Taking the Leap: Making Cheese at Does' Leap Farm

Does' Leap is every working-stiff’s back-to-the-land fantasy come true.

George and Kristin with the family. Photo by Gregory Lamourex.

Farmer George van Vlaanderen grew up in New York City. Farmer Kristin Doolan grew up in Fletcher, Vermont. Neither of them had ever worked on a farm when they met in graduate school at the University of Maine. After studying agriculture from an academic perspective, George was itching to open a cow dairy when Kristin suggested maybe goats were a better choice and they took the leap.

Photo by Gregory Lamourex.

The couple moved to Fairfield in 1997, got 4 goats, lived in a yurt, built a cheese room, and then an apartment to live in above the cheese room. Oh, and did I mention, they also didn’t have any building experience? George laughs now as he talks about all they learned from innumerable mistakes over those first few years.

Photo by Gregory Lamourex.

But what a long way they have come. The farm runs these days like the most beautiful, complex series of feedback loops, reducing their dependence fossil fuels and other inputs to make some of the world’s best chevre, feta, and kefir.

Does' Leap’s 50 goats are pastured, and get most of their nutrition from eating…grass… remarkable in the goat-dairy world where most farms feed their goats grains. George describes his goats as "ADHD, they get bored when they’re on pasture for too long and loose interest in eating grass." To improve the grazing skills of his animals, the goats get moved every 12 hours to provide fresh forage and keep the goats interested in nibbling green stuff.

Grazing Goats! Photo by Gregory Lamourex.

After the goats have eaten down the first 6 inches of grass, the herd is moved and the farm’s 2 draft horses are brought in to graze down the rest of the pasture. In addition to “cleaning up” the pastures, the horses are responsible for doing work on the farm most other places would use a tractor for – cutting hay, spreading manure, plowing, and, in the winter, logging.

Whey-fed pigs are also let out on pasture. Photo by Gregory Lamourex.

All these innovations, all these feedback loops, have allowed Doe’s Leap to be the only certified organic goat dairy in all of New England. It’s a rare occurrence in our local cheese case to run across a certified organic producer, and it assures us that the farm is free of synthetic pesticides, antibiotics, and genetically modified grains.

Photo by Gregory Lamourex.

The goats are milked twice a day in the milking parlor attached to the house. The cheese is made in the next room over, and aged in the basement. The whey from cheese making is fed to the farm’s 4 pigs which eventually George makes into delicious pork and goat-pork sausages.

City Market staff with George (3rd from left) when we visited on Thursday.

And, in the end, their 4 cheeses (the chevre, feta, caprella, and trappist) and kefir are sold exclusively in Burlington. While the farm used to sell their cheese to a distributor who would ship it far and wide, the demand in Burlington has been so strong over the past few years that all their products are now sold only through our co-op, the farmers’ market, and a few other stores and CSAs.

And, interestingly, there are still opportunities for those of us who want to get out of the air conditioned office and have our own goat farm. Vermont Butter and Cheese Creamery is looking for more goat milk and is partnering on a project to open a large goat dairy in Randolph to help meet their need for more local goat milk.