Tieton Farm & Creamery
Tieton Farm & Creamery is a small solar powered farm raising mostly dairy goats and sheep, we make cheese for you non-farmers who want to support responsible farming, fight global warming and eat delicious, chemical free food made by hand and not by machines.
| Shining Bright in Wine Country
Tieton Farm & Creamery is a women-owned, solar-powered creamery located in Tieton, Washington, which is in the Upper Yakima Valley just northwest of Yakima. The Yakima Valley is famous for its wine-making and hops-growing, but Tieton Farm & Creamery is putting cheese on the map there, too!
Photo credit to Tieton Farm & Creamery
| The Perfect Variety
Tieton Farm & Creamery makes cheeses with a blend of sheep and goat’s milks. The majority of their cheeses are soft, fresh varieties or different kinds of soft-ripened and soft, washed-rind styles. They do make a couple of firmer, aged cheeses, as well. Some of the more widely available favorites include Bianca (soft, fresh), Sonnet (bloomy-rind), Rheba (washed-rind Reblochon-style), and Black Pearl (ash-ripened bloomy-rind). Their Ricotta, if you can find it, is life changing.
Photo courtesy of Tieton Farm & Creamery’s Facebook page.
| Zero Carbon Footprint
Sustainability is the core mission at Tieton Farm & Creamery, where they proudly proclaim, “We have a zero carbon footprint on our raw material—just a lot of hoof prints!”
In addition to being solar-powered, the farm refrains from using “artificial fertilizers and poisons.” They are committed to taking just as good of care of the 21 acres of soil on which they farm as they are of the animals they raise on it. That means not only using natural methods to maintain the grounds, but also planting a diversity of plants, raising a variety of animals (including pigs, ducks, turkeys, and more), and recycling all of the farm’s organic waste back into the farm system. They only source locally produced, non-GMO feed for their animals, and they are dedicated to supporting other local farms and producers.
Tieton Farm and Creamery’s vision for the future is a world in which all farms replace the mono-cropping model with a diversity of crops and animals, returning the earth to a healthy, food-producing system. Hear, hear!
Photo credit to Janee Muha, The Mobile Monger
| Rotational Grazing System
Tieton Farm & Creamery keeps their animals on pasture for as many months of the year as Washington’s weather will allow. They practice a rotational grazing system, which involves regularly moving the animals to a new spot of fresh greens once they have eaten down the vegetation in their current section to a certain level. This allows the animals to eat a variety of plant foods, as something different might be growing in different parts of the pasture, and it gives the pasture a break and prevents over-grazing. And of course the animals get to explore all parts of the farm rather than just being stuck in one spot.
Photo credit to Janee Muha, The Mobile Monger
| Lively Namesakes
Did you know that Tieton Farm & Creamery names their cheeses after the animals whose milk makes them so delicious? The farm is proud to have a herd in which they know every animal by name, and they celebrate those animals with decadent cheeses for which local cheese afficionados clamor.
For example, there’s Bianca, a beautiful white goat, after whom the creamery’s luscious, soft-fresh cheese, Bianca, is named. Ember is a beautiful young, red goat, after whom the creamery named its newest cheese—Ember—which is a washed-rind semi-soft cheese with a layer of ash in the middle, somewhat like French Morbier but much dreamier. And then there’s Venus, a goat with the personality of a goddess; they named their hard, cider-washed cheese after her.
Photo credit to Janee Muha, The Mobile Monger
| Love at the Core
Tieton Farm & Creamery is owned by Lori and Ruth Babcock, who started the creamery in 2010 after leaving behind their jobs at a software company in Seattle. Ruth is the herdswoman and Lori is the cheesemaker.
As they write on their website, “We are extremely lucky that we found each other, found what we loved to do, found the right place, found the right people to do it with. We, the owners Ruth & Lori, have been in love with each other for over 20 years. We let love control everything.” You can really taste that their cheeses are made with love, every step of the way.
Photo credit to Janee Muha, The Mobile Monger
| Blended to Perfection
There are very few creameries in Washington making mixed-milk cheeses, and Tieton Farm & Creamery is one of them. In addition to the Ricotta and Halloumi you can find at their farmer’s market booths, the creamery has a lineup of 10 cheeses—all of them made with a blend of sheep and goat’s milk from their own herd. As they put it, “The goat milk adds that special tang and vibrancy, and the sheep milk brings nuttiness and creaminess. Together they give the cheese complexity and the best of both flavor profiles.”
Photo credit to Janee Muha, The Mobile Monger
| The Black Pearl
Black Pearl is one of Tieton Farm & Creamery’s most striking cheeses. As all of their cheeses, it is named after one of the farm’s goats (in this case, it is a black goat named Black Pearl). This is an ash-covered bloomy-rind cheese made from pasteurized sheep and goat’s milks. The ash comes from grape leaves, and it adds an earthy flavor note. The cheese is aged for one to two weeks, and it goes through quite the transformation during its lifecycle: starting as a firm, crumbly creamy nugget and evolving into a gooey, melting morsel that falls apart when you cut into it. It helps that it is striking on a platter, too!
Photo credit to Courtney Johnson
| Aged Masterpieces
While the majority of Tieton Farm & Creamery’s cheeses are younger, soft cheeses that must be made with pasteurized milk due to FDA regulations, the creamery does make three hard, aged cheeses from raw milk: Calypso, Monalisa, and Venus. All three are made from a blend of sheep and goat’s milks; Calypso and Venus are aged for about 12 months each, and Monalisa is aged for four to 10 months. Venus is washed with hard cider from Tieton Cider Works in an expression of local terroir. Calypso is also a product of its local agricultural system, as it is infused with hops from the Yakima Valley and then washed in a Yakima Valley beer. Monalisa is a caprino pecorino Romano-style cheese made in small batches of about three wheels at a time, some with and some without peppercorns.
Photo credit to Janee Muha, The Mobile Monger
