River Valley Cheese Story

Being a connoisseur of fine foods and cooking, not to mention a good ole southern upbringing where everything must come from scratch, Julie decided to give cheese making a try. She found a source for raw milk at a organic food chain. She quickly learned her usual confidence that allowed her to disregard recipes and exact measurement of ingredients was not going to work as batch after batch of costly milk was fed to the chickens. Since the organic raw milk was going for $22.00 per gallon, we decided to buy our own livestock. Raising livestock as pets is one thing, but certification for production and processing of organic raw milk and cheese is another. Dairy industry regulations are rigorous and suppliers must pass inspection of dairy pastures, feed areas, watering areas, and milk and processing facilities. We worked to improve our pastures and built a new milk parlor, milk house, milk processing room, and aging cave for our raw milk sales and cheese processing licensing requirements. Soon the coast was clear to introduce our critters to their new home.

We brought home our first LaMancha without knowing how the heck to milk her. Here we are with a business plan, but one major obstacle, we can't milk our goats. After two weeks of crying (not just us, the patient goats too), we finally got it down and haven't looked back since. Shortly after, we purchased our first yak. Well, there was a whole other problem. You could count on one hand how many folks in America were milking yak so we couldn't call anyone to ask for help. They were wild, had never been milked, more less caught. Their teats are very tiny, more like a sheep than bovine. Once we conquered the yak milking, we took on the task of breaking in some untamed riverine water buffalo. Did I mention water buffalo are stubborn? After lots of good ole lap slapping, fireside telling attempts, we were finally successful with milking our yak. We use their milk combined with water buffalo and cow milk to make our Wild West Mozzarella. Wait until you taste the full flavored creamy taste of it. Melt in your mouth good! You won't find anything like it elsewhere. We're right proud of it!