Beltane Farm

Paul Truby, center

Success stories such as Laura Chenel Chevre and Earthbound Farms lettuces encourage other artisans to enter local niche food markets.  Stonington Farmers Market has two such candidates.  For excellent local goat cheese, look to Paul Truby of Beltane Farm; for local lettuce mix, find Robert Burns of Aiki Farm.  Buy their products and duplicate a culinary moment of history: the legendary Chez Panisse salad course. 

Beltane Farm hosts visitors only before or after its busy summer market season.  I drop in on a Sunday afternoon for a fall tasting event.  In the hills of Lebanon, only a mile off the main highway to Hartford, I am sure my GPS has betrayed me.  To prevent such treachery, I always bring written directions.  The detailed explanation runs a full paragraph and includes the following references: “past the cow field, follow the road into the woods and continue almost a mile ...”  I feel completely lost, then round a curve and come upon a line of cars parked on the shoulder of this very narrow rural road.  Across the street is the entrance to Beltane Farm where Paul raises Oberhasli, Swiss dairy goats, and produces both fresh and ripened cheese from their milk. 

A white colonial house and large old barn announce that the farm has been around for a while.  Across the house yard stands a small shed heated by a potbelly woodstove.  The warmth is welcome on this crisp October day.  During the summer, Paul and his staff sell 90 percent of the farm’s output direct to customers at local Farmers Markets.  But today, Paul and his market staff are back on the farm to give tours through leaf-strewn pastures, small paddocks, and immaculate dairy facilities.  After a brief exploration, guests bring both increased knowledge and whetted appetite to cheese tasting.  

Beltane Farm is home to numerous goats and an assortment of other animals, including Nestor, the donkey.  Paul and his staff milk the goats twice a day, then pasteurizes the milk at 145 degrees for half-hour.  After rapid cooling, a vegetable enzyme is added to curdle the milk.  The resulting curds, hug in cheesecloth bags, become dry as liquid, called whey, drains away.  The curds are then salted in a large pot and formed into logs.  Dried herbs, black pepper, or shopped scallions decorate and flavor the small silky white logs.  

You can find Beltane Farm chevre in twelve Farmers Markets, 30 retail stores in New England, New York and New Jersey and on line through the Artisan Made in New England website.  Along with the traditional fresh chevre, Beltane Farm produces two different aged goat cheeses and a Greek style goat cheese yogurt.