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Mary Keehn is one of the mothers of artisan cheesemaking in America and the founder of Cypress Grove Chevre. She started acquiring Alpine goats in the 1970’s to have fresh milk for her daughters. Soon after, she was showing goats at state fairs and discovered that she had a knack for breeding Alpines. This talent led to an abundance of milk from a growing herd and she turned to cheesemaking in her kitchen as a way to put the milk to good use. The cheese Mary made developed a following and by 1983, her friends and family agreed to help her build a modest cheese plant near her home in Humboldt County (namesake of the infamous Humboldt Fog cheese), far north in California. A few years into the business, Mary realized that making her business a success was going to require her to spend more time in larger cities (San Francisco and Portland), focusing on sales and educating consumers about goat milk cheeses. At this point, there were not enough hours in the day for farming, managing the herd, making cheese, and marketing - so Mary found an individual who wanted to purchase her herd- something incredibly important to her- in its entirety. And thus Cypress Grove Chevre shifted from farmstead to a creamery operation supplied by goat dairies throughout the region. Cypress Grove continues to produce award-winning chevre and soft-ripened goat cheeses of various shapes and sizes. The idea for Humboldt Fog, quite possibly their most recognized cheese, came to Mary in a dream during a flight home from France. Seems hard to believe, but then thirty years ago, so did the idea of eating anything made with milk from goats!
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