A soggy day for a farm tour, but we had fun. This cow was at our second stop, Chapel Hill Creamery. The owner originally wanted to make cheese but couldn't find the milk she wanted, so she decided to raise her own Jersey cows. The creamery milks about a dozen cows twice a day. They make some fresh cheeses, including mozzarella, smoked mozzarella (which is great!), farmer's cheese, feta, and some aged cheeses. My hubby really liked the feta -- it wasn't too salty and reminded him of products he gets in his home country.
There are ten little piggies at Chapel Hill Creamery. They are part of an experiment to find an environmentally-friendly (and neighbor-friendly) way to get rid of the whey left over from the cheese-making process. The pigs are fed the whey, and they will be sold later. The alternatives for getting rid of the whey are to pay to have it hauled away, or to spray it on the fields. Phew! By the way, these pigs, I was told, are a species of pig that was more common more than 100 years ago. It's slowly making its way back, and the meat is supposed to taste better than grocery store pork.
Our first stop was at Busy Bee Apiaries. The owner started keeping bees as a hobby, and one day he got a call-- a farmer was desperate for bees to pollinate his blueberries, but most other bee keepers wouldn't come to his farm because he only needed 20 hives (apparently there was a 100-hive minimum). So that's how Busy Bee Apiaries turned into a commercial enterprise. Oh, yes, and there is honey. Busy Bee produces honey, cream honey, and honey vinegar. I bought honey and a few bars of honey soap. Unfortunately they were out of the vinegar. By the way, did you know that a bee produces only 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey during her entire lifetime? (Her, yes. The girls do all the work. The guys beg for food and live only to spend a night with the queen. Once they finally get their chance they impale themselves upon her stinger. If a guy happens to be around when winter comes, the girls shut him out and let him starve.) I suggest if you don't buy any other locally-produced product, buy honey. (Find producers at Local Harvest.) Beekeeping doesn't bring in that great of a profit, yet a third of our produce depends upon bees. Or put another way, $3 billion* worth of produce in the US annually depends upon the work of bees. Diseases, pesticides, urban development, and other threats have significantly hurt US bee populations, and some species face extinction. Your purchase will directly help the beekeeper and indirectly support local agriculture. (*Late-added Note: I've been doing some research on this-- an apprentice beekeeper at Busy Bee gave me the $3 billion number, but I've found figures much higher, ranging from $14 billion to $24 billion, the higher number representing pollination by both wild and commercial bees. Whatever the actual number is, and perhaps it changes from year to year, it's a lot!)
Unfortunately a late start and heavy rain kept us from visiting more farms. Tomorrow I'm spending the day at Dew Dance Farm, which raises llamas, angora goats, and sheep for their fiber.
