A tour of the Prairie Fruits Farm Goat Dairy

Milking the does at Prairie Fruits Farm

We are a seasonal dairy which means that our does are bred in the fall (October-November) and have their kids in the spring (March-April). Goats lactate (produce milk) for about nine months, so our milking season begins in March and ends in December of each year. This gives the girls (and us) a two month break to rest up before the next round of kids arrives. As soon as they freshen (have their kids and start producing milk), we start producing cheese a new.

We milk the does twice a day—6AM and 6PM, just like a cow dairy. They come in to the milking parlor either from their spacious Coverall Barn or from the pastures and line up on our 7-doe milk stand. They are usually lining up at the door to come in as they know they’re getting grain during milking. We follow sanitary practices to keep the milk and the girls’ teats and udders clean. We wipe down their teats with a warm damp towel, dip their teats in a moisturizing iodine teat dip, strip out the milk in the teat, then dry off the teats before connecting the inflations of the bucket milking machine. Hygiene goes a long way toward keeping the does healthy. After milking, their teats are sanitized again, and they then get sent on their way back to the barn for more hay or out to the pastures to graze.

After the girls are milked, we pour the milk from the bucket milking machine into our bulk tank, which is located in a separate room called the “milk house.” The milk is kept cold in the bulk tank until it is time to make cheese. We make cheese every other day, so the milk is very fresh. On the days that cheese is made, the milk is transferred from the bulk tank through stainless steel pipes to the pasteurizer in the cheese make room or “cheeserie.”

Our Dairy and our Cheese Making Facility

We are a permitted Grade A goat dairy and the first farmstead cheese making facility in Illinois. Farmstead means that we only use the milk produced from our goats to make our cheeses. Having started with three Nubian does and one buck in June 2004, we are currently milking over 30 more milking Nubian and La Mancha does.

We strive to keep our goats as happy and healthy as possible. We manage our herd using sustainable practices, feeding them locally grown, top quality grass-alfalfa hay as well as grain during milking. We have a little over three acres of grass-legume pastures in which the goats graze during the growing season. Although we supplement the pasture with alfalfa hay, rotating the goats through pasture paddocks helps to manage intestinal parasites and generally improve the health and wellbeing of our herd. Rotational grazing also allows the pasture to recover so that they can come back to graze the same area every 3-4 weeks. Our goats lead an enviously carefree life on the prairie.

During the winter months when there is no pasture to graze, we house the goats in a very spacious and open Coverall Barn that allows for excellent air flow, lots of natural light and plenty of room for the more milking number of animals housed there. We clean out their bedding routinely to minimize milking equipment odor generation and reduce parasite loads. Our overall animal husbandry strategy is to maintain our goats as healthy as possible by providing them optimal living conditions and excellent quality feed and water. We do not feed antibiotics or hormones profilactically. We never give our animals hormones, and we only treat animals with conventional medicines when they show symptoms of illness (which is infrequent). Our dairy is an Illinois licensed Grade A Dairy (License number 003508), which means that we must comply with state regulations for maintaining hygienic conditions during milking and milk storage. Our farmstead cheesemaking facility is an Illinois licensed Manufactured Processing Facility (License number 17-532); as such we maintain extremely hygienic conditions in the rooms where the milk is pasteurized and the cheese are made and aged. Our facilities are inspected monthly by the IL Department of Public Health.

How we make our cheeses

We make our goat cheeses from milk that is usually 48 hours old and no older than 3 days. Since most of our cheeses are fresh (less than 1 week old) or aged less than 60 days, we pasteurize our milk first. We use low temperature pasteurization—145°F for 30 min—to minimize chemical alteration. We make all the cheeses in our licensed farmstead cheesemaking facility and we use only the milk from our herd of Nubian and La Mancha goats to make the cheeses. For the cheeses that have herbs or flowers or leaves, we try to use herbs, flowers and leaves grown on our farm. We also use only Illinois wine for our “Prairie Blazing Star Banon.” Our goal is to create cheeses that are grounded in our beautiful prairie roots—a little bit of terroire here in Central Illinois.

Cheese making process for the fresh, chèvre style cheese

The steps taken on making delicious, Prairie Fruits Farm cheese are highlighted below:

Pasteurization (145°F for 30 minutes)
Milk is cooled to 80°F
Once at 80°F culture is added
(The culture is a mix of lactic acid producing bacteria along with a very low concentration of rennet. Rennet is an enzyme added to aid in coagulation of the curd)
After the culture and rennet are added, the milk sits for approximately 12 hours at room temperature of 70°F. After 12 hours of fermentation, the whey (liquid portion) is tested for acidity using a titratable acidity test (acidity tells if curd is firm enough to ladle).
Then curd is ladled into plastic shopping baskets that are lined with cheesecloth.
The curds are then squeezed to extract excess whey and then allowed to naturally drain for an additional 12 hours.
Cheese is then salted to finalized production.

*All seven steps are done at room temperature to aid the lactic acid bacteria in their development and production of lactic acid.

Our Orchard

We planted over 350 fruit trees and 600 berry plants in spring 2004 on a little over 3 acres. Both our fruit orchard and pastures became USDA certified organic in August 2006. As such, we don’t use conventional fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides and we are trying a variety of ecological approaches to managing pests, diseases and weeds. We planted diverse cover crops as permanent cover for our orchard and berry areas, as well as patches of flowering plants to attract beneficial insects. We scout for pests and diseases and apply USDA-NOP allowed pesticides only when pest/disease thresholds dictate the need. We control weeds by hand weeding, cultivating and mowing. Our main soil fertility building practices include use of certified organic compost and cover crops.

Our fruit season starts with strawberries in mid June, gooseberries and currants in late June, raspberries, black-berries, Marion berries and boysenberries in July-August and fall raspberries in September and even into October. Our tree fruits include peaches, apples pears, cherries and apricots. We expect a respectable harvest of most of our tree fruits in 2007 as the trees are in the fourth season. We offer u-pick or we will pick the fruit for customers. We also sell our fruit at farmers' markets including Urbana's Market at the Square and Chicago's Green City Market.

We have 25 varieties of tree fruits including:

Nine varieties of Apples
One variety of Hardy Apricot
Seven varieties of Peaches
Three varieties of Cherries
Five varieties of Pears