Who We Are
How we started…
Who We Are
Cows Around the Corner was born out of adaptability, hard work, and a love for local farming. Julie never planned on becoming a cheesemaker — it simply wasn’t on her radar. In 2014, she and her husband Ron built a barn, equipped it for milking goats, and purchased a small herd. When a local cheesemaker needed goat milk, Julie stepped up and began supplying it.
After only six months, that cheesemaker went out of business, leaving Julie and Ron with fresh milk and no buyer. Rather than give up, Julie learned how to make goat cheese and yogurt herself — and the products were an immediate hit with customers.
Our farm may be younger than many of the farms around us, but farming has always been part of the land we call home. Julie’s father, Clarence, grew up running a dairy farm with his parents on this very property in Bethlehem, Connecticut. Although Clarence chose refrigeration services instead of farming as an adult, Julie and Ron purchased part of the family farm more than 30 years ago and slowly built it into a working farm, raising cattle, chickens, goats, hogs, and vegetables over the years.
In 2013, Julie’s passion for goats led to the creation of “Little Farm on Main,” and before long, the farm was producing goat milk, cheese, and yogurt for local markets and events. The Bethlehem Garlic & Harvest Festival quickly became a favorite place to share their products with the community.
By 2019, Julie was looking for a way to keep production going year-round, since goats are difficult to keep milking through the winter months. She began purchasing fresh milk from local dairy farms nearby. Some of those farms were so close that the name “Cows Around the Corner” just made sense.
Over the next several years, Julie and Ron expanded the creamery to meet growing demand. Today, they purchase thousands of gallons of local cow milk every year and turn it into handcrafted yogurts and a wide variety of artisan cheeses.
In 2022, the goats moved out of the barn to make room for a larger pasteurizer and additional equipment needed for production. While Julie and Ron miss having the goats at home, they still see them often at a nearby friend’s farm, where the goats are milked and their milk is still used to create Little Farm on Main goat products alongside Cows Around the Corner cheeses and yogurts.
We are proud to support local farms throughout Bethlehem and the surrounding towns of Connecticut, transforming fresh local milk into products that connect families to the farmers and land around them. And while we may be taking a short breather from raising goats ourselves, we are certainly not done with them yet.
It became clear after a few years that little can be done to keep the goats milking through the winter and we began buying surplus milk from local cow dairy farmers. Some of these farms are so close that we decided to call our cow milk products “Cows Around the Corner” and that is how we got to where we are now.
The goats moved out of the barn in 2022 so we could make room for a larger pasteurizer and the attendant equipment to handle its output. We miss the goats, but we get to see them weekly as our friend has them on his farm where he milks them along with his goats. We buy the milk from him and continue to make our Little Farm on Main goat products alongside our Cows products!
We will keep you informed, but we are not done with goats – just taking a breather while we get the production side of the business in order!
Creating a sustainable resource for our community.
We are committed to reducing greenhouse emissions and value sustainable resources. We found a need in our community that can use dairy that would otherwise be thrown out. Instead of throwing out perfectly good milk, we take that milk from our local dairy farmers and make it into cheese and yogurt!
