The Stevens family, which runs Stone Cow Brewery at Carter & Stevens Farm in Barre, might be the busiest people you’ll ever meet.
They already run a dairy farm, a brewery, a restaurant, a farm store, an ice cream stand and dabble in BBQ during the summer months. Oh, and by the way, they also recently appeared on NBC running a Spartan Race.
Now, thanks to a government grant, the Stevens family will soon be selling cheese and butter at their upcoming creamery, which will be called Stone Cow Creamery.
In the wake of their announcement video, Stone Cow has already had visitors coming in to “try the cheese.” However, the creamery isn’t expected to open for production until “the end of winter or early spring” next year.
Molly Stevens Dubois does a bit of everything over at Carter & Stevens Farm, which was founded by her great-grandfather in 1938. Now, she’s adding the title of head cheesemaker to her list of duties.
Stevens Dubois says she “would truly like to make every kind of cheese known to man.” But for now the plan is to focus on New England-style cheddar, cloth-bound cheddar, asiago and mozzarella that will go on their pizzas.
Stevens Dubois says they’ve been “scheming and dreaming” about making their own cheese and butter as a way to bring additional business to the farm and keep the family’s legacy intact.
“The whole reason behind this place is the land and the cows,” she says. “Now you get to taste this amazing food that comes from all the hard work that we do — hopefully soon.”
Stevens Dubois has to stress that the creamery is still being built out. Her father, farmer Phil Stevens, is running the construction.
There’s a long history of Molly being the dreamer and Phil being the builder who makes it happen.
That first started in 2005, when they opened a farm store. It continued a year later when they opened their Field to Flame Restaurant. But nothing has been bigger than in 2016, when they opened Stone Cow Brewery, which Molly founded with her husband, Sean DuBois.
Each new attraction has been a hit. But the No. 1 priority has always been to keep this land a dairy farm.
“We’re five generations now on this farm, and we don’t want to be the generation in our family that stops milking cows,” Sean told MassLive in 2018.
The cows are Molly’s passion. But sharing the product of that passion isn’t easy. Outside of the milk and ice cream they sell at their farm store, most of their dairy is sold wholesale.
With milk prices dropping, that’s never been an easy way to keep a beloved farm afloat. But the brewery — and soon the creamery — both are playing a big part in keeping Carter & Stevens Farm successful.
A big part of the Stone Cow philosophy is to keep things local. If at all possible, they try to use what comes from their own land.
That will extend to the cheese-making process. Molly describes herself as a disciple of “cheese guru” Peter Dixon from Parish Hill Creamery in Vermont. She plans to follow Dixon’s method of using native cultures as the catalyst for cheesemaking rather than simply buying frozen cultures from the factory.
Molly says that, since they can make fresh cheese like mozzarella in about a day, it creates a unique opportunity to show how the farm turns into food on the table.
“You could literally come to the farm, see the cow, know that this was her milk from yesterday,” she says. “You’re eating a cheese pizza from our wood-fired, brick-oven pizza. That’s pretty cool to like see the cow, see the grass, eat the cheese all in one, one sitting.”
