For cheese nerds in search of something distinctive and delicious, the Farm at Doe Run has fast become a standard-bearer. This small, nimble farmstead creamery in Chester County, Pennsylvania, has racked up more cheese awards in the past few years than most producers do in a lifetime. St Malachi—a dense aged cheese with flavors of broth and browned butter—took home best in show at 2023's American Cheese Society competition, beating out hundreds of entries. The extra-aged reserve version just won second place at the US Cheese Championship. And Seven Sisters and Seven Sisters Reserve keep winning ribbons as well for their deep nutty notes and lingering umami finish.
It's rare for a creamery this small to roll out hit after hit to national acclaim in such a short span of time. So what's the secret sauce at the Farm at Doe Run? Cheesemaker Miguel Vivanco attributes the team's success to good land stewardship, a creative spirit in the cheesemaking room, and an abiding respect for the milk from the farm's cows, goats, and sheep.
"We're just a conduit for this process" of turning pasture into milk and then into cheese, Vivanco says. "We do our best to guide it in the right direction when the milk gets to us." The Farm at Doe Run is a true farmstead operation: all of the milk from the farm is dedicated to making cheese, and the creamery doesn't buy any outside milk. Cows, goats, and sheep graze on a pasture heavy with native grasses and herbs, and they're regularly rotated to give plants time to regrow. Vivanco likens it to "a salad that's always varied and always fresh." To work with that milk at its fresh peak, the creamery makes cheese five to seven days a week. That's important in a farmstead system. Animals produce a steady flow of milk and that milk has to be used within a couple days. The farm is less a workplace than a giant organism that metabolizes soil and sunlight into finished cheese.
Vivanco joined the Farm at Doe Run in 2021 around the same time as many of the current creamery staff. He describes the team as having "a lot of enthusiasm and the experience to back it up, who are ready to test their skills on their own." It's a small crew: just three herders to tend the animals, two people in sales, and an assistant for Vivanco in the cheesemaking room. His wife Hope is the creamery's affineur in charge of aging the cheese. Then a couple part timers help out during the busy summer season. "There's a lot of support for pursuing creativity," Vivanco says. "I've worked for a few different outfits and this is the most trust anyone has put in me. It's not about having control—it's about utilizing resources to express yourself in your work."
Part of the Farm at Doe Run's award success has been the sheer output of this tiny team. Vivanco estimates that he's created 20 unique recipes that have worked themselves into the creamery's lineup. He and the staff have also been tweaking the creamery's older recipes to test out new ideas, such as adjusting rennet concentration and curd acidity. It's an iterative process where you don't see the full results of your work until months later, when the cheese has finished aging. "We've identified what we want our cheese to be and how to maintain consistency, which is one of the hardest things to do in this industry," he explains.
When the Farm at Doe Run began making cheese in 2010, many of the recipes were for mixed-milk cheeses that could best accommodate the farm's fluid milk output. In more recent years the team has turned to highlighting the best qualities of cow's, goat's and sheep's milk into individual cheeses. Now Vivanco's project is to whittle down the number of cheeses they make to streamline production. "You're balancing the milk flow, determining the size of the cheese, deciding how many to make, and adjusting the schedule based on changing milk volumes." Farm and creamery must work in tandem to keep up with each others' capacity.
It's rare for a small farm to prioritize sustainability and creative output to this extent. Vivanco acknowledges it's a privilege to exercise the freedom he has. But we need places like the Farm at Doe Run to set the bar higher and higher for American artisan cheese. "I hope the pursuit of flavor and craft is evident in what we do," Vivanco says humbly. We think this beacon of quality cheesemaking still has its best days ahead.
Get inspired by the the Farm at Doe Run's champion cheeses!
Farm photos courtesy of the Farm at Doe Run.
