Achadinha Cheese Co. Farm Tour
CUESA visits Achadinha Cheese Company in Petaluma, where the Pacheco family raises goats and makes cheese from their milk. All photos by Barry Jan.
We drove to Achadinha Cheese Company in Petaluma, where the Pacheco family raises goats and makes cheese from their milk.
Donna Pacheco (at right) greeted us in the driveway of her property.
In the foreground is Donna's husband Jim Pacheco. Jim's family started a ranch in 1955 in Bodega Bay, then relocated to Petaluma in 1969. In 1997, he and Donna sold most of their cows and bought dairy goats.
The Pachecos have four children, including Elizabeth (12), pictured here. They all do work around the farm.
The Pachecos live on the farm.
The goats line up and push their way into the building to get milked
Inside, their teats (2 per goat) are hooked up to a milking machine. It takes around 5 minutes to milk each goat and the milking lasts form 7 am to 1 pm. The second milking starts at 6 pm. Each goat produces around one gallon a day.
Achadinha raises six breeds of goat: La Mancha, Saanen, Nubian, (these give milk with the highest butterfat), Toggenburg, Oberhasli, and Alpine. They don't keep the breeds separate, so the result is a pretty mixed herd.
This is Jose; he lives and works on the farm with the Pachecos and is responsible for the bulk of the milking.
Next, Donna took us into her brand new cheese making facility. This is Donna's 10th year making cheese, but until now she has always had to rent space in other facilities. This year the Pachecos finally got the money together to finish building a new space just for making and aging their cheeses. When we visited, there were 1800 wheels of cheese in the process of being aged.
Wheels of cheese are pressed between plastic slabs, weighed down with tubs of water. These will become Capricious.
The Capricious cheese, pictured here, gets rubbed by hand with several coats of olive oil as it ages. The shelves are made of cypress, which Donna believes contributes subtly to the flavor of the cheeses. No two wheels of cheese are the same. "I'm not interested in conformity," says Donna. "I tell people we're consistently inconsistent."
"I like aged cheese," says Donna. "I'm just not passionate about Chevre." The mold changes with the seasons.
Donna came home one day and her husband said, "Your new car is here!" Her $20,000 stainless steel tank had just arrived. She is very happy to have it.
Donna loves talking about her cheese. Also pictured here are her goat sausages.
The goats go out to the pasture every day, but there's not much nutrition in the grass in the summer, so their diet is supplemented with alfalfa hay and brewer's grains (a by-product of the beer making process).
Elizabeth brought us some Broncha (the less-aged variety they make) to sample.
We all walked out to the loafing barn to see the 800 goats the Pachecos have on the farm. (They have another 800 pregnant goats at a separate facility).
Elizabeth and the other Pacheco children have all helped the goats give birth at some point.
The Pachecos do most of their own veterinary work.
The male goats look very different from the females. The Pachecos keep about six of them to mate with the females. Other newborn male goats are sold at auction.
The goats are very smart, social animals. As Donna put it: "they have cliques."
They also like to have their heads scratched.
The farm picks up whey from local creameries to supplement their animals' diets. (They also raise a few cows, sheep and pigs).
The Pacheco ladies bid us farewell!
