Killeen Farmhouse Cheese

Killeen Farmhouse Cheese makes cheese on their goat farm in County Galway, Ireland. Apart from goat’s milk cheese, they also produce a cows’ milk cheese made with milk from a nearby dairy farmer. Their most popular cheese is a semi-hard cheese, made from pasteurised milk. They make this in a goat’s milk variety, and also from cows milk. The cheese is sold at two months of age. The goat's cheese is available in plain, or fenugreek. The cow's milk cheese comes in plain, cumin seed, basil and garlic, and Italian herbs and olives. Relatively new is the production of a raw milk goats cheddar. It is traditional in every way. Not only is it made with raw milk, but it is also cloth wrapped. This is a natural way of protecting the cheese, but it does let the natural yeasts and moulds influence the flavour. All our cheeses are made with traditional rennet, as it ensures the best quality cheese. Vegetarian rennet can give the cheeses a bitter flavour. The heart of Killeen Farmhouse Cheese is the goat farm. Without this, we there would be no cheese. Haske started his goat farm in 1990. In 2004 they made the first cheese. At first they only used some of their milk, nowadays we use all the milk of our 200 goats. Killeen has 50 acres of land around the farm. Here they grow all the fresh grass and silage that they feed to our goats. Haske mixes the meal, which is like muesli, for the goats himself so that we know exactly what they are eating. On the farm, they also have a few suckler cows (who eat the leftovers from the goats), horses (for fun), some hens (for eggs), ducks (for eggs and because they are cool), cats (to catch mice), and dogs (to keep an eye on the place).