Farmers’ Market: Milk and more!
The main products from the O’Meara Family Farm are the result of a collection of recipes from various sources, a certain degree of trial and error, some family taste testing, and most importantly, a steady source of rich, fresh organic milk from their herd of pure-bred and cross-bred milk cows. Options available can be investigated on the Internet by visiting cheese@omearafamilyfarm.com, omearafamilyfarm.com, or on Facebook: O’Meara Family Farm, or you can call 896-5311. You can also stop by the Presque Isle Farmers Market in the Aroostook Centre Mall parking lot every Saturday morning.
The product line from this locally owned and operated organic farm includes three types of cheese — fromage blanc, mozzarella, and cream cheese. While each has its own unique flavor and texture, the velvety mouth-feel and wholesome goodness is common to all three. Addition of traditional cheeses the way they were made for centuries to your recipe of choice is an experience not to be missed. Packing a lunch basket with cheese, freshly made bread, recently harvested fruit, and at least two large, fluffy napkins as an alternative to fast food drive-through is an idea well worth trying.
You can also treat yourself to freshly made yogurt in three styles — drinkable yogurt in 12-ounce bottles, traditional yogurt in 32-ounce containers, and thicker, more dense Greek-style yogurt in both 8-ounce and 32-ounce containers. The sizes are about the only similarities between O’Meara Family Farm yogurt and yogurt found in the dairy section of the supermarket. O’Meara Family Farm yogurt is fresh and tangy with no additives or flavors; you can add your own fruit and/or sweeteners as well as enjoy it the way it has been made for generations prior to the introduction of high fructose corn syrup, preservatives, and thickening agents to commercially available yogurt products.
If fresh, “low and slow” pasteurized, unhomogenized fluid milk is not an experience to which you have yet treated yourself, hang onto your socks! Anyone who has tasted honest-to-goodness fresh milk from a local farm quickly realizes that the relationship between what is purported to be fresh milk sold in plastic jugs at the Big Box stores and “real” fresh milk straight from the cow is similar to the closeness of Tang breakfast drink to fresh-squeezed orange juice (“Well, they are both orange …”). Fluid milk in individual, 12-ounce containers as well as family-sized, half-gallon jugs are available just by stopping by the Market and asking Christine O’Meara to break open the cooler and set you up with a bottle of her best. Shake it up and pour it down. The pleasure is practically “health on the hoof!”
Rounding out the price-list of available products from the O’Meara family Farm just off Route 1 in New Sweden are organic duck and chicken eggs … yes, there really is a difference and not just to the bird to whom they originally belonged. Try some of each.
Editor’s note: This weekly column is written by members of the Presque Isle Farmers’ Market. For more information or to join, contact their secretary/treasurer Steve Miller of Westmanland at 896-5860 or via e-mail at beetree@xpressamerica.net.
