Lum Farm is a goat and sheep dairy located on beautiful Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands. The farm is located on the Coffelt Farm Preserve, a historic farm now owned by the San Juan County Conservation Land Bank with the mission to remain a working farm in perpetuity.

Photo credit to Lum Farm.

Lum Farm is the only licensed dairy on Orcas Island in San Juan County! The Lum Family took up the mantle when the cheesemaker who preceded them retired. The Lums bought the business and formally became a fully licensed goat dairy.

Photo credit to Lum Farm.

Amy and Eric Lum of Lum Farm got into cheesemaking as a 4-H project with their youngest daughter, Rachel. They partnered with a local goat dairy and took on a spring’s worth of kids, and then raised four on their own. That got them making lots of fresh chevre and Mozzarella, as well as some bloomy-rind cheese. They then apprenticed with Jenny Myers of Myers Creamery and inherited her recipes when she retired.

Photo credit to Lum Farm.

Lum Farm specializes in goat’s milk cheeses, although they add a little bit of sheep’s milk to their Feta. They have a herd of Nubian and Nubian/Boer cross goats. According to Mandy, who manages marketing efforts for the farm, the goats, “have lovely long ears, have lots to say and make loads of creamy milk!”

Photo credit to Lum Farm.

Lum Farm makes a variety of goat’s milk cheeses, including plain and herbed fresh Chevre, Gouda, Feta, Tomme, and an aged Chevre they call, “Bloomin’ Hazel.”

Bloomin’ Hazel has quickly become the farm favorite as they spent time developing and refining it over the past year. Bloomin’ Hazel is an aged, ash-ripened Chevre that has a white, bloomy rind. It has a soft, runny paste beneath the rind that blends with the goat’s milk’s acidic tang. It is a seasonal cheese that they look forward to sharing with their community in the spring and in the fall.

Photo credit to Lum Farm.

If you are hoping to find Lum Farm’s cheeses for sale, you will have to head to Orcas Island to buy them. They sell their cheeses through their on-site farm store, as well as at other Orcas Island restaurants and grocery stores. The farm store sells not only the dairy products made in the creamery, but also offers farm-grown vegetables, meat, eggs, wool and hides, and other Island-made goods and gift items.

Photo credit to Lum Farm.

If you are looking for another reason to visit Orcas Island so that you can hit up Lum Farm, here it is: Lum Farm is the only licensed goat’s milk ice cream maker in Washington State. They have flavors like vanilla, coffee, and chocolate, as well as cajeta swirl and seasonal flavors like blueberry, blackberry, and peach. You can order the ice cream to eat on the farm, or you can buy pints to take home.

Photo credit to Lum Farm.

Another exciting dairy product that Lum Farm makes is cajeta, a goat’s milk caramel. Lots of small goat dairies make cajeta as a way of using the whey leftover after cheesemaking, and we can’t think of a more delicious method of recycling. Lum Farm’s cajeta is perfectly creamy and spreadable, and the flavor is not at all goaty! When Amy Lum brought the cajeta to sample at this year’s Seattle Cheese & Meat Festival in October, she was able to win over several folks who said they didn’t like goat cheese, just by sampling her cajeta to them. When they tasted it, they couldn’t believe it was made with goat’s milk. Well played, Lum Farm!

Photo credit to Lum Farm.

If a farmstead creamery is a creamery where the animals’ milk is both produced and made into cheese on the farm, then Lum Farm is a true farmstead creamery. They do all of the work of running a farm—from harvesting hay, composting bedding and manure into fields, delivering babies and milking the goats—right through to the processes of cheesemaking and affinage, packaging, marketing, and sales. The creamery is family-owned and -run, with a couple of additional staff hired in from the community. There’s a lot of work to do, and everyone has something to keep them busy!

Photo credit to Lum Farm.

If you ask the folks at Lum Farm what is most important about their work, they will tell you this: “Community involvement and education is very important to us. We try to open up as many aspects of the farm as possible while balancing the many daily chores. As a result, our community feels invested in this farm and part of the story of this chapter of Island agriculture.” Hear, hear!

Photo credit to Lum Farm.