Published on March 25, 2009

Marisa Mauro, left, and Princess Maclean started the Ploughgate Creamery in Albany almost a year ago. Photos by Bethany M. Dunbar

ALBANY — Princess Maclean and Marisa Mauro started making cheese a year ago this May.  Called Ploughgate Creamery, their tiny agricultural enterprise is unusual in at least one noteworthy way.

They have no animals.

“Our whole motivation behind this is to be farmers,” said Ms. Mauro with a wide smile.

They just haven’t got quite that far yet.

Both young women always wanted to have a dairy farm and make cheese.  Both have worked in a variety of cheese-making settings and learned a lot about it, with hands-on experience — from California to Shelburne Farms and locally.  Not only did they learn how to make amazing, incredible cheeses, they learned about marketing as well.  So instead of starting with the farming end of things, they decided to start with the cheesemaking and selling end.  In theory, they will master the second part of the process first, so they won’t have to be figuring it all out at once and suffer the consequences of milking cows and having no market for large quantities of milk.

So far, so good.

Ploughgate Creamery cheeses are mostly soft cheeses, like brie.  The cheeses are smooth, rich and creamy, slightly tangy, and the cheesemakers are working on varieties including one washed with ice cider, so the rind carries the local beverage’s distinct flavor.

The two make small batches of cheese, between 25- and 45-gallon batches, or about 45 pounds of cheese, three or four times a week.  In the winter they use cow’s milk because sheep’s milk is seasonal, but they use sheep’s milk in the summertime.  They buy the milk from local farmers and pasteurize it.  Although they would like to make some raw milk cheeses at some point, they aren’t ready yet. Raw milk cheeses require a 60-day aging process.

“I have a hard time bragging, but when people try it, they like it,” said Ms. Maclean.  So far they have been selling Ploughgate cheeses at farmers’ markets and at the Buffalo Mountain Cooperative in Hardwick.  Claire’s Restaurant in Hardwick uses some Ploughgate cheese in its menu as well, and Ploughgate cheeses are a featured part of the community supported agriculture shares at Pete’s Greens in Craftsbury.

If Ms. Maclean’s first name seems unusual, it’s good to know that she was named by her sister, who was four years old at the time.  Her sister’s name is Emmy Lou Harris Maclean.

Ms. Maclean was born in Massachusetts and went to Sterling College in Craftsbury, studying sustainable agriculture.  Ms. Mauro, who grew up in Dorset, Vermont, also went to Sterling, but only for a year.

“I’ve just been working on farms that produced cheese ever since I was 16,” she said.  She currently works part-time for Lowell Urie.

Ms. Maclean worked at Neil Urie’s sheep dairy, Bonnieview, for five years.  Her husband, Nathan van Gulden, works at Jasper Hill Farm in Greensboro.  Ploughgate ages some of its cheeses in the caves at Jasper Hill.

Ms. Mauro worked at Bonnieview as well.  The two young women decided to work together to create the new creamery.  They discovered a

These are some of the soft-ripened cheeses made by Ploughgate Creamery: Hartwell, Willoughby, and Winter Trials, which is made with an ice cider brine.

creamery in Albany that was not being used.  Built by Frankie and Marybeth Whitten, the creamery was the former home of Up a Creek creamery, which made sheep milk cheese and hard cheese for a few years.  For Ms. Maclean and Ms. Mauro, leasing the place was a great way to get started.

The goal of making great cheese has been achieved, but it’s far from the point where the two are making a living.

“We haven’t made any money yet, and we are working all the time, but we love it,” said Ms. Maclean.  She said they have a business plan, and that has helped.

“We never want to be big,” said Ms. Mauro.

As for the cattle, Ms. Mauro already owns a Holstein-Jersey cross and a Holstein calf.  They are boarding at Neil Fromm’s, one of the farms they buy milk from.  Ms. Maclean said she would like to have about ten cows, but her husband would like to have about 20.

“We want our farm, but it’s fun to work with other farmers too,” said Ms. Mauro.

Both said they’d like to be milking their own cows in two to five years.

It has been helpful for both women to work as a team.  They said although their experiences have been similar, they are not the same and they have been able to learn from each other and bounce ideas off each other.  The two are at the creamery six days a week, but not always at the same time.  Their paths tend to cross in the middle part of the day, a time for discussion and brainstorming.

The artisan cheesemaking culture in northern Vermont has been extremely supportive of their new little business.  Ms. Maclean and Ms. Mauro said the Vermont Cheese Council has been helpful, as have Jasper Hill, Bonnieview and Laini Fondiler in Westfield, who has Lazy Lady cheese.  Cheesemakers in this network tend to help each other instead of seeing each other as competition.  This came in handy for Ploughgate as Ms. Maclean and Ms. Mauro searched for second-hand equipment to save money.

Jasper Hill helps with aging in the caves, and with distribution.

One type of recipe the Ploughgate ladies have been experimenting with lately is cheese washed in a brine made of micro-brewed beer.

Recently the two traveled to Brooklyn, New York, for a tasting at a pub.  They met someone who knew Ms. Fondiler, who makes a cheese called Sweet Emotion.  This person told them that Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, who co-wrote the song “Sweet Emotion” which the cheese is named after, had discovered the Sweet Emotion cheese in New York and loved it.

Ms. Maclean and Ms. Mauro were quite excited to hear that news.  When they got home they called her and left a long message about it on her telephone answering machine.

It seems it’s a small, sweet world in the northern Vermont cheese business — and it’s full of emotion.