Night Sky Farm hopes to make a name for goat cheese

In early 2005, Jennifer Downey arrived at her Brookneal farm for the first time, after a 14-hour drive from Vermont.

Hitched to the back of her truck was a trailer with 14 goats, a washer and dryer, a bunch of chickens, some grain and several bales of hay.

“We had to stop at every rest area to check on the livestock,” she said, “and every time we pulled in, the goats would baaah, the roosters would crow, the dog would bark and everybody would turn around and look at this motley crew of creatures.”

That day marked the begin-ning of Downey’s journey to establish a USDA-certified Grade A goat dairy and produce several kinds of goat cheese.

Since Downey’s introduction to goat milk almost 30 years ago, she always has had a herd that, until recently, was milked by hand. Her new milking parlor has what she says is the only auto-mated milking machines for goats in Virginia.

Making cheese is a long and labor-intensive process, Downey said. “It takes a lot of patience and the environment has to be just right.”

First the milk is pasteurized to kill all bacteria and create a blank slate for the type of culture Downey wants to use.

Her trademark fresh chevre has to sit overnight to culture. “By the time I come up in the morning, I have what looks like a thick yogurt with whey on top,” Downey said. The curd is then drained in bags until it reaches the right consistency. It’s then flavored, rolled and frozen.

The result is a tangy, creamy cheese that at least one area restaurant now uses exclusively.

Sean Meeks, executive chef at Meriwether’s in Boonsboro, said he has been hooked on Downey’s cheese since she brought in a sample several months ago.

The restaurant had been using goat cheese from a farm in North Carolina, but after tasting the Night Sky cheese, he decided that “local is 10 times better. Her product is top notch. It really is,” he said. “We just get really ex-cited when we get it in.”

Meriwether’s uses about 20 pounds of the cheese every cou-ple of weeks, Meeks said. “We have tried to do a really good job of using local products and she fits that niche here perfectly.”

Selling her cheese to an area restaurant is just part of Downey’s plan to expand her business while retaining its uniqueness. “I want to sell my cheese to Tavern on the Green in New York City within a year,” she said. “I might have to go there, but I have a lot of wonderful literature to send them.”

While many small gourmet food producers aim to sell their products at places such as Whole Foods Market, Downey said she wants to limit her production to maintain her brand’s character. “I’d rather have my product in 15 small places and be Night Sky Farm and be unique.”

She couldn’t do any of it with-out her goat herd, which will keep growing. Each of her goats are named and exhibit their own personalities.

In addition to making cheese, Downey wants Night Sky Farm to help teach people sustainable farming. Downey grows vegeta-bles and fruits for her family to eat and keeps turkeys and chick-ens for meat and eggs. What she doesn’t keep for food, she gives away or sells.

Besides the fresh chevre, Downey also makes several other pressed cheeses, such as ched-dar, all produced from the goat milk. In the spring, when she expects to have 35 does produc-ing milk, Downey wants to start making other types of cheeses, such as Brie and Camembert.

“Most people don’t realize how versatile this milk is and then you have the people who go, ‘oh goat milk, how gross,’” she said. “They won’t even taste it because it comes from a goat.”