Now Open for Business:
North Valley Farms Chévre
Farmstead Online Cheese Shop
Fresh
Award Winning Hand Crafted Goat Cheeses
shipped directly from our Farm to your
Door!
Coming Soon: Our newly designed
website! Watch for it.
Read our Story in California Country Magazine
North
Valley Farms is a small family owned/operated farm in the
northern portion of the Sacramento Valley. Located in Tehama
County the farm is home to North Valley Farms Chévre,
Inc., a Grade A Dairy/Farmstead goat cheese making facility.
The farms’ sixty acres
of lush certified organic fields are home to Mark and
Deneane Ashcraft and their herd of award winning dairy
goats. It is here Deneane grazes and raises her goats and
handcrafts a unique line of specialty award winning goat
cheeses.
A passionate dairyman,
cheese maker, farmer and food animal welfare advocate,
Deneane began breeding and raising dairy goats in 1990 and
developed the present NVF dairy herd which consists of
Toggenburgs, LaManchas, Saanens, and Experimentals.
Permanent Show Champions, National Top Ten Does for milk
production, and several does earning the Superior Genetics
designation from the American Dairy Goat Association are
among the present day dairy herd.
A sixth consecutive
generation California farmer, Deneane spends most days
milking, caring for the goats, monitoring grazing and
forage, and handcrafting signature cheeses that are
literally “of the grass."
Following a model one
would have seen decades ago, ours is a true small family
farm in that Deneane is the full-time herdsman/milker for
the goat herd, as well as cheese maker, and Mark takes
care of the farming end as well as direct marketing the
cheese on the regional/local level. Our cheeses are not
available through distributors at this time.
Ours is one of only a
handful of small family-owned/operated farmsteads in
California that can guarantee our cheeses are traceable to
our goat herd and pastures with no exceptions!
The goats are the
focal point of the operation. They make it possible to
produce exceptional cheeses which have garnered several
State and National level awards. The Gold Award for Herbs
de Provence in the 2007 California State Fair Cheese
Competition and the Gold Medal Best of Class award for
Soft Unflavored Goat Cheese in the 2009 U.S. Championship
Cheese Contest in Wisconsin, are tributes to the work done
on the farm. This year (2010), both Feta and Herbs de
Provence were award winners at the American Cheese Society
Contest in Seattle Washington.
We
are especially proud of being the
first commercial goat dairy in the U.S. to earn
Animal Welfare Approved Certification
Animal Welfare Approved website.
Due to time
constraints the farm is not open to the public for tours
or visits, and all products are retailed off site. At this
time the farm is not selling milk, as all milk is made
into cheese our used for kid rearing.
As we begin the fifth
year of production, we continue to appreciate our growing
base of loyal customers and thank you for your patronage,
which allows us to continue caring for our animals, farm
in a humane and sustainable manner and pursue our passion
for producing exceptional unique cheeses.
We look forward to
visiting with you at a Farmers Market or Community Event!.
