The scenic climb through the pastures of Grace Hill Farm has its rough-and-tumble moments. Trailing close on the heels of Max Breiteneicher, who owns this land with his wife Amy, my hiking shoes slip once or twice into a patch of sucking mud, and I nearly roll my ankle as I hop a little too confidently over a wire fence. But it’s a beautiful Wednesday morning, and the Cummington air is bright and clear. As we round the top of a short rise and look out across the field where — still more than a hundred yards off — a small herd of cows grazes, I can already see why Grace Hill’s dairy tastes so good: this cheese comes from happy cows.
Max and Amy bought this 120-acre property four years ago, and the farm has really gotten going over the last couple of years. Max, who grew up south of Boston, was persuaded out to western Massachusetts by Amy, a Hampshire College graduate, and by something many of us have but aren’t inclined to pursue full-time: a passion for cheese.
The couple keep chickens, sell eggs and grass-fed raw cow’s milk from their farmstand, grow vegetables and work year-round on restoring their small farmhouse, where they are raising their son Charlie (just over a year old). But it’s the cows that take up most hours of the day for Max, who spent the past decade learning cheesemaking and animal husbandry at Jasper Hill Farm in Greensboro, Vt., at Chase Hill Farm in Warwick and at Sidehill Farm in Ashfield and Hawley.
These are spread-out fields, marked by the old stone walls of pastures past, and the Breiteneicher team has done a lot of clearing to open up rotational grazing space. Max and Amy keep 10 cows, two of which were just born this year, and they are in the middle of building a larger, more modern barn — using a grant through the Natural Resource Conservation Service — that will allow them the room to acquire another 10 cows over the next couple of years. “That would still be a small dairy operation,” says Max, who works with no additional farm staff, “but it’ll be big for us.”
Most dairy farms still in business have been bought or inherited. Even in western Massachusetts, it’s uncommon to see someone start a farm from scratch — Cummington, which had 120 dairy farms at the turn of the 20th century, now has just three, including Grace Hill — and an overgrown 120-acre farm is a lot to sink your livelihood into. But Max says that even after seeing lots of other properties for sale in the area, it didn’t prove hard to pull the trigger.
“This place came on the market on a Thursday, I saw it on Friday, Amy saw it on Saturday, and we made an offer on Monday,” he says. “It just felt 100 percent right.”
The chance for these Normande and Ayrshire cows to graze freely in temporary paddocks throughout the day helps to keep them fit, free of parasites, and in milk production for several years longer than cows that stand inside a barn, chowing down on feed or corn. Both of Max’s breeds have high-fat, high-protein milk profiles, which are excellent for cheesemaking.
It took many months of set-up, and lots of consultation with other farms as well as state and federal regulators, to get all of the systems in place — including a new building that houses a cheese-aging “cave” set at 50 degrees, with 80 to 90 percent humidity at all times — but Grace Hill’s results are delicious.
Max currently makes five varieties of cheese, available at farmers markets year-round:
• Cheesecake: A soft, mold-ripened cheese that Max describes as “a sort of camembert brie type,” with a Bucheron-like texture similar to its namesake dessert. The eight hours of sit time between when Max adds the culture and the rennet produces a slight, but special, tanginess. Aged 60 days.
• Hilltown Blue: A creamy and fairly mild cheese inspired by a recipe for Jasper Hill Farm that mixes characteristics of an English Stilton and an Australian Milawa Blue. A little mushroomy, and very rich. Aged 120 days.
• Wild Alpine: A hard cheese in the style of a Gruyère with a buttery, nutty flavor — a result of the traditional alpine culture Max uses. Great atop French onion soup. Aged nine months.
• Clothbound Cheddar: A traditional English farmhouse cheddar. Danker and more floral than a standard Vermont cheddar, which is sharper and brighter. Smooth, fairly mild, and great paired with sticky-sweet sausages (if you’re feeling British). Aged roughly one year.
• Valais: A gooey, pungent, Raclette-style cheese that’s excellent for melting, as they do in the Swiss and French alps, atop toast, potatoes, or vegetables. Perhaps your best new go-to for grilled cheese sandwiches. Aged at least three months.
Grace Hill has pulled off quite a feat for a small, new farm: several distinct and consistent cheeses to be proud of. Max is humble about it, saying that “It’ll take me another 20 years until I feel I have a degree of mastery.” But I’m already sold on his additional products coming down the pike over the next year or so, like homemade cottage cheese and cream cheese — two products that are hard to find hand-made locally.
Grace Hill Farm sells artisan cheese at farmers markets in Lenox, Northampton, Springfield, Otis, and Amherst, with more on the way. Follow along at gracehilldairy.com.