Creamy cheeses, treats and lots of love take center stage at this Louisville-area goat farm

Most people think goat cheese is one thing: a soft, creamy-white cheese.

And while soft chèvre cheese is perhaps the most well-known goat cheese, it's not the only one. Goat cheese is simply cheese made from goat milk, as opposed to cow milk or sheep milk.

Challenging this misconception is something David Taylor and Beth Boesch-Taylor, owners of goat farm Sirocco Ridge Farm in southern Indiana, have to do with most new customers at farmer's markets.

"You wouldn’t go to the store and say 'I want some cow cheese, please,'" Boesch-Taylor said. "It's just all cheese made from the milk of a goat, whether you're buying a chèvre, which a lot of people think of as goat cheese, or a feta or ricotta made from goat milk."

Taylor said several area goat farmers make fancy goat cheeses that work great on cheeseboards. At Sirocco Ridge, the focus is cheeses that are great to use as ingredients in all kinds of pasta, cheesecakes, and any number of dishes — though they look great on a charcuterie board, too.

Sirocco Ridge isn't a large or flashy farm, running with just five employees, 26 acres, 56 goats, and a handful of chickens. But by focusing on sustainable farming and animal welfare from the beginning, Taylor and Boesch-Taylor hope to make a big impact on their community.

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About 30% of the farm's energy is produced from solar panels on the barn, which power electric fence chargers and the creamery. The farm's goats fed on local hay from two family farms and roam pastures or forage for at least 12 hours a day. Their diet is supplemented by high-quality dairy goat feed, which makes a creamy milk that tastes of toasted grains and fresh grass, which in turn makes delicious cheeses, Taylor said.

"We're local. We don't want to be international," Taylor said. "We want to be transporting locally so you have a local product. That's sustainable. We support farmers markets that accept SNAP and EBT. We pay our team members a living wage. Those are the primary things we apply to the whole farm."

While the couple officially opened Sirocco Ridge Farm in 2013, they didn't start making milk and cheese until 2020. When the pandemic forced the local creamery they were using to shut down, the Taylors decided to build their own creamery in a recycling shipping container right next to the milking room. The first cheese made entirely on property was launched last March.

"We're now in Indianapolis and Louisville with Harvey's Cheese. They were a believer in our work from the very beginning," Boesch-Taylor said. "They have always had a real attention to making a diversity of cheeses, not just for cheese boards but for recipes."

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Sirocco Ridge Farm currently makes four kinds of goat cheese. The best-seller is its flagship cheese, "The Big Softy," a soft, fresh cheese with a créme fraiche-like taste, smooth texture and rich flavor. Then there are two cheeses in the Caprini Legacy series, carried forward from the now-closed Caprini Creamery: a Caprini Legacy feta, with a creamy feel, complex flavor and slightly less salt than other fetas, and a Caprini Legacy chèvre, a traditional, hand-packed chevre with a slightly dry and tangy flavor, perfect for spreading on bread or crackers.

The last cheese is a salty sea goat fetta-style cheese, which begins as a block cheese and spends a minimum of 30 days in brine. Younger blocks have a bright tang, and the longer it's aged, the deeper the flavor.

Because the farm's goats graze outdoors, each season's cheese tastes just a bit different, Taylor explained.

"We made our first cheese of this year on March 6," Boesch-Taylor said. "The cheese is super creamy right now. It tastes like spring. Your body wants to eat seasonal flavors, so it's really satisfying. It's delicious."

This year, Sirocco Ridge Farm has doubled its herd size to keep up with demand. It's planning to add aged cheeses to the lineup soon, including a goat gouda, coated in vegetarian cheese wax and aged a minimum of 60 days, and a Manchego-style hard cheese, aged at least 30 days with a rind hand-rubbed with Spanish olive oil. After that, it'll get started on making gelato.

"It's awesome, we have sold out of every cheese we've made," Boesch-Taylor said. "And part of that luck is we had people believe in us before we believed in ourselves. Our goal was, what does the community need that they're not currently getting? Let's make some of that."

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Customers can buy Sirocco Farm products at a variety of local businesses, including Donum Dei Brewery in New Albany, Indiana, Foxhollow Farm in Crestwood, Kentucky, Lotsa Pasta International Food Shop in Louisville, delivery concept Market Wagon and farmer's markets in Indianapolis and Jeffersonville, Indiana.

Sirrocco Ridge Farm staff milk the goats twice a day. Last year, it produced 50,000 pounds of milk, which was used to make 4,000 pounds of cheese. This year's larger herd is expected to produce more milk and cheese — and more goats and kids to sell as well because the farm simply cannot keep them all.

Male goats born on the farm serve a purpose, too. The Taylors often take a group of them out as hiking companions, and they can be rented out in groups of eight as "grazers," to help homeowners take care of overgrown areas on their land. Some male goats are kept for breeding, and others are used for their meat, processed by the halal company Brewer Livestock and sold to places like Open Caribbean Kitchen, a restaurant in Louisville.

Taylor said there are goat farms in the country with tens of thousands of goats who live their entire lives indoors.

"Our girls live outside, and our milk has a terroir [unique environmental quality] for the plants that grow in this area. There's a flavor there you will not get anywhere else, and we take pride in that."

Boesch-Taylor said one of the best benefits of buying products directly from farmers is being part of the story, knowing exactly where that food came from.

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"The other thing is the closer we can get to the source of the food, the less environmental impact we have and the more nutrients you can get out of it," she said. "Eating isn't just something w do socially. It's something we do biologically and that's important."

For more information on Sirocco Ridge Farm and how to purchase cheese or dairy goats, visit siroccoridgefarm.com.

Reach food reporter Dahlia Ghabour at dghabour@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Sirocco Ridge Farm brings locally-made goat cheese to Louisville