Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05
May 8, 2008 issue
Farm Profile: Ripshin Goat Dairy Farm
Story by Ellen Gwin
If you want a drive that takes you to another place, drop down out of the mountains to Happy Valley and visit Liza Plaster and William Early at the Ripshin Goat Dairy Farm. Approaching their homestead is like entering the English countryside. A hedgerow wraps the fence around their front yard. Their home is rustic stone in the Tudor style. But as you take in the effect, you see the milking barn peeking through the backfield, a “green” poly-carbon structure with passive solar energy and safety red trim. The juxtaposition of old and new is intriguing.
Liza was raised in Happy Valley and has six generations of history here. Her great-grandfather was the headmaster at The Patterson School for Boys and an Episcopal minister; he raised cattle for a hobby. Liza grew up with livestock.
Liza and William live in the house her grandparents built in 1930 and are surrounded by family, including their daughter across from them and their son who lives down the road, the architect behind the milking barn. The farm is named after Ripshin Mountain—a peak visible from their farm that looks like a sawtooth. The mountain’s name comes from the rocks that will rip hikers’ shins if they trip.
The farm is Liza’s third career. She was formerly executive director for the Caldwell County Arts Council and communications coordinator for Greer Laboratories, a family-owned company that makes extracts that test and treat allergies in humans and animals. William worked as a photographer for Bernhardt Furniture before coming onto the farm full time.
Liza and William have had goats for five years, and their farm has been a licensed goat dairy for three.
“Goats are enough like horses. If you’ve loved horses, you can love goats. They are so loveable and very affectionate,” said Liza. She fell in love with the idea of having goats from visits to Carl Sandburg’s farm, home to the Connemara Farms goat herd in Flat Rock, N.C.
The farm started with four females and one billy goat. At the beginning of this year, Ripshin Goat Dairy Farm was home to 30 goats, and then 30 kids were born during kidding season. The goats are the American Saanen breed that originated in Switzerland.
They are an excellent milking breed with a long lactation season.
Breeding occurs from September through October, kidding takes place in February, milking starts at the end of March and continues through November and the cheese making coincides with the milking. At Ripshin, Liza and William keep track of their goats’ offspring each year by giving each kid a name that begins with the same letter as its mother’s name.
“We try to find charming names for them because we love our goats,” said Liza referring to Penny, Porsche, Marley and Daisy.
Lucky visitors to the farm during kidding season might have the chance to witness a birth. In March, Lizzy went into labor sooner than expected and delivered three kids— Leonardo, Lorna and Lilly—who were all around 8 pounds each. The babies were walking within an hour of their arrival.
Of those kids, the females will be mothers within the year and will then begin to be milked. The goats are milked twice a day by machine rather than by hand because of the significant time savings. William joked that each milking session would take three days by hand. Each goat produces an average of a gallon of milk per day, and milking by machine takes less than five minutes.
William runs the milk through a filter and refrigerates it immediately. Then the milk is pasteurized within three days’ time. The pasteurization process takes a few hours because the milk has to reach a temperature of 145 degrees F.
After the milk cools, the cheese-making process begins with the addition of culture and rennet. Culture adds flavor and acidity, and rennet contains an enzyme that coagulates the milk, causing it to separate into curds (solids) and whey (liquid).
By day two, the curd has settled in the bottom of the 30-gallon pasteurizing tank and the whey is on the top. Liza and William ladle out the whey and give it to a local pig farmer because the whey is a great protein-rich snack for pigs. They stuff the curd into cheesecloth bags and hang the bags so the excess whey can drip out. The room smells as if you’ve just opened a fresh tub of plain yogurt.
On the third day, Liza and her daughter Rachel Plaster Dalkilic make the cheese. The most common cheese they make is soft, spreadable chèvre. Their bestsellers are plain chèvre, as well as chèvre flavored with rosemary, garlic or organic herbs. Sometimes they flavor the chèvre with lemon peel or preserves.
Liza and Rachel also make Camembert, a hard-rind and medium-hard textured cheese that is similar to but lighter in flavor than brie, and chocolate cheese truffles in the fall. Typically, the cost of plain chèvre is $16 per pound and $9 per half-pound. The cheese has a three-week shelf life in the refrigerator and freezes well.
Liza sells to the public at the Watauga County Farmers’ Market on Saturdays, as well as at the Uptown Hickory Farmers’ Market and at Erick’s Cheese and Wine in Banner Elk. In addition, she sells her cheese to several Blowing Rock restaurants and to restaurants in Hickory and Wilkes County.
To visit the farm, call ahead and schedule. Contact Liza at lizaplaster@bellsouth.net or 828-758-0906.