Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
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68 | NOVEMBER 2015 nshoremag.com Dancing Goats Dairy Newbury 978-255-3218 dancinggoatsdairy.com rescue her. Instead, they got a very different phone call. "I'm never coming home," Bligh remembers saying. "I think I want to farm for the rest of my life." It was there that she fell in love with goats and cheese making. "I've been infatuated with goats for a while," Bligh says. "They were funny! I couldn't be in a group of the baby goats without just laughing. They're like perpetual children." The self-described "big home- body" eventually came back to the North Shore, and now rents property on Tendercrop Farm in Newbury, adding that its owner, Matt Kozazcki, "gave me a chance for sure." She finished construction on a cheese kitchen there in March. Now she jokes that she's "making cheese to support my goat habit." But her cheese is no joke at all. "We've been getting all sorts of calls," she says, from people who want to sell her cheese. She learned the ins and outs of cheese making at Consider Bardwell Farm, and is now playing with recipes and making cheeses that are unique to her farm. Case in point: Dancing Goats Dairy's cider parma. Bligh washes the rind of this nutty, salty Parme- san-style cheese with hard cider from Far From the Tree in Salem. The aged cheese has notes of orange peel and coriander, and is wonder- ful shaved over pasta or salad. Bligh says she was thrilled when she first tasted her creation, exclaiming, "Oh my god, I just created my first baby!" In addition to selling cheeses at the Newburyport and Gloucester farmers' markets and at her farm's small store in Newbury, the dairy is working on increasing distribution into Boston area restaurants, the Massachusetts Cheese Guild's booth at the Boston Public Market and lo- cal farm stores and shops. But all that will have to wait until spring: She's quickly running out of milk just a few months into her first year. "We hit a wall for production, which is exciting, but also very ter- rifying," she says. These days, Bligh rises with the sun to tend to her 40 goats—breed- ing them, birthing them, feeding the babies at 3 a.m., milking them, cleaning stalls, trimming hooves, and, of course, actually making and processing cheese. But the joy of the work makes the hours fly by. "I enjoy every minute of it," she says. "I get to work on my tan, even if it is a farmer's tan." Bligh crafts artisanal cheeses from her goats' milk. CO N TAC T