In 2017, The Farm at Doe Run released Mayfly, a robust bloomy-rind Camembert-style cheese. Since that time, 10% of the sale of the cheese has benefited Stroud Water Research Center’s mission. After a brief hiatus, Mayfly is back in stock at select stores up and down the Eastern Seaboard. We recently had the opportunity to meet the new Head Cheesemaker Miguel Vivanco and give him and his team a tour of the Stroud Center’s campus in Avondale, Pennsylvania, where we talked about life, the Stroud Center, and of course, great cheese.
“Aging cheese is beyond creating something delicious, but a way of connecting to the land. We are below the earth, a part of it, while coaxing out the personality of a cheese that is a product of the weather, flora, and the animals’ microbiome,” says Olivia Haver, director of deliciousness for The Farm at Doe Run.
Along the way, we talked about how best management practices on farms are so important to water quality and how our long-term research helps us to share with landowners science-based solutions for healthy soils and clean water.
Head Cheesemaker Miguel Vivanco says, “As cheesemakers, we design cheese by studying milk composition, cultures, and our environments. In theory, things will go as planned, but the reality is we are constantly met with variables that can affect one or all of the aforementioned. Touring the Stroud Center reinforces the need to understand the overall relationship between all aspects of what goes into the cheesemaking process.”
The team encountered a real mayfly for the first time and plans to go scouting for more in the streams that run throughout the creamery property. (We know they are there, as our research team has spent time sampling these streams!)
Meredith Langer, sales and marketing manager, says, “Mayflies are such a special, joyous thing to see in a healthy stream! I absolutely love how this concept inspired the cheesemakers to make such a yummy wheel of cheese that oozes with joy as you cut into it. At The Farm at Doe Run, we value the beautiful Chester County landscape we work on and understand the importance of maintaining that beauty by keeping our waterways healthy. The Stroud Center’s work not only helps us locally, but their research and data collection impacts the world. We are truly grateful to have them in our backyard and are honored to donate 10% of our Mayfly cheese sales back to the Stroud Center.”
Visit our website for the most up-to-date list of retailers that currently have Mayfly in stock. Warning: it sells out quickly, so don’t delay!
