Family Made Cheese - Boston Post Dairy

Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in food and beverage but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Anne Doe, owner of Boston Post Dairy, located in Enosburg Falls, VT, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

We are a small dairy farm located in Enosburg Falls, Vermont, right next to the Missisquoi River, with a lovely view of Jay Peak! This business is owned and operated by women. We are home to 250 goats, 12 cows, free-range chickens & friendly barn cats.

Our parents started farming in 1962, so we grew up farming! We are a large farm family; there are 15 siblings, 11 boys & 4 girls. It was hard growing up with Eleven brothers, and as we found out, it was also challenging making our first hard cheese! We decided to call it Eleven Brothers since the cheese & the brothers all turned out good!

Tell us about yourself

Our parents always taught us that we could do anything we wanted to if we really put our mind to it. Hard work always pays off. I worked for feed companies for 20 years, then decided it was time to go back to the family. I had my own sugar bush, so I started making specialty maple products out of my kitchen and selling them at farmer's markets. My sister, Susan, was making goat milk soaps from her home at the same time. We both started doing markets and shows together. My parents attended one of our shows; they were very impressed with the turnout and told us we should open a store. We both thought, "oh sure, like we could afford to do that?"

In 2007 our parents bought this farm and gifted us with the barn and 82 acres of grazing land. Wow, ok, here we go! We both knew making and selling goat milk soap & maple specialty products weren't enough to run a business. Our sister Theresa was milking goats, so naturally, we thought, let's make cheese! Susan & I took the cheese classes @ UVM, Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese. In the meantime, we were tearing down the existing tie-stall barn, the walls were caving in, and we built this facility in the same footprint. We built a storefront, soap-making room, commercial kitchen, Cheese-make area, processing area, and two caves for aging the cheese.

In March 2010, the goats started kidding, and off we went. We took the classes, so we thought we were ready. We had our colander lined with what we thought was good cheesecloth, scooped out our first scoop, and it went right through the cheesecloth! Lesson learned, what is sold as cheesecloth is not what we need to strain curds. Susan's mother-in-law bought some muslin, and she stayed up all night sewing us some "usable" cheese bags to finish the batch. Needless to say, we ordered the "correct" cheese bags to use from then on!

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

Making award-winning cheeses. We started entering our cheeses in competitions to get the judge's notes on how to improve them. We also wanted to know how they compared to other more seasoned cheesemakers. We used the judge's notes to improve our cheese, then entered again until we reached the blue ribbon.

In 2016 we entered our Tres Bonne (French for very good) into the World Championship Cheese Competition and took a bronze medal. So I thought, what if I aged it another year? I did just that and entered it into the 2018 Competition and took a silver!

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

Getting reliable help is one thing. It seems we hire someone, and after 6-8 weeks of hands-on training, they decide it's too much labor for them. In the cheese world, there is a lot that can go wrong; a cheesemaker friend told me it takes about five years to go through all the problems, the problems don't go away, but after the first five years, you'll know how to handle them! She was right!

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

Do not be afraid to work! Put your own time in to make your business successful!
Be persistent; keep knocking on doors to get your product moving!
Believe in yourself & your business.
Keep Smiling!

How other cheeses got their name. Family is very important to us; you can see that reflected in the way we have named our cheeses.

Eleven Brothers:

This was our first hard cheese. We grew up with 11 brothers, which was also hard! The cheese & the brothers turned out good, so we named the cheese Eleven Brothers.

Très Bonne: When we tried our very first wheel of this cheese, we all kept saying: "This is good!" "really good" Our mom was working in the soap room, and she said, "c'est Très Bonne" True to our French heritage, that's what we named it. The French language is both masculine & feminine. We chose to spell it this way to accent the feminine! It is, after all, made by women!

Maddy Rose: The very first batch I made as a trial, I had 100 lbs. in a tub to process by hand. I also had 3000 lbs. in my large vat going at the same time. My granddaughter Madison was helping me; she was 11 at the time. I had to process the large vat at the same time that the small tub needed attention; not being able to do both, I instructed Madison on how to add the cultures. She did a great job and finished the batch, including hooping! I soaked this cheese in a wine wash to give it its beautiful burgundy color. Since Madison helped me, and her middle name is Rose, of course, it would be named Maddy Rose!

Gisele: We make an alpine mixed milk cheese that we finish with a spiced apple cider wash. Gisele is our mother's name; we named this after her because she does so much behind the scenes and doesn't want any credit. The label is done in pink as that is her favorite cheese.

Bon Pere: French for good father! We used to make this all cow's milk and named it in honor of our father, that has also done so much for us. Unfortunately, this cheese wasn't as popular as the others, and we have since stopped making i.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://www.bostonpostdairy.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bostonpostdairy/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bostonpostdairy

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solopreneur that you'd like to share, then email community@subkit.com; we'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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