The Veggie Girl: Local goat cheese

Lake County’s only commercial dairy lies outside Lakeport on picturesque Scotts Valley Road. Named for the herb that grows wild in nearby hills, Yerba Santa Goat Dairy is run by cheese-making brothers Javier and Daniel Salmon.

The only access into the dairy is via a rustic bridge slung over a shallow gorge in which a swollen creek flows after the winter rains. Three low-lying meadows are home to 87 milk goats, and a couple dozen yearlings – milk goats in waiting, so to speak – make their home in a fenced area at the edge of the meadow.

It is here that the brothers from Lima, Peru create the cheeses that are sought after locally, as well as throughout much of the San Francisco Bay Area.

This is the time of year that cheese production slows, as the milk goats have been carrying young since mid-September. Two very busy bucks have impregnated the entire herd, and the twice-a-day milking cycle has dwindled to one.

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