid pasture rotation guarantees the animals fresh graze every day. The woolly beasts browse down a lush quarter-acre of clover, timothy, and alfalfa every 24 hours.
Once Sweep the border collie has returned the flock to pasture, Weinberg combines chilled milk from the previous evening with the morning's still-warm production and heats it all to begin separating the curd. Then she'll sanitize molds, ladles, and curd-cutting knives. Cheese draining from the night before may need attention. "There's rarely a day that I'm not making cheese," she says. "It's pretty much a continuous loop with different stages."
The farm produces a fresh ricotta, the Camembert-like Shushan Snow, and Battenkill Brebis, a firm, Basque style wheel, among other cheeses. Pasture-fed lamb comes in a variety of cuts, including whole bone-in leg, chops, and kebab cubes, and as merguez or chorizo-style sausages.
