Celebrity Dairy
by Deborah Wechsler 
(Reprinted from Making It On the Farm: Increasing Sustainability Through Value-added Processing and Marketing, published in 1996 by Southern SAWG) 

SILER CITY, North Carolina--When Fleming Pfann moved to rural North Carolina from Florida nine years ago, she was an accomplished craftswoman, leaving behind a successful business as a weaver and basket maker. But in the process of fixing up the old, run-down farm her husband had inherited, she found herself embarking on a new career. She acquired a few goats and, since the goats produced more milk than the family could use, she began making cheese almost immediately. She soon started selling it--illegally--at a nearby farmers' market and discovered she liked goats and cheesemaking. "Three years from when I first saw a goat," says Fleming, "we had our dairy license."

Celebrity Dairy is now a well-established operation, marketing its gourmet goat cheeses throughout the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area of North Carolina. From the beginning, the dairy has primarily been Fleming's project, while her husband Britt commuted to an off-farm job in the Research Triangle.  

From Kitchen to Commercial Scale 

Fleming learned about working with goats from an experienced goatkeeper living nearby. She gradually increased her herd up to 19 goats, milking by hand, making cheese in her home kitchen, and selling mostly at a farmers' market. However, she began having trouble with carpal tunnel syndrome from hand milking. Partly because of this, and partly because they were getting an enthusiastic response to their cheese, she and her husband decided to make the jump to a commercial operation: to buy a milking machine, get the cheesemaking out of the kitchen, and get licensed.

During 1989-90, they built a concrete block, concrete-floored cheese-making building with an attached milking area. They supplied much of the labor--for example, they did their own electrical work and plumbing--but hired out the block work. The whole building, including the materials for some attached goat sheds, cost them $22,000. They were able to get most of their cheesemaking equipment from a goat dairy that was going out of business in Arizona "We got the whole lot, plus transportation, for less than the cost of a single new piece of equipment," recalls Fleming. Their total expense getting set up was around $60,000, "but you could easily spend a million dollars" says Fleming, "if you went with all new equipment and didn't do the work yourselves."

Because dairy licensing has quite exacting requirements, they worked closely with the NC Department of Agriculture in designing, constructing, and equipping the building, and found the inspectors helpful and enthusiastic. (When, later on, they needed to get a larger pasteurizer, their dairy inspector helped them get one he had seen lying unused at a cow dairy in eastern North Carolina.) They also had to work with the local health department in setting up their water and septic system. In the absence of specific regulations, they were able to convince the authorities that goats were much lower-impact than cows and could get by with less involved septic systems.

"It could be a problem," notes Fleming, "if a goat dairy has to comply with all the regulations for cows." She still has to test every batch of milk for antibiotic residues because of general dairy requirements, "even though we don't use them and wouldn't even want to--the antibiotics would keep the cheese culture from working." 

48 Goats, 250 lbs of Chevre Per Week 

Currently, Fleming milks 48 goats. She has three bucks, one a past champion, and raises her own replacement does. She doesn't show, so she's not particularly concerned about maintaining pedigrees among the milk goats. She sells all her excess animals to individuals. All the goats are very tame, easily handled, almost pets--Fleming clearly enjoys the goats themselves.

Celebrity Dairy's main product is chevre in various forms--plain or with herbs or pepper. All cheese is made with the same culture/curd, since, according to Fleming, a cheeseroom needs to be dedicated to one kind of cheese. She learned about cheesemaking mainly by reading and by doing it. Her primary resources in learning the business, she says, have been "patience and a scientific background--you need to be able to isolate why things happen differently at different times. It's important to keep a journal. It took a while to figure out, for example, that the cheese needed a very restricted range of temperature while it cultured." She also learned a lot from discerning customers' comments--her early customers were her trial tasters.

The Pfanns benefited from observing French cheesemaking as well. As they were establishing their commercial operation, Britt spent seven months in France on other work, where he investigated cheese dairies on weekends. Fleming was able to go over for a week, helping on one dairy and visiting others. "When you reach a certain stage," says Fleming, "you can learn a lot just watching someone else's operation."

Fleming spends about 2-1/2 hours a day milking and about five hours a day on cheesemaking; a part-time employee helps in the cheeseroom. After the goats are milked, she carries the milk into the processing room and puts it into a large stainless steel pasteurizing kettle. She needs to collect three milkings to have enough for a batch of cheese. The milk is then pasteurized and cultured in the kettle. After it sits for a while, she scoops the curd out of the kettle and sets it to drain in plastic baskets lined with cheesecloth. She then mixes in the salt and herbs, using a commercial mixer, and puts the curd into small plastic cheese molds. After they set, the cheeses are removed from the molds, wrapped in food-grade parchment paper, labeled, and refrigerated. The whole process takes about three days, but each stage is variable, depending on temperature and humidity. On average, she makes 250 lbs. of cheese a week--350 in summer, 150 in winter.

The cheeseroom represents a considerable investment in equipment. Besides the large stainless steel pasteurizers, there are stainless steel sinks, buckets and utensils, numerous food-grade five-gallon buckets, countless plastic cheese molds of various shapes and sizes, a large double-doored cooler, and a scale. The Hobart mixer alone cost $2000, but it replaces many hours of hard work mixing in salt and herbs by hand.

To make logs of cheese, however, Fleming developed her own low cost technology. She was able to get approval to use nylon embroidery grids to wrap and mold these cheeses. These grids can be easily rolled and allow the cheese logs to drain well. Her effective and inexpensive innovation is now being adopted by most goat cheese dairies. 

Mix of Retail & Wholesale Markets 

Fleming still sells cheese on Saturdays at the Carrboro Farmers' Market, her first outlet. On Tuesdays, she sells at another upscale farmers' market outside of Chapel Hill. She also sells to 12-15 stores and restaurants in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area. Some restaurant buyers bought her cheese even before she was licensed, but now it's all legal and above-board. She delivers once a week, and no longer has to do any promotion of any sort.

Celebrity Dairy's cheese sells for $5.50/lb wholesale and $10-12/lb retail. Because the price is so much higher and Fleming likes going to the markets, she gives first priority to retail sales. The demand is great enough that she could probably develop wholesale markets for more than she currently produces. During the late spring, when the milk is most abundant, she makes dried chevre, which can be grated like parmesan, or pickles the cheese in olive oil and herbs. She calls this product "Beta-Feta." Both of these keep a long time, and add shelf-life to an otherwise short-lived product. Fleming doubles the price-per-pound on both of these products.

Though the farm shows paper losses to depreciation, the goats have always paid their way. The operation was realizing $6000 a year income even before licensing; their only year with a loss was the year they built their facilities.

Dinners and a "Cheese Chat" 

Cheesemaking is not the only operation at Celebrity Dairy. Two years ago, Fleming and Britt started serving monthly Sunday "Dinners at Celebrity Dairy," attended by 24-28 people, each paying $30. The event was the idea of a Chapel Hill chef, who cooked for the first few months; then Fleming took it over. The dinners have been very successful, and are now booked six months ahead. Participants come at around 1:00 pm and often stay until 6:00. Along with their leisurely, multi-course gourmet meal, they get a tour of the farm and dairy and a "Cheese Chat" telling them how to serve, keep, and cook with goat cheeses. The dinners allow Fleming and Britt to visit in an organized--and remunerative--way with the many people interested in Celebrity Dairy. They also enjoy the social aspect, since there never seems to be any time for regular socializing.

The Pfanns are also in the process of building a bed-and-breakfast attached to their house, which they expect to have finished by Spring 1996. The inn will have six bedrooms; the ground floor is all wheelchair-accessible. They expect their customers to be a combination of returns from the dinners, people in the Triangle getting away for weekend, and some travelers simply passing through. Britt will be quitting his job to run the B&B. The three operations--goat dairy, dinners, and B&B--are complementary, with the dairy an attraction for their guests and the goat cheese enthusiasts a good pool of potential customers for the farm's hospitalities.

Fleming thinks the growing interest in goat cheese is here to stay. "It's like yogurt in the 1950s", she says. She notes that she gets many calls for goat-milk fudge and candy--high-value processing that would require even fewer goats than she has. There is opportunity as well for goat milk sales, but a farmer would need at least 150-200 milking does. Someone set up already with cow dairy could easily make the transition. Several smaller producers could create a co-op and share one processing facility.

"But don't do it just to make money," she advises. "It's better if you love doing something and then find a way to make money at it. Everything else will fall into place." For Fleming and Celebrity Dairy, that's what seems to have happened.