Juneau, AK — When Jennifer Ansley saw goats for the first time at a state fair, her heart nearly skipped a bleat.
“Oh, that’s what I want,” she told her husband. “I’m going to learn to make cheese. And I did.”
A decade later, Ansley is among a growing number of Alaska farmers who have found a niche with goats, hardy animals they say adjust well to the state’s climate. Ansley has 10 goats on her 15-acre farm in Ester and makes cheese for her family – something that concerns state officials who have drafted the state’s first rules for commercial cheese making.
“We don’t want people making cheese in their bathtubs,” said Kristin Ryan, director of the state Division of Environmental Health. “We want it done in a sanitary environment.”
Ansley doesn’t sell her cheese, instead making a living selling soaps and skin creams made with goat milk. But state officials are hearing from more farmers who want to sell cheese – and suspect some may already be doing it out their back doors – as the number of dairy goat farms grows.
It more than doubled from 12 in 1997 to 27 in 2007, the latest year for which numbers are available. But Ryan said Alaska remained the only state without commercial cheese making regulations until this winter.
The rules issued then have alarmed the state’s budding cheese-makers, who say they will raise costs and squelch entrepreneurs. One particularly vilified rule requires eight separate rooms for production with specifications for plumbing, lighting and ventilation. Ryan said that wasn’t the intent, and it will be relaxed.
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