Good Food is Everybody's Business
Mel and Sue Brown, Amaltheia Organic Dairy, milk more than 200 goats and, in their small cheese plant, they turn out chevre, whole milk ricotta, and feta cheese. The original three flavors of Amaltheia’s chevre won American Cheese Society awards in 2004 and the whole milk ricotta was called “perfect” by the Society judges.
Sue Brown, cheese maker, goat herder, and owner with her husband Mel of Amaltheia Dairy in Belgrade MT, describes how her farm and dairy are “closing the circle” by finding ways to profit from waste products like whey and manure. Sue answers the “unspoken” question: What to do with those male baby goats since they aren’t likely to earn their keep?
Mel and Sue Brown milk more than 150 goats and, in their small cheese plant, they turn out award-winning chevre, ricotta, and feta cheese. The chevre comes in four flavors and Sue is experimenting with aged cheeses.
At Amaltheia Dairy, located in Belgrade Montana, north of Bozeman, offers organic goat milk cheese and organic pork. Mel and Sue Brown milk more than …
Can Montana feed itself? That sounds like a pretty basic question – after all, Montana is the fourth largest state in the United States, spanning 147,000 square miles.
Shouldn’t we be able to support our meager population of 1,050,000 souls? We are primarily an agricultural state where almost 28,000 farms and ranches are spread across 60 million acres.
Support your local winter market! Yes, winter market! So often we think of farmers markets as a summer thing. After all, summer is the growing season. Here in Montana we’re not ready to give up on markets when the snow starts to fly.
The Bozeman Winter Farmers Market runs from the end of September to the end of April, and you can get your “fresh local food fix” every two weeks through the season. While you’re not going to find tomatoes and cucumbers on offer, you will find a wonderful array of products from 30 plus vendors.
Many women in farming have had to develop their own production techniques, their own farming methods, and even their own animal breeds and bloodlines. And in the US, we’ve seen women become experts, teaching other young women to farm, and leading the food movement in small livestock production equal to or even beyond the contribution of academics with little or no field experience. We highlight four women farmers raising small livestock (one of whom has retired after 44 years of sheep farming) to recognize the commitments they have made to what is essentially “women’s work” – that is, small ruminant husbandry.
Every December for the last decade, regardless of the weather, the Montana Organic Association (MOA) has held its annual conference. This year, from December 12-14, about 100 hardy souls gathered in Kalispell Montana to learn more about organic production, seed saving, and GMOs. Some of the participants traveled for hours through blowing, drifting snow and temperatures as low as -35°.
