Twig Farm visits the WNYC.or Green Space

Yesterday Michael had the honor of participating in a live forum hosted by Leonard Lopate on chese and agriculture at the WNYC.org Green Space.  The bright lighting for video in the studio was very bright and overall I think the event was good.

Here's a screen shot of the taping our friend J.Nordberg took.

Here's a link to the description and an archive of the taping:
Agri + Culture (aka Fermentation and Civilization): Cheese 

Guests for the taping included: 

• Anne Saxelby, founder and co-owner of NYC cheese shop Saxelby Cheesemongers
• Michael Lee, cheese maker at Twig Farm
• Bennett Konesni, an expert in field workers’ songs
• Keith McNally, owner of Cafe Luxembourg, Pravda, Balthazar, and Minetta Tavern among other restaurants

As the years go by we're discovering that more and more of a percentage of our cheese sold is sold at the Middlebury Farmer's Market and at the Middlebury food coop.  It is such an honor to hear from friends when they have our cheese served to them.  We're so grateful that folks enjoy our cheese and allow us to continue to produce it.  Good eating of our cheese in our neighborhood seems to happen most often in the home kitchens and more and more of our cheese is consumed there.  So many of our friends seem to enjoy their best meals at home, with family and sometimes with friends.  We live in a community of good cooks, of homes that eat dinners together at home.  I'm surprised how infrequently we eat out here compared with how often we'd eat out when we lived in cities.  Our local way is to enjoy most of our special meals at home, sometimes in restaurants, but most often at home.


Michael makes a negative comment in the video about local restaurants which made our son Carter tap on the computer screen and say, what? that's not true.  Our current favorite local restaurants are The Shoreham Inn, Tourterelle, The Black Sheep, The BobCat Cafe, and The Inn at Baldwin Creek and the cafeteria at our local elementary school.  Many of our local restaurants create dishes from the bounty of exquisite foods that our county produces.  We know that the cost of product features into the decisions that restaurants and schools have to make to make ends meet and to provide a variety of dishes. So, sometimes the small local producer can't compete in terms of availability or cost with the bigger marketed products.  Our cheese because of our scale, is more expensive than commodity cheese.   We wish our neighbors would and could eat more of it.