I am Marie-Laure. I tell people that I am a cheesemaker, but the truth is…

I don’t know crap.

I trained with cheesemakers, affineurs, goat herdsmen and cheesemongers in France, Spain, Italy and Massachusetts for two years, working with them side by side. Since then I’ve scoured the northeast U.S. and Québec searching for the place to begin making that elusive dairy product out of goat’s milk. I’ve met cheesemakers and milk producers, spoken with mongers, learned the regulatory requirements to start a farm business, and looked at the costs of building a cheeseplant. As my very first French farm family warned me, my conclusion is this: start the business before I realize it’s too difficult and decide to quit.

No, people, farming is not bucolic; it’s business. Unfortunately, I have no business degree, no nest egg from years of working on Wall Street, and I am no workaholic, holding down multiple jobs and building a cheese empire. I have only one thing: family. I have parents, a sister and a fiancé, who don’t think I’m (too) crazy for deciding to get into this field. They want to see me happy and want to help me however they can, which includes marketing the farm and the cheese, running the financials, testing the batches of cheese, and catching the baby goats. Family is one asset I can’t live without.

With that, I’m here to tell you that if you care to read about the adventures of farm entrepreneurship, I’ll be writing for Culture Magazine’s Blog every now and then. I hope to succeed in at least entertaining you because if I fail in making cheese and herding goats, at least I’ll have a good story to tell.

Be well and check out more developments at: http://OurTerroir.com