Our Cave to Co-op for October 2024 is Swallow Tail Tomme, a raw cow’s milk cheese, from Stony Pond Farm, Enosburg Falls, Vermont.

Stony Pond Farm is a 260-acre certified organic first-generation farm owned and operated by Tyler and Melanie Webb in Enosburg Falls, Vermont. It is also a Brand Partner with the Northeast Organic Family Farm Partnership (NOFFP).

When Tyler bought the farm in 2004, it was run down, had poor pastures, and had no roads; it was exactly what he was looking for. After a stint at a large conventional farm and then for the National Resource Conservation Service of the USDA, he realized that conventional methods were not the path he wanted to take. It took sitting in at organic grazing meetings at conferences to point him towards the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont and that particular run down farm.

By 2007 Tyler had a herd of cattle, had built miles of fences, and was bringing the land back to life. To earn money, he sold frozen grass-fed beef alongside cheeseburgers at Burlington’s Farmers Market; one week, a photographer from Brooklyn was visiting friends and stopped to grab a burger.

Melanie is a Carnegie Mellon graduate who brings business acumen and creative flair to Stony Pond. Leaving the city behind—but not her cameras—she moved to the Green Mountains and hasn’t looked back. In addition to working for a non-profit that advocates for people with disabilities, Melanie also promotes local biodynamic communities.

People looking at Stony Pond Farm’s cattle might come away scratching their heads. The mix of breeds is a little strange for most New England farms. There are Jerseys, Devons, and British Whites mixed together. The calves are even more unique.

The milk comes from the pretty-faced Jerseys and some of the Devons, giving plentiful and rich milk, which was sold to Organic Valley until the summer of 2019. Melanie and Tyler’s lifelong dream of making cheese led them to convert an un-used part of their property into a cheesemaking room and another into an aging room, where cheese is made 2-3 times a week.

If you were to ask a cheese pro what a tomme is, they’d likely give an answer along the lines of: it’s a relatively small format natural rind farmer’s cheese. Another answer might be that tommes refer to small cheeses made in the summer months while the ruminants are out eating fresh grass. Both definitions would apply to Swallow Tail Tomme.

Swallow Tail Tomme is named after swallows that swoop and dive over the fields at Stony Pond, controlling pests that would bother cows and humans alike. Made using raw milk from a single milking, then aging for an average of ninety days, this cheese is a time capsule of the organic fields of spring through early fall.