Meet 16 ladies making goat cheese, and their ‘mama’
Retired nurse opens microcreamery in northern California
CLOVIS, CALIF.— You’ve heard of a microbrewery, no doubt. But how about a microcreamery? Clovis has one now. Rocky Oaks Goat Creamery, a farm with 16 goats, is making and selling its goat cheese. The little operation just got the approvals needed in September to start selling the eight kinds of cheese it makes.
Running it are Margie and Joel Weber. She’s a former RN and nurse-practitioner who grew up on a dairy farm in Southern California. Her husband Joel is a pharmacist working in corporate finance at Community Medical Centers. For years, they had goats as a hobby, but recently turned it into a business together.
“I wanted to retire, but really wanted something more to do,” Margie Weber said.
She liked cheese and liked goats, so she took a cheesemaking class at Cal Poly. Now, she holds the titles of creamery owner, head milker, cheese maker and mama to the goats.
The 16 ladies are named after country music singers or princesses. For example, there’s Cinderella, Bella (queen of the herd), Carrie (as in Underwood) and Trisha. Named after Trisha Yearwood, this goat was smart enough to work the latches on the barns and let her roommates out.
They are all Nubian goats, a breed with big, floppy ears. The little ones are bottle fed, making them friendly around people.
The goats are guarded by two giant Anatolian shepherd dogs named Blake and Barbara (after Blake Shelton and Barbara Mandrell) that are as big as the goats.
The goats sometimes seem a bit more like pets than farm animals.
“These are all our ladies,” Weber says as she enters the pen to pet and talk to the goats. “How is everybody? What are you doing?”
The cheese sells for about $10 for a half pound.
Things are a little slow these days at Rocky Oaks as the milking season wanes. All of the goats are pregnant and will start giving birth — kidding, as it’s called — in February and March.
That’s when the milking and cheese making goes into full swing. Goats can produce a gallon of milk a day, which translates to about 15 pounds of cheese a day during their peak production.
Two Fresno State interns help out, along with an employee who helps make the cheese. In the grand scheme of things, the operation is still “extremely small,” Weber said.
Goat milk, and by extension goat cheese, are easier for human bodies to process because it has smaller fat globules.
“It’s more digestible,” Weber said. “A lot of people who can’t tolerate cow milk can tolerate goat milk.”
And goat cheese has its critics. Some people say they don’t like goat cheese because of a bit of a funk, a gamy taste sometimes called “goatyness.” That comes from the male goats, the bucks, being around the female goats, Weber said. That odour, designed to attract female goats, can transfer into the milk.
Weber encourages skeptics to give it try, saying she doesn’t taste that goatyness in her cheese.