Water Buffalo? In Vermont?
Water Buffalo? In Vermont?
I came; I saw; I tasted water buffalo mozzarella cheese in Vermont and it was delicious. You may ask: what are South-East Asian animals doing in New England? My answer: living on a dairy farm, producing quality Italian-style mozzarella cheese, and helping to promote sustainable agriculture in Vermont. While that may seem like a tall order for creatures thousands of miles from their native land, water buffalo at Vermont Buffalo in South Woodstock, Vermont seem to get the easy end of the deal when compared to the humans who have to run the economic end of the business (hooves are poor tools for crunching numbers on calculators). “The girls,” as farm owner David Muller calls them, live in climate-controlled barns, and when they aren’t socializing and being milked in the farm’s 5×5 tandem milking parlor, they are free to serenely graze, grunt, and dream of being lost in the dark chocolate eyes of male buffalo.
Water buffalo were first brought to Vermont for their thick, creamy milk which is high in fat and rich in flavor. The Vermont Water Buffalo Company uses buffalo milk to create an assortment of cheese and yogurt products free from preservatives and artificial thickeners. The company’s cheese makers are Italian-trained Vermont artisans. Let’s recap: what do you get when you mix south-Asian animals, Italian techniques, and Vermonters? Cheese that pleases everybody.
The Vermont Water Buffalo Company also promotes sustainable land usage and agricultural conservation and encourages others to do the same by starting up their own water buffalo dairy-farms. (The company also hosts an annual meeting of the American Water Buffalo Association which provides a forum to discuss the raising, breeding, and marketing of water buffaloes.) While cows typically only produce milk for three or four years, water buffalo yield milk for twelve to fourteen. So while cow-print patterns may currently cover everything from milk cartons to notebooks, the wooly faces of water buffalo are slowly rising in fame and may soon claim prominence on cheese packages. With prices for cows’ milk steadily decreasing, raising water buffalo for high-end dairy products is a way to keep Vermont’s economy alive and eco-friendly, and this new form of sustainable agriculture has attracted the attention of cheese connoisseurs across the nation.
Although water buffalo are warm-weather creatures, they quickly adapted to the cushy conditions at the Vermont Dairy. In the winter, the climate-controlled barn offers a heated escape from harsh VT snowstorms that can turn water buffalo into yetis; in the summer, misters in the barn’s ceiling release puffs of cooling water to refresh and revive the buffalo to keep them from melting under the weight of their shaggy brunette locks. In addition, each stall contains a climate-controlled “water bed” – also heated in the winter and cooled in the summer – which provides the domesticated, water-loving buffalo with a sense of their natural habitat (note the “water” part of the name “water buffalo”).
Despite the fact that other organic Vermont creations such as Otter Creek beer, Vermont cheddar cheese (it’s white!), New England coffee, maple syrup, and Lake Champlain chocolates all compete for grocery shelf space, the Vermont Water Buffalo Co. has carved out its own sliver of the market due to one simple fact: gourmet taste. And they don’t just offer mozzarella and ricotta cheese; they also produce a variety of yogurt flavors including honey, maple, cappuccino, black currant, blueberry, raspberry, strawberry, vanilla, and chai. My job in culinary tourism means that I get to mix-and-match samples like these while knowing that I’m supporting local artisan producers and the advancement of sustainable agriculture. Nothing could be better, except for maybe installing climate-controlled waterbeds on the tour busses . . .
