Capella Meadows prepares cheesemaking facility ahead of Taste Trails
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
Building a better organic goat farm in Brussels keeps bio-dynamic farmers Erik and Edda Boettcher’s hands full more often than not, but these days, their schedule is even more packed than normal! They’re not only hard at work putting the finishing touches on their soon-to-be up-and-running on-farm cheesemaking facility, they’re also readying their farm, Capella Meadows, for an impending open house and farm tour as part of Huron County’s Taste Trails event on June 21.
The Citizen stopped by Capella Meadows for a quick check-in with Edda about how preparations are coming along, and found the farm’s resident cheesemaker in the midst of rerouting a misguided goat and her kid that had somehow ended up on the wrong side of the fence.
In a word, the Boettchers are busy. “Very busy!” Edda exclaimed. “Because the building is just on top of everything else we do, right? I just came from the field where I was planting potatoes… we grew up an acre and a half, maybe two this year - I’m not sure.” Some of those potatoes will head to Firmly Rooted Farms in Belgrave, some will be sold at the Capella Meadows farm store, and their family will eat the rest. ‘It started as a self-sufficient thing, but we love growing potatoes,” she confessed.
Edda easily guided mother and child back to the herd grazing in the pasture. The tribe at Capella Meadows has been growing slowly, but surely. “Honestly, I’m not exactly sure how many it is,” she said. “We milk around 200 right now - maybe a couple more. And then there’s 40 kids running around. Not all of them are out. Some prefer just to stay in the barn - for them, the barn is the safe space. For the first couple days after giving birth, the moms usually don’t join the herd outside - they just stay inside. And then, at some point, they try to go out and then the kids take a couple more days. We don’t force them… they’ll learn eventually.”
The Capella Meadows cheesemaking plant has been in the works for a long time. “We actually had this plan before we started making cheese, like six years ago. And then we just adjusted it kind of over time,” she said. Over the years, Edda worked in a variety of cheesemaking places that helped her figure out what she liked and what she didn’t. It also took Edda and Erik some time to decide what kind of cheese they really want to make. The configuration they’ve settled on includes an office, a sterilization area, a cheesemaking lab, and two aging rooms - one for tried-and-true standards like their flagship cheddar, and one with a higher humidity to house Edda’s more experimental cheeses.
Most of the cheesemaking equipment has already arrived, but Edda’s cheese press and moulds are still en route from the Netherlands. “I think it should be coming actually in the next week - I hope it’s here for the open house,” she said. So far, the cheesemaking room has two vats - a large one and a smaller one. “If I start a new cheese, or an experiment, I will probably use the smaller one,” she explained. There’s also a special machine for filling tubs with a new product Edda hopes to be making soon: cream cheese.
The cheesemaking plant is nearing completion, especially now that the building has a roof on it. “We had friends over for raising the roof,” Edda recalled. “I don’t remember how many it was, like, nine friends or something, but they came and within one day we just put the whole roof on.”
Even though the building is already looking impressive, the plant will not be up and running for the open house. “The big things are kind of done, but there’s a lot of small stuff to do,” Edda explained. “It’s hard to say how much time it will actually take to do all the small stuff.” After the actual construction is complete, the facility will need to be thoroughly inspected and undergo a rigorous certification process, with several additional steps to be certified as an entirely-organic operation. She’s hoping to open in earnest at some point mid-summer.
Once things are up and running, the plant will need to maintain a sterile environment. “I wouldn’t want to do an open house in a running cheese plant - I’d have to clean every single inch after! I don’t mind cleaning - as a cheesemaker, half your job is cleaning. But I don’t have to add on extra cleaning jobs too!” she declared.
Edda is planning to use the opportunity of her unopened cheese plant to give visitors the rare chance to check out the space up close. “My idea is to do two guided farm tours, explain a little bit about what we do, show the animals, let people ask questions. And then also two tours where we would go through the cheese plant, and explain to people a little bit on how cheese is made, maybe do a little bit of a demonstration of the process and what it looks like. We’ll hopefully have self-guided tours as well. And in between, we'll have some coffee and treats,” she told The Citizen.
Curious cheese fans that don’t make it out to Capella Meadows on June 21 will still be able to observe what Edda’s up to, from a safe, sterile distance through two large windows that have been installed in the facility for just that purpose.
And, once the plant is finished and the open house is behind them, the Boettchers will turn their attention to the next phase of their grand plan: building a natural cheese-aging cave on the farm!