Bee Tree Farm

Yesterday morning Filipa milked the goats for the very last time in 2018. She texted me with a full report telling me who acted which way to which goat, how udders looked, how the vacuum pump ran. She listed off a few tasks we needed to consider accomplishing in the parlor and made suggestions about when might be the best time to complete them. I responded the way I usually do with her these days, I said “yes, great, perfect!” as I generally defer to her judgment. I’ve learned that, 99.9% of the time, it’s best. I was feeding the horses when she texted, scratching muzzles, listening to the snuffling sound of their noses buried in grain, lips gathering up mouthfuls. The air was suspended in puffs of steam against the cold chill of morning. Their equine scent, so reminiscent of oiled leather, musk, the dry, course smell of hay, hung heavy beneath the rafters of the shed where they eat and find shelter from the elements. I breathed it in deeply, staring at the text on my phone from a person who has – literally – changed my life. The reality of standing with the horses while someone else stands in the dairy is a palpable luxury. I do not take it for granted.

We started this place in July of 2016, but I was first licensed sometime in April of that year. My inspector, who I’d been trying to lure out for a final inspection FOR WEEKS, finally showed up at the farm gate unannounced just as one of my goats went into labor. My two human babies were not yet one, and my mother was holding one on the front porch, urging another to come back to her as he crawled fast towards the line of fire ants marching across the concrete. In the middle of this chaos my inspector was let into the gate, let into the dairy. I raced between the dairy building and my barn where Rosie was pushing out triplets. I answered the state inspector’s questions while wiping miscellaneous goat fluids from my hands. Without ceremony, she presented me with two licenses. And without emotion she stated, “Here, put these on your wall. They prove you’re now licensed to legally produce cheeses in the state of TX. Call me with questions.” Then she packed up her pens and notebooks and shut the door as I stood in the middle of (what was then) a gleaming building, the epoxy so fresh you could still smell the chemicals leaching. I was paralyzed, stunned by this monumental victory which had taken so many years to achieve, so many false starts, so much blind faith in a goal I did not yet fully understand. I know I trembled slightly with the raw power of it all, the keys to some mysterious kingdom she’d handed me. I walked to the little hand wash sink in the milk room, scrubbed up to my elbows (which had just been buried inside a goat’s birth canal). Dried my hands. Turned off the light, walked home. My hands shook as I texted Jeremy from the barn, Rosie’s triplet’s learning to stand on rubber legs and wobbling across my feet. “Jeremy. Holy shit. Please come home. The dairy is licensed.”

My mother agreed to stay an extra two hours that day so that we could run to the tiny Mexican restaurant in our tiny town and eat nachos in celebration while a mariachi band played next to our table, competing with the evening news blasting on the TV suspended above our head. I remember it all so clearly because I had the foresight to understand the relevance of that particular day in the history of our lives.

Three months later the first cheeses produced in our commercial kitchen were sold off the farm. They were purchased with the money people earned working at jobs they probably didn’t love. They chose to share some of that wealth with me. In exchange I gave them small wedges of the fermented milk we make here (because that’s really all cheese is). I was in awe of the fact that what these goats produced could somehow be exchanged for money. So I kept at it. The rest of the year was hard. It was bad. Many mistakes were made, and the only person to correct them was me. I felt lonely and petrified and sure it was ALL a mistake. That’s how I ended 2016.

So it is, truly, no small thing that as we end 2018, our third season in production, I am receiving text messages from people who work with me. It is no small thing that when mistakes are made and emergencies happen – I can call on other people to help. And it is precisely because of this help that we can now call 2018 the most productive, and the one in which we established some incredibly important relationships. Our cheese is now sold across the state through distribution partners, is sold in stores, is on the tables of spectacular restaurants, and the farm has hosted many memorable public and private events and classes and just received the outrageous honor of two grant awards. I’m not bragging, I’m basking. I’m BASKING. I AM IN AWE of what land, labor, and love can achieve when bound together correctly – when you find the pieces that fit.

There are very few things we have ‘figured out’  – very few. Except this: entrepreneurship is scary (and if it’s not scaring you a little, then you’re doing it wrong). You’ll be standing on sea legs for some time and you must find something steady to hold onto while you learn. You must. For me, this was partnerships, co-workers, and friends in the industry who know exactly why receiving midnight texts from chefs for 9am deliveries IS NOT ALWAYS GOOD NEWS. Who understand why the “land of milk and honey” can, in reality, feel like a slow death by drowning in milk and invoices and inventory and profit and loss. It is at least one entire world away from a silver bucket, a wooden milk stand, and the romance of a relationship with an animal. One entire world.

This is why off season is a Thing I Do, every year. It is a space for me to unplug and to turn off the lights. It is the time I get back into the barn just because it’s filled with animals. And the animals are the only reason a building was built, lights were wired, equipment was purchased, plumbing was connected. They are the only reason and lest I forget – (because in the midst of deliveries and sales pitches and paying bills – I forget) – the animals led me here, exactly where I know I am supposed to be.

This place is nothing without the goats and nothing without the people who have joined the team to support them, me, and the cheese. If you raise a glass to any godd**n thing related to Bee Tree Farm, raise a glass to those people and to my husband, the antidote for these sea legs that I’ve wobbled atop for the last many years. Now we rest briefly, long enough (just long enough) to miss the chaos and adrenaline, the thrill of babies in the wee hours on freezing nights. The glorious first hiss of warm, fresh milk into a pail, the sound of the vacuum pump coughing and sputtering and revving up to speed, the gears churning, the milk flowing, the babies crying and begging, the world just spinning and spinning into sunrise and sunset, new life, sudden death, around and around again.

‘Til then.

photo cred: Filipa Rodrigues