English Farmstead Cheese

08/01/2025

Back in the saddle again, well for a couple of days at least. Enjoyed helping get Three Sisters Cheese & Provisions started on their cheese journey. Follow their page for updates and where to pick up your old favorites (it’s our recipes) and maybe some new things down the road who knows.

04/07/2025

This is the last piece of the retirement puzzle for us. We moved the equipment last week and closed all the business accounts this week. I am looking forward to Aaron's new adventure and yes he has all my Buttercup molds.

12/17/2024

Well its been almost three months since Helene devastated North Cove. We are doing OK but still isolated because our roads above and below are still not passable, hopefully soon they will be open again. Everyone here wants to offer a big Thank You for all the donations of feed, and especially fence posts and wire we received. Because of the generosity of strangers, friends, and family we were able to rebuild completely destroyed fences around two pastures. More work is needed around here and some equipment will need to be replaced but we will manage all that eventually. While we are not asking for donations of anything we would ask you to consider helping us and other local businesses around here out with something. For the last three months the area has been flooded with generous donations of hay from all over the country. This has been a blessing for a lot of animals on a lot of farms, but the trend we have begun to notice is that some of the hay entering the area is now for sale. Our request is if you are going to buy hay please buy from local farms that have plenty to sell, like us. We generate a lot of our revenue from hay sales and that didn’t happen this fall. Last season was a bumper crop for us and we have plenty. The loss of land up here cannot be replaced by anyone but along with that we have lost income that also cannot be replaced. While donations are great and appreciated just remember when you can buy local. Local producers of hay, feed, food, clothes, gifts etc. will really appreciate it because income that has been lost by circumstances beyond anyone’s control is hard to replace. So remember us if you need hay, call Terry at 828-442-3649 or meat from English Cattle Company call Jay at 828-803-8723 anytime but will especially help after the Holidays. All of us here wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.

Please do not message me here about prices of hay or meat, I don’t know. Call the above numbers.

10/11/2024

After two weeks of limited communication here I finally have enough cell service to let you know we are OK after Helene. While we still have no internet we do have power back, a marvelous thing. The main roads above and below are washed out so the only way in is the small narrow road we all call the Old Road. Retiring when we did was fortunate for us as after then storm our pasture and infrastructure as it is now is gone so we would have been forced to sell in a hurried way, most likely to slaughter. The 50 or so cows we do have are all well and fed. We did lose pasture and a couple hayfields and almost all our fence which resulted in an old fashion cattle round up down the middle of 221, glad there wasn’t much traffic. As for the cheese just glad I didn’t have to worry about it and my heart goes out to the other Cheesemakers in the area that did lose a little or a lot in some cases. My nephew Jay is operating the store and selling meat which he did manage to keep frozen with generators. Visit his page English Cattle Company if you are local I am sure he would deliver. Please support local when you can it is devastating to lose business and access in and out to that business. Most devastating of all is the loss of October revenue which around here a lot of small businesses absolutely must have to survive the winters.

The first picture was made a year ago, this is our house and the pasture is acros the road. The second and third are now all those trees and land between the road and the pasture are simply gone. The creek is 50 feet or more into the pasture. It’s course completely changed in 4 hours.

09/04/2024

Bruce and Barbara did love them some Cranberry Pecan and Roasted Garlic cheese spread back in the day. We enjoyed many wonderful visits and many laughs with them over the years. God Speed Bruce and Barbara I hope you know Luanne and I are thinking of you during these next few weeks and months.

“Bruce was a restaurant pioneer in downtown Marion,” said Freddie Killough. “He started with a simple and basic take-out food business and grew it into a downtown destination.”

06/27/2024

Change as defined by Webster’s dictionary is to make or become different. This summer here has been all about change. Today was the final step, we milked here for the last time. The milk cows were sold to a farm in Iredell county and the last of them left today. They are in a good home with folks that will love them as we did. The last milk pick up will be tonight. I am not lying the "change" also known as retirement has not been all easy. Time is an interesting commodity that sometimes one is not sure what to do with. We do still have cows but the twice daily attention to the detail known as milking is over and we sold the very last of our cheese this week as well. Terry and I are embarking on this new life which oddly enough allows us to spend more time together than we have ever been able to in 47 years, good thing we still like each other. Thanks for all your kind words, thoughts and prayers over that last couple of months. We are looking forward to the future and all it holds for us as my bucket list is ever growing. I will always keep in my heart the words that the fount of wisdom I just happen to live with said to me just this week, “It will be different but that doesn’t mean bad different. it very well may mean good different. ” Gonna be interesting to see how late he will sleep, my guess is he will still wake up at 4am to watch his daily farm digest.

06/15/2024

Hay, hay and more hay. Lots of spring rain and cow “fertilizer” has resulted in a bumper crop. If you or anyone you know is in the market for some really nice hay call Terry at 828-442-3649 for details. Leave a message if he doesn’t answer. Best if you don’t inquire here because I won’t be able to help you much. Hay is not my department.

05/04/2024

That’s a wrap for English Farmstead Cheese. Give us a week or so to clear out and let the new management get moved in. Until then you can still find Buttercup and Ashford Cheddar at TC Farms/PG Produce, Linville Falls Winery and here when the store reopens. Then please continue to shop at the little red shop on the hill. English Cattle Company and Sours Mountain Homestead Farm will open in a couple of weeks with much of the same we have had and even more. The Grand Opening Festival is scheduled for Memorial Day Weekend with lots of vendors and hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch. Stop on in. Thanks for everything. Terry and Susan

05/03/2024

Retirement is sweet in more ways than one thanks to Randy and Katrina at Hoyle's Son-Shine Artisan Works

04/29/2024

The Last: Its been bittersweet to experience the last of things. The Last gouda make, the last cheddar make, the last Buttercup make, the last jack make, the last spread make and tomorrow the last make ever which will be curds. I will not miss curds one bit even though I am aware the rest of the world will. You know I am not the only one who makes them. The last visit from Jody our state inspector, believe it or not I will miss getting to see him. Thanks for all your help over the entire time we have been here. I also want to give a shout out to Ted and Tory from Darlington Dairy Supply in the cheesiest state there is Wisconsin. Ted you are always welcome at my kitchen table any time you are passing thru these parts. When the store reopens Memorial Day weekend I will not be a part of it. Its just hard to go back after leaving. I wish Jay at English Cattle Company and Bob at Sours Mountain Homestead Farm all the success in the world and will help them with advice any time they wish it from me. I just will not be there physically. I am making a clean break (sort of a pun if you know anything about cheese making). The hardest last of all will be the day the cows leave. I am not going to lie a few tears may be shed that day by everyone here. We will move on but it will be different so think of us this summer as Terry and I along with everyone else here as we all adjust to a new life. Life is all about change. Many people have asked “What are you going to do?” My answer is Anything I want to, at least for a while. Thanks for everything but I esp. want to thank my family. I could not have done this without you. I love you all very much. I am going home next week to finally sit on this porch, work in these flowers whenever the mood strikes and mow lots of grass which is certainly not an unpleasant task for me.

04/22/2024

Just for fun: Our pet peeves and other stuff
Most everyone who works here has a customer pet peeve. These are a few of them.

Me: I do not like customers who show up when you are closed and expect you to open no matter what you are doing just because they are there. Believe me this happens every day. This was my “favorite.” One Sunday morning with several inches of snow on the ground and still snowing a SUV load of younger women pulled up into our snowy parking lot, got out, walked down to the milkbarn, found someone working down there. She asked if I could come out from my home on Sunday morning in the snow and open up for them. Surprise!! they did not get any cheese that morning.

Luanne: No surprise, she had a few pet peeves but her biggest would be those who are checking out and without warning decide they need something else. The ones that wonder off and leave you hanging with no regard for those waiting in line behind. Steam often rises from her ears when this happens and she would cancel their sale and move on to whoever was waiting behind. Oh yeah, she did not care for what she called “handsey” children.

Karen: she is by far the most patient of us all. Very little rattles her and when it does she rarely complains. There were times she just disappeared outside which often meant someone has gotten on her nerves and she is hiding until they are gone. (Luanne would go hide in the back when she needed an escape and Regina would just sigh and say “they made me tired.”)

My Mother or Grammer: Early on she would come and “work”, well mostly visit on Fridays. Those were the days when we also had a sample table. She was the guardian of the sample table. Grammer could not stand those customers who came in and as she called it had free lunch at the buffet. Often she would say “They came in and just ate like pigs and does no one ever watch their children anymore.” It was just best if you didn’t mess up Grammer’s sample table too much. What I wouldn’t give for one more Friday with her on her bench keeping vigil over that table.

Side note: We occasionally played the what kind of ice cream are you going to order game. When we sold Jack Frost Ice Cream often when a group would get out and walk thru the parking lot we would try to guess what flavor of ice cream they would order by what they looked like. It can be pretty predictable, Butter Pecan the preferred flavor of the older set and chocolate the favorite of kids, or chakite as Everett called it. If you know Everett it would be no surprise as a small fellow he had Mrs Jack Frost wrapped around his little finger so he got a lot of free chocolate cones from her. Miss Clara got her share of free cones also which is why I guess they always volunteered to go “help” pick up the ice cream order. Jim Burgin I am now headed to the Butter Pecan club as 65 is fast approaching, but it would be hard to beat nutty coconut.

04/19/2024

The gang’s all here, including the goats. We have three more weekends and are pretty well stocked but have begun to be out of a few things. Pepper Jack, Tomato Basil Jack and flavored curds are forever gone. We are out of a few spreads but will make the final run this week so will have plenty of those next two weeks. Come visit for all the rest until they too are gone.