Producing Award-winning Goat Cheese

An eastern Missouri couple takes careful steps in producing their award-winning goat cheese. And this is the first year that Veronica and Steve Baetje have been selling their cheeses at farmer’s markets. Veronica tells Julie Harker about raising goats, producing cheese and the rewards of selling their products face-to-face to their customers.

Podcast 8: LISTEN HERE

Twice a day, seven days a week, the Baetjes get about a gallon of milk from each of the 43 adult females in their herd. The milk, drawn by a vacuum pump and sent to large stainless-steel cans, is carried one room away. There it is passed through a filter into another, larger collector can that chills the milk to less than 40 degrees - the first step in producing the four cheeses sold under the Baetje (pronounced BAY-gee) Farms label at the Soulard, Clayton and Kirkwood farmers' markets and to restaurants, gourmet food stores and wineries in St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve.