The only lockdown that our goats are experiencing now is their usual one – being permanently locked out of our tree plantings and remnant bushland paddocks. Otherwise, for the goats at least, life goes on, with the rising and setting of the sun and the moon. Milking twice a day, rumination time, grazing time and sleeping time.
For the rest of the herd – that’s us – there’s been some big adjustments. And with all new challenges comes innovation and adaptation. One of our responses has been to make our cheese available for purchase on-line for delivery to Victorian cheese-lovers.
In line with this big new world of on-line and not in-person selling, we’ve given our website an update. It’s been seven years since we began the website and although nothing has changed about our vision and values and approach to natural farming and cheesemaking, the ways people access and use social media and the world wide web certainly has!
So, as we launch the new look website, we also launch our Cheese Boxes.
We now offer a weekly Holy Goat Cheese Box delivered directly to Victorian customers in most metro and select regional areas. The Box contains a selection of our best cheeses for the week; a mix of styles and flavours chosen by the cheesemakers. You choose a set price for your box, starting at $60 plus delivery.
While it’s not possible for you to choose the exact cheeses, each week’s box will include a selection from each of our Cheese Families – you can read more about them here.
As a small, dynamic farmstead, we make our cheeses according to the goats (and cows) and the season, and we release them at peak eating. By providing you with a mix of fresh curd, soft rind, semi-soft and semi-hard cheeses, your Cheese Box should provide perfect eating, at your leisure. We also provide notes on care and storage of your cheeses, to keep them at their living best.
It’s a good time of year to be getting a Cheese Box. It’s now Spring according to the calendar, but our farm certainly started to experience spring conditions many weeks ago – or perhaps “Sprinter”. Whilst winter milk is the richest and also the lowest volume (some of the goats have kidded, the weather is cold and the goats put energy into growing their kids and keeping warm), Spring milk is sweet and light with medium levels of fats and protein. Goats have excellent access to green grass which encourages milk production. We’ve had good rain too, so this Sprinter/Spring’s exceptional milk is directly expressed in all our cheeses – but especially in our fresh curd cheeses.
And a reminder that we are still relying on our primary form of cheese selling – face-to-face at the Farmers’ Markets, as well as to our current retail and restaurant operators who have supported us throughout the last six months. Whilst Farmers’ Markets are still continuing to operate, we’ll be there with our cheeses. Because the Covid 19 situation is changing daily, please check – either with our Instagram account link or with the Markets directly – to see where and when Holy Goat will be this week.
We hope the new website is easier to navigate, find information and also for those who can’t access a market, to buy our cheese. Please be patient as we get our weekly cheese boxes up and running. It’s a brave new world for us all at the farm – but not so much for the goats.
Cheese Note: We are thrilled that our iconic Brigid’s Well has just been awarded Gold in this year’s delicious Produce Awards. You can read more about her here.