Pipe Dreams Fromage

Greencastle, Pennsylvania

You could call it a pipe dream come true! Cheesemaker Brad Parker traversed the globe to find his true calling as a cheesemaker. As a college student, he spent time in the Limousin region working as a goatherd, learning the rudiments of raising goats and making goat cheese. Years later during a stint in the Peace Corps in South Central Africa, Brad decided that he would return stateside and milk cows for a living, but was dissuaded by a local farmer who told him that milking cows was too expensive, and that he should look into goats. Brad wrote letters to 10 goat farms that found in a farming periodical he chanced upon at the Peace Corps office, and got a response from one close to Philadelphia offering him a job and room and board.

By 1986 (still early days in the American artisan cheese movement) Brad was a real trailblazer - milking 30 goats and selling his cheese to a number of accounts in Washington DC, the home of the French Ambassador chief among them. He and his wife moved their farm to its current location in 1991, and began making cheese there in 1994. Today he milks 30 to 40 goats, and produces fresh and mold-ripened goat cheeses.

Photo Credits: C Bay Millin