Producer
Jasper Hill Farm
City: Greensboro, VT,
Website: jasperhillfarm.com
About Us
The Kehler family was looking for meaningful work in a place that they loved. Young brothers Andy and Mateo, along with their wives, Victoria and Angie, pooled their life savings and bought a rocky hillside farm in Vermont's subarctic climate zone near the Canadian border. What made the Northeast Kingdom region special to them was the sleepy village of Greensboro with its sparkling, secluded Caspian Lake - where their family had found summer respite for more than 100 years.
Greensboro's sparse population and rural locale held few opportunities for conventional career paths. The old dairy barn they found themselves with hadn't seen cows for nearly 40 years. Small-scale farms like this were becoming more difficult to keep up and running - a 50 cow farm like theirs would have to compete with average herd sizes of about 900 cows out west, as all of that milk is priced by the same commodity market. About a third of the farms in town sold their cows in 1998; the same year that the Kehlers bought what locals referred to as "the old Jasper Hill farm."
So from the start, Andy and Mateo realized their farm would have to be different. They set out out to create a model for small-scale dairy farming that could offer more opportunities for Vermont's working landscape. The concept was called value-added agriculture: the practice of transforming a raw material like milk into something more valuable before it leaves the farmer.
Greensboro's sparse population and rural locale held few opportunities for conventional career paths. The old dairy barn they found themselves with hadn't seen cows for nearly 40 years. Small-scale farms like this were becoming more difficult to keep up and running - a 50 cow farm like theirs would have to compete with average herd sizes of about 900 cows out west, as all of that milk is priced by the same commodity market. About a third of the farms in town sold their cows in 1998; the same year that the Kehlers bought what locals referred to as "the old Jasper Hill farm."
So from the start, Andy and Mateo realized their farm would have to be different. They set out out to create a model for small-scale dairy farming that could offer more opportunities for Vermont's working landscape. The concept was called value-added agriculture: the practice of transforming a raw material like milk into something more valuable before it leaves the farmer.
Practices
Jasper Hill is a working dairy farm with an on-site creamery in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. An underground aging facility maximizes the potential of cheeses made by the creamery, as well as those made by other local producers. Leftover whey from the cheesemaking process is fed to heritage breed pigs, roaming the woodlands beyond the cows' pasture.
Jasper Hill's mission is to make the highest possible quality products in a way that supports Vermont's working landscape. We are driven to be the standard bearer of quality and innovation in the artisan cheese industry while promoting our regional taste of place.
Jasper Hill's mission is to make the highest possible quality products in a way that supports Vermont's working landscape. We are driven to be the standard bearer of quality and innovation in the artisan cheese industry while promoting our regional taste of place.