Come taste G.O.A.T. cheese and visit our goats this summer!! Take a self-guided walking tour outside our creamery, goat barns, milking parlor and pastures and learn about how our award winning goat cheese is saving the planet through regenerative farming! You will have the opportunity to visit our special petting goat herd, sample our award winning cheeses and purchase your favorites (cash preferred). Closed toed, farm appropriate shoes required. Please contact info@idyllfarms.com directly if there is a mobility issue so that we can best accommodate your needs.
Tour Dates: 6/20, 7/3, 7/18, 8/1
Time: Arrive anytime between 3-5 pm and park in designated parking area.
Price: $20 Adult (13 and up) Children $10 Children (12 and under)
We are KIDDING, but not KIDDING around about our bottle-feeding farm event! Bring your family and come bottle feed our goat babies!
Kidding season is in full effect at Idyll Farms and the babies would love to meet you! Please join us on May 11th for a 20 minute play date with our newest additions.
What to expect:
One-on-one time bottle feeding some of the kids.
Playing with them in their play yard.
Staff will be onsite to answer all your burning goat questions, provide history of the farm and take pictures so please bring your camera!
Cost: $20 for a party of up to 5.
Please purchase a ticket at your preferred time slot HERE!
Tickets are extremely limited!
Please arrive at least 5 minutes early to allow time to check in.
Closed toed, farm appropriate shoes are required and waiver must be filled out.
Our address is 10901 E Peterson Park Road, Northport, MI 49670. If traveling from Scott Road on Peterson Park you will need to drive past the barns and at the very bottom of the hill on the right you will see an orange parking cone and a sign that says “parking’. Please park here for the event.
Take a trip through Leelanau County with a sampling of award-winning dairy products from Idyll Farms and Leelanau Cheese Company: Idyll Pastures Garlic and Herb, Idyll Puck, Leelanau Cheese Raclette (1/2lb), Leelanau Cheese Black Truffle Fromage Blanc, and Idyll Farms logo soft cheese knife.
Please note that this box contains several fresh, perishable products requiring a minimum of 2nd day air shipping outside the state of Michigan.
Partners in cheese Idyll Farms and Leelanau Cheese Company have come together to bring you the ultimate gift box showcasing the best dairy products Leelanau County has to offer: Idyll Pastures Garlic Herb, Idyll Pastures Spreadable Plain, Chili Billy, Idyll Puck, Leelanau Cheese Traditional Raclette (1/2lb), Leelanau Cheese Black Truffle Fromage Blanc, Great Lakes Chocolate bar, crackers, Barbeclette, and Idyll Farms logo soft cheese knife.
Please note that this box contains several fresh, perishable products requiring a minimum of 2nd day air shipping outside the state of Michigan.
The Idyll Farms tour will consist of walking outside the creamery, goat barns, milking parlor and pastures. Guests will learn about how award winning goat cheeses are made, Certified Humane ® practices, and how regenerative farming methods sequesters carbon and saves the planet. This year, for the 1st time guests will have the opportunity to visit our special petting herd goat kids! Guests will be given the opportunity to sample our award winning cheeses and purchase your favorites (cash preferred). Closed toed, farm appropriate shoes required. Please contact info@idyllfarms.com directly if there is a mobility issue so that we can best accommodate your needs.
We just finished our 10th year of cheesemaking!! We have come a long way from purchasing our 1st 2 goats in 2011 and experimenting with cheesemaking in 2012 in our equipment barn while our creamery was being constructed.
2 NEW CHEESES!
We launched 2 new cheeses in 2022! Chef’s Idyll Farms G.O.A.T. Cheese and Chili Billy, both the results of collaboration and input from local celebrity chefs.
Chef’s Idyll G.O.A.T. Cheese is a food service format fresh goat cheese that was designed with a lower moisture content that allows for high temperature baking on pizzas or crumbling on salads and such. It was featured seasonally on Detroit metro’s Bigalora’s menu on wood-fired pizzas, appetizers and salads.
Chili Billy is our spicy G.O.A.T. cheese that features a dusting of Aleppo pepper on top. A perfect people pleasing snack dip/spread to share at parties.
11 NEW AWARDS!!
It was a banner year for awards for our cheeses. Starting the year with a bang, winning 2 Best in Class awards at the World Championship Cheese Contest in Madison Wisconsin for our Idyll Pastures spreadable plain and Idyll Pastures spreadable Garlic and Herb.
We won more goat cheese awards for the 3rd time than any other goat cheese producer at the American Cheese Society collecting 7 total at the ACS awards show in Portland, Oregon! Winners included Idyll Pastures and spreadable Honey Lavender, Idyll Pastures Fennel Pollen, Idyll Pastures Garlic and Herb, Idyllweiss, Temptation, and Idyll Ricotta.
At the World Cheese Awards, an international competition held in Wales, England in November, we won 2 awards, a silver for our Idyllweiss and bronze for our Idyll Pastures plain spreadable.
2022 Community Outreach and Event sponsorships
Our cheese was donated in kind to support nonprofit organizations and featured on their event menus. These events included:
Great Lakes Culinary Institute “Tastes of Success”
The Loja Saarinen House Party for the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research fundraiser
held at Kingswood School Bloomfield Hills, MI
5Loaves2Fish Fundraiser, Leland, MI
Michael Chetcuti Foundation dinner Northport, MI
Uncorked for a Cure breast cancer research fundraiser, M1 concourse Pontiac, MI
Finnish Independence Day Santa Monica, CA
Henry Ford Museum’s Carver Carson society award dinner, honoring Chef Alice Waters at Greenfield Village
THANK YOU!!
Thanks goes out to Cherry Capital Foods, Carmela Foods, Great House Foods and Gourmet Foods International for all their support getting our product to customers old and new alike.
Thank you Melissa Hiles and Team Idyll on the farm and creamery for caring for our goats and making the G.O.A.T. cheese.
Thank you Courtney for ensuring administrative matters are handled with diligence and being an asset to the marketing team.
Thanks to all the chefs and restaurants supporting locally made but world class cheese, showcasing and creating new recipes for our product.
Most of all, thank you to all new and old customers for enjoying our G.O.A.T. cheese. Looking forward to gracing your plate from our Idyll pastures in 2023!
Idyll Farms of Northport, Michigan won 7 awards at the 2022 American Cheese Society contest announced July 21 in Portland, Oregon at the 39th ACS Annual Conference. It is the 3rd year they have won more American Cheese Society goat cheese awards than any other goat cheese producer (2017, 2019 and 2022). 1st place awards were given for Temptation and Idyll Pastures honey lavender, a 2nd place for Idyllweiss, and 3rd places for Idyll Pastures garlic and herb, Idyll Pastures Fennel Pollen, Idyll Goat Ricotta and Idyll Pastures spreadable honey and lavender. Idyll Farms was recognized by judges for excellence amongst 1,387 products from 196 entering companies.
Idyll Farms is a goat farmstead creamery located in Northport, Michigan, a small village perched on the edge of Lake Michigan. Their Certified Humane ® Alpine goats are pasture-fed through managed intensive rotational grazing, which is great for the pastures, the soil, the goats, and best of all, their cheese (not to mention sequestering carbon and regenerating the planet). And by doing everything in house, from pastures to plate, they meticulously coordinate the entire process in order to make some of the world’s tastiest award-winning G.O.A.T. cheese.
To date, Idyll Farms have won 32 American Cheese Society awards (more than any other goat cheese producer in 2017, 2019 and 2022), 9 World Championship Cheese Awards, 5 U.S. Championship Cheese Awards and a Good Foods Award. This year, Idyll Pastures spreadable plain and garlic and herb won 2 Best in Class awards at the 2022 World Championship Cheese Contest. In 2021 they opened the 1st and only goat cheese vending machine in the world in the village of Northport.
Taken from the American Cheese Society website:
The American Cheese Society Judging and Competition, the largest event of its kind for American-made cheeses, took place May 19-20, 2022, at the Huntington Bank Stadium on the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis campus. Canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, the Judging and Competition (J&C) will be held separately from the Conference in 2022 for the first time. Following this year’s virtual 38th ACS Annual Conference (July 28-30, 2021), entries for the J&C will open in October 2021, with winners were announced at the 39th ACS Annual Conference in Portland, Oregon from July 20-23, 2022. View the winners here.
The ACS Competition shines the spotlight on American cheesemakers by showcasing their talents and work as leaders within the industry, both for their excellent cheesemaking and commitment to food safety. Growing from just 89 entries 37 years ago, the ACS J&C welcomed cheeses and cultured dairy products from 257 companies in 2019, when it was last held in Richmond, Virginia. Competing entries represented 35 U.S. states, 4 Canadian provinces, Mexico, and Brazil. The ACS awarded a total of 433 awards including 139 gold medals, 143 silver medals and 151 bronze medals. The 2022 event received nearly 1400 entries in 120 categories.
Cheeses entered in the competition were received May 18, 2022, with judging from May 19-20.
By hosting the Judging & Competition, ACS hopes to shine the spotlight on American cheesemakers by showcasing their talents and work as leaders within the industry, both for their excellent cheesemaking and commitment to food safety. ACS celebrates and respects the craft of every cheesemaker who enters the ACS Judging & Competition. It is the ACS members’ efforts that continue to collectively advance the quality and character of American cheeses.
We are excited to announce the grand opening of the 1st and only G.O.A.T. Cheese vending machine! It’s located at the old Pier group building’s side porch next to Haserot Park in Northport next to the visitor’s center. We are going to keep it stocked with a selection of our cheese and additional picnic items. Say cheese and tag us on your posts!
Idyll Farms is excited to partner up with the Northport Union to offer an enhanced farmstead goat cheese tasting along with an informational goat farm and creamery tour following the tasting.
The guided cheese tasting will be at the Union and will consist of a selection of Idyll Farms cheese. There will be an opportunity to purchase the cheese at the Union after the tasting and it will be available for purchase during their open retail hours. The cheese tasting will be $20 and the goat farm tour $10 with option to do one or both when registering. The Idyll Farms tour will consist of walking outside the creamery and learning about how their award winning goat cheeses are made, walking outside the goat barns as you learn about their Certified Humane practices, getting a brief look at the pastures to learn of their regenerative farming methods and the highlight will be peeking into the milking parlor to have a look at the evening milking in progress!
This tour will allow for seeing the goats BUT THERE WILL BE NO PETTING/TOUCHING/HOLDING GOATS due to Idyll Farm’s strict biosecurity practices, which keep the goats at their optimal health. Idyll Farms does not currently maintain a petting zoo, it is solely a dairy goat operation.
Please wear closed toed shoes as the tour requires walking over uneven ground. Please contact info@idyllfarms.com directly if there is a mobility issue so that we can best accommodate your needs.
The dates are 7/8, 7/15,8/12 and 8/26. Tastings begin at 4:30 and Idyll Farms goat creamery tour will begin at 6 and will last an hour. The reservations can be made with the Union. To pre-register email thenorthportunion@gmail.com. Space is limited. Go to the Uninon’s website to book tickets https://www.thenorthportunion.com/
