Sprout Creek Farm Cheese Curds - Photo by Sprout Creek's Georgie BlaeserSince this post was written our plans have changed. Check out this post for an update.
Big news on the Little Seed Farm front! Sweetbreads recently accepted an apprenticeship role at Sprout Creek Farm near Poughkeepsie, NY. We’ll be packing up and moving out at the end of November and she’ll be working on the farm for approximately 6 months. As we posted about previously, Sprout Creek operates a highly diversified farm (dairy, meat chickens, eggs, pork, lamb, goat, turkeys, etc), but really specializes in cheese.
On our first Farm Hop to Sprout Creek we had a long heart-to-heart with Margo Morris, the founder. The entire time we were chatting I was thinking to myself, “man, this would be an amazing place for one of us to apprentice!” It’s relatively close to NYC, which would allow one person to keep a job to pay the bills and the other person could gain invaluable experience before we set off on our own. It turns out Sweetbreads was thinking the same thing! Well, Margo (the founder of Sprout Creek) must have picked up on our brainwaves because at the end of our conversation she suggested the possibility of an apprenticeship at Sprout Creek! We were beside ourselves with excitement and now, several visits later, couldn’t be happier with the opportunity to join such a wonderful group of people and kick-start our on-farm education.
I’ll be commuting to NYC four days a week for my normal job, but at least one of us is making the leap! All of these little steps along the way are really HUGE steps in our lives. Giving up one income is no joke, especially when we’re trying to save to start the farm, but an investment in Sweetbread’s farm education is critical, especially since we’ve decided that raw, farmstead cheese will be an important part of Little Seed Farm and Sprout Creek makes some amazing cheeses.
She’ll be spending her days with Sprout Creek’s fantastic cheesemaker, Colin McGrath. Colin’s claim to fame is a Second Place prize at the 2008 American Cheese Society competition for his cheese “Eden”. In addition to multiple placings in International cheese competitions, his Ouray has been selected by Wine Spectator as one of the 100 best cheeses in the world. Sprout Creek specializes in aged, raw cows and goats milk cheeses, which aligns just about perfectly with our vision.
Now we just have to wait until the winter to get started! We’ll keep you posted!
