A Long, Long Time Ago (2003)...

Keeley McGarr was a Sophomore at the University of Vermont.  Having grown up on a dairy farm, she was trying to decide how she could fit into the family business once done with college.  Keeley landed a work-study job at Shelburne Farms, making cheddar cheese from their herd of grazing Brown Swiss cows.  A few months of being constantly bent over a cheese vat, lifting 40 lb. cheese forms, sweating, while being told cheesemaking was really "A job for men, with lots of upper body strength," and she was hooked! 

A few years passed and Keeley was a Senior at UVM.  She decided to study abroad in Ireland.  While in Galway, she visited some dairies and admired their green pastures, with cows being grazed almost all year. 

After coming back to UVM for a cheesemaking course at the Institute for Artisan Cheese, a classmate suggested Keeley might enjoy a cheese internship in Ireland.  So in Fall of 2008, it was back to the Green Isle, this time with the goal of learning how the Irish craft their award-winning washed rind cheeses.  Three months of observation and training followed, centered around Gubbeen Farmhouse Cheese on the wild Atlantic Coast in West Cork.  This experience affirmed Keeley's love of natural-rinded cheeses, developed with individual attention, each cheese unique, due to the microflora of the region where it's created.

Keeley came back to Central New York with a firm vision in her mind.  Keeley's Cheese Co. was created in September of 2009, and renovations began!  Thanks to an amazingly hardworking team of family and friends, the old farmhouse is now 'the Cheese House,' and the special microflora in our Finger Lakes have begun their job of influencing these unique cheeses.