Three Creameries & Their Strategies: Marketing Your Dairy Products
Keswick Creamery
Newburg, Cumberland County
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
10am - 4pm
$15 PASA and Future Harvest-CASA members, $25 all others
Lunch will be provided.
Click here to register now!
Malanie Dietrich Cochran, Keswick Creamery; Brad Parker, Pipe Dreams Fromage; Candace Walker, Caprine Delight
Gather round and let’s talk cheese! Join PASA and Future Harvest-CASA for a day exploring options for marketing dairy products. We’ve got three cheesemakers - each with very different dairies and very different markets and marketing strategies - ready to talk cheese with us. Melanie Dietrich Cochran from Keswick Creamery will be joined by Brad Parker of Pipe Dreams Fromage and by Candace Walker from Caprine Delight.
We’ll spend the morning taking a tour of Keswick Creamery. The final product -- be that cheese, yoghurt or puddings -- is dependant on the quality of the milk... And a great deal pf the quality of the milk is dependant on the health and comfort of the cows. Mel will talk about her herd of Jersey cows, and we’ll tour the cheese making facilities, too. During this time, Brad and Candace will tell us about their dairies as well. The differences in their dairies extend far beyond the fact that Mel has cattle and the other guys have goats!
After lunch, we’ll spend the afternoon focusing on marketing. We’ll hear how each of these creameries market their products and how they came to the decision about how to market for their dairy. We’ll also explore some new and innovative avenues for marketing, talk about what’s worked and what’s not worked for each individual, and provide some information about resources and ideas around marketing.
This is not a workshop intended to provide concentrated information on cheese making. If that is your primary interest, please take advantage of the beginners’ cheesemaking field days being offered later this season, as well as the advanced cheesemaking offerings at the PASA Farming for the Future Conference in February.
This field day is being held in partnership with Future Harvest-CASA, a network of farmers, agricultural professionals, landowners and consumers living and working in the Chesapeake region. Future Harvest-CASA promotes profitable, environmentally sound and socially acceptable food and farming systems that work to sustain communities. Funds for this event are provided through grant support from National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC).
About the Presenters
Melanie Dietrich Cochran owns and operates Keswick Creamery at Carrock Farm, LLC with her husband Mark. The Creamery is located on her family's dairy farm in the Cumberland Valley, near Newburg. Along with her mother, Susan Dietrich, she and Mark milk 45 registered Jersey cows and make aged raw milk cheeses and fresh cheeses. Her family has milked registered Jerseys since 1974. They are a grass-based dairy that uses organic practices on their farm. In 2001 Melanie started making aged, raw milk cheeses in their licensed, on farm cheese plant and selling at a few producer-only farmers markets. After the birth of their daughter in December 2005, Mark returned to the farm full-time, they added a pastuerizer and started making fresh cheeses, a traditional type of yogurt, and chocolate pudding. All of their cheeses are hand made using traditional methods in small batches. Currently they sell at 6 producer-only farmers markets in Washington, DC and Carlisle, Pa and sell to restaurants and stores from Harrisburg to Philadelphia, and a few in Pittsburgh. In addition, Mark has started a loose-knit marketing cooperative with their neighbors, called Natural Newburg, marketing grass fed meats, eggs and cheeses to Philadelphia.
Candice Walker owns and operates Caprine Delight Dairy near Gettysburg, PA. She has between 21 and 30 goats in the flock at any given time. Her flock has registered or Pedigree goat breeds such as Alpine. Caprine Delight is a licensed raw goat milk distributor and sells raw and aged Feta, Gouda, and Parmesan cheeses.
Pipe Dreams is an 18-acre farm in Greencastle, Pennsylvania and home to cheesemaker Brad Parker, his wife Jennifer who is an architect, and their three small children. They have a mixed-breed herd of 60 goats, primarily Saanens, who are milked twice daily and treated to foraging walks twice weekly through the farm's wooded acres. Brad apprenticed for a cheesemaker in the Limonsin region of France in 1983 and has worked in cheese production and agriculture since 1986. He began Pipe Dreams in 1991 and has never looked back - other than to keep track of his kids (human and animal) on the farm. Brad sells his cheeses wholesale on the D.C. market.
Click here for directions, available on the Google Maps page.
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