Sprout Creek Farm , associated with the Society of the Sacred Heart, was featured for its outstanding quality on the front page of a recent edition of the Voice Ledger. Read the article below, or download a PDF of the newspaper pages.

 Voice Ledger article (PDF) 1.59 Mb

A unique place to buy unique gifts

By Aaron Kemnitz
Staff Reporter, The Voice Ledger

Take a look through one large, glass window and visitors can see milk being churned into cheese or a wheel of savory Toussaint being rolled into the ripening room. Take a look through another window and a cow may very well stare straight back.

One thing is abundantly obvious at The Creamery and Market at Sprout Creek Farm: There is never any question as to how the cheeses are made. Everything from the actual production - to the cows themselves - are on display, and visitors are encouraged to experience the farm for themselves.

"You can talk to me, you can talk to the farmers, you can talk to anyone making the cheese. You can go on a tour. We want people to connect with the food," said co-founder Sister Margo Morris.

That connectivity, said Morris, is what Sprout Creek Farm is all about. It may be easy to walk into a grocery store and buy a box of cereal, for instance, but figuring out where all the ingredients come from is another story all together. Morris describes such a disconnection with food as wholly destructive — a product of a fast-past life that is becoming increasingly divided from other people and the earth itself.

But at Sprout Creek, everybody, and, indeed, everything, joins together as one. The people and the animals are just two parts to a large and diverse community.

"Small farms know their animals and it makes all the difference. When the staff gets together, we talk about the animals as if they’re people," said Morris noting that the cows roam the pastures freely, meaning they eat whatever they please.

This freedom, while good for the cow, is a challenge for the cheese-makers. A cow’s diet directly affects the taste of milk, and, therefore, the taste of a cheese. But rather than negatively affecting the seven varieties of cheese produced at Sprout Creek, the natural diet actually makes the cheese better. And it’s also what attracts people to the farm in general.

"There is no sense of an artificial environment here. People are increasingly looking for a genuine experience," said Morris.

Visitors at Sprout Creek will definitely have a genuine experience. One can literally taste a passion for the product in every bite of cheese. In addition to selling artisan cheeses, Sprout Creek market also sells T-shirts, jewelry, select meats and more and is a great place to buy a local gift for the holidays. The farm is also holding a solstice celebration for the community on Dec. 22 starting at 5 p.m. The traditional event is capped by a bonfire and is, quite simply, a celebration of what life once was.

"It incorporates the old ways that people thought about farming and land and the earth going to sleep," said Morris.

In many ways, the day echoes the purpose of the farm as a whole.

"This is all about reconnecting and re-identifying with some vestige of our instinct," she said.

Sprout Creek is located at 34 Lauer Road in Poughkeepsie. The market can be reached at [845]485-9885.

Posted with permission of The Voice Ledger.