Sunflower Farm Creamery

Nigerian Dwarf Dairy

[Open to the Public for free visiting Saturdays 11-5 from May 25th-October 31st 2024.]

Welcome to Sunflower Farm - where all the romance of farm life is still very much a reality. Looking for delicious local cheese made in small daily batches? You have come to the right place. May-October, our feta, chevre, yogurt, caramels, fudge, truffles and cajeta are available in our self serve farm shop. Come check out what is available, then relax a bit and watch the goats grazing in the field.

We smile when folks visiting ask us if all the goats have names. Not only do they all have names, they all have distinct calls we know even from the kitchen, they each have preferences for their favorite treats, and places they most love to be scratched. In the milkroom, each mama has their own approach to our time together: Plum likes to be milked without her head closed in to the head gate. Belle insists that she be milked one side at a time. After Rhubarb is milked, she waits on the milk stand for a few minutes of love before she is ready to hop down and go about her day. And Sweet Pea looks right at our kitchen window and calls us to the barn each morning while we are getting our coffee brewed.

There are lots of hot words in the sustainable food movement. Some mean very different things depending on who is using them and for what purpose, but for us, “local” dairy products are unique because each bite is intimately connected to the way the animals at our farm live. Even a town over, the goats are eating different grass, enjoying a different breeze, their milk is not from Claire and Radish and Cinnamon. We find great joy in sharing our lovely goats with visitors so that when they eat our chèvre or feta or yogurt or caramels, they taste even better because they are remembering a sunny summer day in the field with our herd. Hopefully you can taste the love.

After We're Gone

 

When we moved into the farm,

the basement was full of preserves stewing in dusty canning jars in the basement.

They whispered her name in the darkness

but would never touch our lips,

and yet it took years for us to throw them away.

They sat in rows like unseen gravestones to her memories

and the sweetness of her last summer,

turned to acidic poison,

the strawberries contained had long since forgotten their own name,

their past life in the sun.

 

After our last breath

We become the things

those who love us can not throw away,

the orange purse hanging in the hallway closet,

the worn leather shoes beside the bed,

the collections of telephone transformers, stamps, silver spoons, and delicate animal skulls.

 

We will all become the drawer of photos

where faces who lost their names long ago patiently wait for time to reverse,

hoping someone will breathe life into history buried in too many days past.

 

I will be the dented pewter sugar bowl

the list of novel ideas in the drawer beneath my bed,

a pair of barn boots by the door,

a red string from Cambodia,

the notes you wrote me that I can not bear to throw away

and the journals I have tried to rid myself of in a million bonfires,

only to pack them again in dusty milk crates in the garage.

 

I hope that when the final wave of my life reaches the shore,

I will not leave too much of a burden of things in my wake.

I am ruthless with what I throw away,

hope that somewhere on the clean slate where my life once danced

I’ll leave bootprints in spring mud,

Or perhaps I will become more of a whisper than an image

a flurry of energy like dust suspended in a summer barn --

that it will bring an unexplained rush of movement to your heart.