A growing market for goat cheese presents an opportunity for central Minnesota's goat producers, but they are unable to help meet demand now that a Canadian company has stopped processing their milk.
Woolwich Dairy Inc., a Canada-based company that makes goat cheese, told 20 central Minnesota dairy goat producers last month that the company would no longer pick up their milk to process.
That's a serious issue for the state's goat dairy farmers, many of whom are not close to processing facilities, said Georgia Raymond, the cheese buyer for one of the Mississippi Market Natural Foods Co-ops. In Minnesota, processors are few and far between. That's why most of the local goat cheese the co-ops carry is produced in Wisconsin.
One of these farmers who depended on Woolwich is Missy Isder who has a small dairy farm just north of Little Falls. Since Woolwich ceased its pick-ups, Isder has been feeding some of the milk produced by her 140 milking herd to calves and dumping the rest.
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