As promised, we have done nothing blog-worthy in the past week unless you would be interested in the great refrigerator swap-out of 2010. That was a production. We had an enormous, old, ex-country store display refrigerator here in the Inn, and it drew it’s last breath last week. So it had to be replaced, which means it needed to be removed from the premises. Ah…but we have built a grill room extension on the kitchen since the days when the refrigerator entered the Inn. We came up with several other potential plans that did not involve it having to exit the Inn; turning it into a hot tub, tossing it down the basement stairs and storing fuel in it, taking a chain saw to the front of the Inn and making a quick, new door –  before careful planning, much measuring, removing of several doors, moving a lot of furniture, three guys, two dollys and the 1985 Chevy pickup got involved. It’s out, it was painful, but it’s done.

Sorry, this post is supposed to be about cheese. Because refrigerator maintenance, while a large part of an innkeeper’s life, may not be what you would come to Vermont to see. But, you might want to come check out our cheeses. We have wonderful cheeses. I know I am partial, but Addison County in particular has wonderful cheese. I thought I’d talk about one local producer, so I can talk about others at another time (when perhaps toilet repair has featured heavily in the week’s activities, and you won’t want to hear about that either…) Today we will talk about Twig Farm. It is run by Michael Lee and Emily Sunderman, and they make fantastic goat cheeses. I have to admit, I really was not a huge goat cheese fan, but only when I moved to Vermont and started tasting the local cheeses did I learn that there is much more to goat cheese than chevre, which was all I knew. Twig Farm makes wonderful aged cheeses, blue cheeses, soft, pungent European style cheeses, all from goats milk. The first time they had us over to taste some of their cheeses and meet the goats Dominic and I fell a little bit in love with everything about Twig Farm – the cheeses are delicious, Michael and Emily are intelligent and passionate about what they do, their house and work spaces are wonderful, and they have names for all their goats, who really like to rub the tops of their heads up against your legs, and that is pretty darn cute. For a while Dominic tried to convince me we could use a goat for a pet. (Two goats actually – you have to get goats in pairs, they make friends for life and if they are separated from their first friend, they become loner goats. Very sad.)

Vermont cheese has become increasingly popular over the time we have lived here, and if you are interested in sampling locally, the fantastic Middlebury Farmer’s Market is a great place to pick up cheeses and meet and talk to the producers. If you are here when the Farmer’s Market is not in session, the Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op also has a very wide selection. Another idea would be to sign up for a Vermont Farm Tour, some of which focus exclusively on cheesemakers. And finally there is a great map put out by the Vermont Cheese Council, called the Cheese Trail Map, which details all of the cheesemakers in the state and gives locations and hours of operation for those farms that do open themselves up to the public.