Nothin' But Curd

Nothin’ But Curd is operated by J&R Family Farm in Troy, Vermont at the base of Jay Peak. Their artisan cheese curds are made in small batches on the farm in a state-of-the-art facility. The milk to create their delicious cheese curds is sourced on the family farm and neighboring farms. Roberta and Jacques Royer came to the Vermont Farm Fund for a Business Builder Loan after realizing they needed a larger cheese vat to keep up with the demand for their products. Purchasing a 200-gallon combo Cheese Vat will allow them to be more efficient producing more cheese at one time.

Jacques and Roberta created J & R Family Farm, LLC and began milking organically in April 2015. Currently the dairy farm consists of 70 milk cows and 60 heifers. The cows are housed in a tie stalls and heifers in a hoop barn. The farm owns 88 acres with the farmstead and rents another 140 acres. The farm harvests the forage crops with its own labor and equipment.

The Back Story

Roberta has been a long-time cattle director of the Orleans County Fair where she has volunteered countless hours to improve the fair. In 2009 the fair learned that the milk coops would no longer pick up milk produced at the fair. This led to farmers not having a market to sell their milk during the fair, and led to a drastic drop in cows exhibited at the fair to a staggering number of just 12 milking cows. Roberta had learned of a self-contained mobile milk processing unit that could process milk into cheese. The fair thought this would be an excellent solution to the problem and in 2010 developed “Dairy on The Moove.” Roberta was very involved in the development of the unit, volunteered many hours learning the process, and was soon processing milk produced at the fair into fresh cheese curds. The farmers get paid a fair price for their milk produced at the fair and fresh cheese curds are sold to the public. This led to an increase of 50 milk cows exhibited at the fair. Roberta was often approached by fair goers telling her they hated having to wait for fair season to purchase fresh cheese curds. With milk prices on the down side, Jacques & Roberta viewed expanding their dairy into cheesemaking as an opportunity to help their farm by diversifying.

In 2017 they brought the vision of processing their own milk into a cheese to reality. In June of 2017, Jacques and Roberta sold their motorcycle and used the money towards building their cheese plant, farm store, and processing equipment. In August of 2017, they began making fresh cheese curds under their own label “Nothin’ But Curd.” Growth has been rapid and currently the farm processes 3,200 to 4,000 lbs. of milk into cheese each week with demand continuing to increase.