From Goat’s Milk Soap to Prize-Winning Chevre
New York Times August 28, 2005
By Marcelle S. Fischler

The proof is in the chevre:  Happy goats make the best cheese.  At Catapano Dairy Farm in Peconic, 55 milking goats spend their days lounging on a wooded hillside.  “We feed them the best organic food possible, and they are happy,” Karen Catapano said.  “We keep them stress free.  We don’t overproduce them.”

For the last three years, Ms. Catapano, 49, a former nurse andpharmaceuticals saleswoman, and her husband Michael, a 52-year-old doctor, have been running the Island’s only goat dairy.

Mornings and afternoons, the goats jump up on the milking stand and snack on a mixture of oats, corn, what and a bit of molasses while being milked.  Each doe produces a gallon or so of milk a day.

“Happy goats make better milk,” Ms. Catapano said.  “More milk, better quality milk.”

Three days a week Dr. Catapano works as the cheesemaker.  After pasteurizing the milk in a huge stainless –steel vat, he turns it into creamy chevre, gently aged Gouda or a mildly tangy and easy-to-crumble feta.

Last month, the Catapanos won first place for their fresh unripened goat cheese at the American Cheese Society’s annual conference and competition in Louisville, Ky.  First place is an honor reserved for the best cow, sheep and goat cheeses in the United States.  The society’s members are more than 1,000 farmstead, artisanal and specialty cheesemakers.  Dr. Catapano said he entered the contest on a lark.  “I don’t know what the standards are for chevre,” he said.  “I just made it like I was taught to make it and made it like I like it.”

The Catapanos’ winning cheese doesn’t have a pungent, goaty flavor.  It’s almost as bland as cream cheese and as easy to spread.  It’s delectable on a bagel or as a rich salad topping.

“It’s got a very fresh dairy taste,” Dr. Catapano said.  “Its very creamy, it doesn’t have any off flavors, and the taste of the milk really comes through.”

While their cheese beat those of producers who have been making cheeses for 30 years, the Catapanos didn’t know much about goats when they started three years ago.

Ms. Catapano’s son, Patrick Behringer, now 21, was in the army and was stationed in Iraq.  “We both knew that we needed something to totally absorb me,” Ms. Catapano said.

Around the same time, after two decades as an emergency-room physician, Dr. Catapano joined Wainscott Walk-In Medical Care, working 32 hours a week stitching up patients and setting broken bones.  He seemed to have a lot of time on his hands.

Friends had started the goat dairy, which then had 15 to 20 goats and was struggling.  The Catapanos bought it even though they did not know how to make goat cheese.

“I knew I liked to eat goat cheese,”   Dr. Catapano said.

His grandfather had kept a herd of goats in his native Italy before becoming a vegetable farmer in Brooklyn and later in Bethpage, where Dr. Catapano spent his childhood.  He later bought the family homestead, but housing developments had sprouted around it.  In the 1980’s, his father, Salvatore, moved to Southold, where he has a flower farm.

Growing up in Oyster Bay, Ms. Catapano raised horses and dogs.  A registered nurse with a master’s degree in gerontology, she ran the cardiac rehabilitation department at Southampton Hospital before creating a community health-improvement and wellness center there, with a staff of 21 dietitians, counselors and nurses.  Her background came in handy on the goat farm.

“I certainly get to be a caretaker of all the animals, and they are easier than people for the most part,” said Ms. Catapano, who tries to attend the birth of each kid.  Breeding takes place in the late fall and early winter, and thanks to their two bucks, the Catapanos currently have 18 kids, which they currently keep in a separate pen.

The Catapanos immersed themselves in learning about goats and cheesemaking.

Maribeth Andresen, who raises prize-winning show goats in Aquebogue, taught them about goat husbandry.  The couple took classes through the New York State Farmstead and Artisan Cheese Makers Guild and spent two weeks with farmers upstate learning to make cheese and about life on a farm.  Ms. Catapano collected enough recipes for a goat-cheese cookbook.

“We learned a little bit here, learned a little bit there, read a lot, various sources,” Dr. Catapano said.

He attributed the award-winning cheese to the commercial cultures he uses and to the organic alfalfa that is the mainstay of the goats’ diet.  “it just made our cheese extra special,” he said.

The business took off quickly, and Dr. Catapano told his wife that they didn’t have enough milk or enough cheese to meet the demand.  “she said, ‘Get more goats,’ “ he recalled.

The growing herd includes long-eared Nubians, whose milk is high in butterfat;  La Manchas, which produce well-rounded milk; and big white Saanens, which are the most prolific producers.  The milk from their two Toggenburgs, fawn-colored Swiss dairy goats with white markings, has a strong flavor.

The cheese is made by blending the different milks.  “It’s more versatile and we can make more cheeses that way,” Dr. Catapano said.

In the shed that doubles as a processing plant, milk from a refrigerated tank is heated to 145 degrees in a pasteurizer for 30 to 40 minutes and then poured into 5- gallon buckets.  Culture and a vegetable rennet are added to ripen the cheese and make the curd harder.  After ripening over- night, the chevre is ladled into cheesecloth that is folded and hung from a rack, dripping whey into a sink.  Later the cheese is put into stainless- steel bowls in a refrigerator, then packages and labeled.

Dr. Catapano also makes yogurts, feta, blue cheese, and mold-ripened and surface-ripened cheeses.  Some of the chevre is rolled in aromatic herbs like lemon pepper or organic garlic.

The dairy produces about 500 pounds of cheese a week, mostly chevre.  Dr. Catapano says he gets about one and one third pounds of chevre, his wettest, freshest cheese, from a gallon of milk.  A pound of feta can be made from a gallon of milk, but only two-thirds of a pound of a harder cheese like Gouda.

Cleanliness is 90 percent of cheese-making.  “You have to be scrupulously clean—that’s part of makes a good cheese,” Dr. Catapano said.  “Milk just picks up errant flavors too quickly.  If you have bad odors or unclean things, even just a little bit, it goes into the cheese and then makes it less than special.” 

Ms. Catapano also sells sweets like dark chocolate goat’s milk fudge and goat cheesecakes.  And in a shed called the Delicate Doe Goatique, she sells a line of goat’s milk skin-care products she makes in her kitchen.

“That was Cleopatra’s secret,” Ms Catapano said.  “She used goat milk, and she supposedly had beautiful, beautiful skin.”

Among them are hand and body cream, moisture-rich masks, under-eye creams, bubbling milk baths and shaving bars.

One of Dr. Catapano’s mistakes turned into Ms. Catapano’s yogurt soap.  “He made a yogurt that didn’t yog,” she said.  “It
was too thin, and we had hand-picked these berries at our local farm, so we turned it into soap.”

When she mailed a bar of the peach goat’s milk soap to her son in Iraq, he shared it with his buddies.  Soon she was shipping cases of soap off to Iraq.  “All the guys were using it because it really gets you clean but it keeps your skin nice and it moisturizes,” she said.  Her son returned from Iraq unscathed, but a week after his return, he broke his arm skate-boarding.  He is now stationed in Texas.

While the beauty products are available at www.catapandairyfarm.com, the fresh cheeses are available only at the Catapano’s dairy and at other farms on the North and South Forks, including Sang Lee Farms in Peconic and the Green Thumb in Water Mill, and at restaurants like A Touch of Venice in Mattituck and Tweeds in Riverhead.

The dairy has been so successful that at the end of this years’ milking season in October, the Catapanos plan to move their operation to a five- acre farm seven miles east to Peconic, where they will increase the herd to 90.  Dr. Catapano is building a barn and a cheesemaking room with walk-in refrigeration and the proper curing and ripening conditions for the cheeses.  He hopes to do an Alpine –style tomme, a pressed cheese, and mold-ripened and blue cheeses.

He expects production to double.  “We will be keeping busy,” Dr. Catapano said.

And with a steady stream of tourists from the wineries and corn mazes nearby, the Catapanos are planning to set up the new farm as the latest agricultural entertainment center on the North Fork, with areas for visitors to view the cheese being made and goats being milked.

They never expected the dairy to grow so fast.

“We started this off—we thought it is just a little hobby,” Dr. Catapano said.  “It takes you for a ride.  Now we are just kind of being pulled along with it.”
 

The Front of the Herd

Catapano Goat Cheese Named best in US.
Suffolk Times, August 2005

Peconic- Three years ago, Karen and Michael Catapano knew next to nothing about goats, except that they liked goat cheese and that grandpa Catapano used to keep a herd back in his native Sicily. Now, they make the best chevre in the whole country.

Catapano Dairy's soft chevre, a soft cheese, has been awarded first place at the American Cheese Society's annual "Festival of Cheese" conference and competition held this year in Louisville, KY. The groups membership includes over 1,000 makers of farmstead, limited production and specialty cheese, marketers and academics, and is the largest advocacy and trade group of the US quality cheese industry.

The Catapanos make about 10 types of cheese, including a cheddar, feta and ricotta, but it is the fresh chevre, their only competition entry, that caught the judges attention. The blue ribbon came in the highly competitive "fresh, unrippened cheese: goat's milk" category. The company beat out Cypress grove Chevre, a 20 year old, award winning California producer and others. It was the first time the Catapanos had entered a competition, and they had hoped for an honorable mention at best.

"It was a complete shock," said Ms. Catapano on Monday. "We were reeling. They are the most prestigious and biggest cheese society in America, and we are just thrilled to be recognized like this. We're so small and new, but we beat the big guys."

There is no big secret to making really good cheese, she said. You just have to have the best goats, feed them the best food, and be scrupulously clean in your cheesemaking. Catapano cheese is a blend of milks selected for their complementary qualities, a concept familiar in winemaking. The herd of 55 goats includes show quality Saanens bred by local goat fancier Mary Beth Andresen; Nubians, which produce milk with a high butterfat content; La Manchas, which make a sweet milk; and Alpines, which produce a well rounded milk in high volumes.

The goats are fed on organically grown alfalfa sent from a 500 acre farm in upstate New York, owned by a farmer Dr. Catapano met at a cheese-making conference last year. The alfalfa is supplemented with wheat germ oil, vitamins and grains. It is also important to create a stress free environment for the goats,  because as any dairy farmer can tell you, a good quality of life improves both the quality and volume of milk, said Ms. Catapano.

"Happy goats make better cheese," she said. "It is really that simple."

Catapano Dairy, the only goat farm on Long Island, has come a long way in a very short time. Ms Catapano, a former nurse and pharmaceutical sales person, and Dr. Catapano, a physician who still practices four days a week on the South Fork, bought the one acre goat farm next to Macari Vineyards on route 48 when it came up for sale in the fall of 2002, and moved there from the South Fork in 2003. "It was a leap of faith," said Catapano.

Over that winter, they attended cheese-making and goat-keeping workshops upstate and in Vermont, researched cheese recipes and goat milk soap, and generally boned up on all things goat. Dr. Catapanos bedtime reading was a huge veterinary textbook, said Ms. Catapano. The farm was an unproven venture, and in need of some serious investment. The Catapanos have put a few hundred thousand dollars into the business, buying the latest stainless steel equipment, "upgrading" the goats, and bringing a couple of employees on board.

Now, after milking the goats and cleaning stables first thing in the morning, Ms. catapano opens the shop for the day and Dr. Catapano goes to work. After work, he makes cheese, and runs deliveries on his "days off." Ms. Catapanos son, Patrick Behringer, is just returning from 13 months of military service in Iraq and will likely work at the farm for awhile starting this fall, before heading off to college.

Catapano cheese is now available all over the East End - at 15 places on the South Fork, and at a number of North Fork outlets including the Village Cheese Shop in Mattituck, Sang Lee Farm in Peconic and Wickham's Friut Farm in Cutchogue. At the moment, there is greater demand for their cheese than the Catapanos can satisfy. They recently turned down a request to supply Citarella, a NYC based fine food purveyor, because of the volume of production that would be required.

"We really don't want to become too huge," said Ms. Catapano. "We'll probably never get to the point where we can supply
a big chain. But we do want to grow, because we are usually down to our last log of cheese by the end of every week."

When this year's  milking season draws to a close and the goat farm closes to the public, the Catapanos will move the dairy to a new five acre location on Route 48 in Peconic. There will enough space to double the herd and accommodate the increasing number of customers and frequent school and bus tours, and also more room for cheesemaking operations. But town code requirements will limit retail space to 100 square feet, the maximum size of a farm stand.

Next year, cheese production will double and dairy will start to ship orders made via their website, www.catapanodairyfarm.com. Ms. Catapano also plans to continue a line of goat's milk soaps, creams, and skin care products that she has developed, called the Delicate Doe.

"We're really more than pleased with how it is all turning out," said Ms. Catapano. "My husband and I make a great team working together. I thought we would, but I really didn't know for sure, and we have met the greatest people out here. We're loving it."

“The Goatique” at Catapano Goat Dairy Farm
Dan's Papers August 19, 2005

Peconic Resident Proves Goats and Milk Make a Silky Soap
By R. B. Stuart

When shopping for a skin softening soap, goat’s milk is the key ingredient to look for. Now you can get this kind of soap locally at the award winning Catapano Dairy Farm in Mattituck. Karen Catapano, a nurse of 15 years and well studied in Health and Wellness, uses the goat’s milk from her farm to create an amazing line of soap.

After being open for only three years, this small family run farm has already won the coveted “Best in The US Soft Goat Cheese” category from the American Cheese Society, the most prestigious award available for cheese makers. Now that they’ve perfected the soft goat cheese, Karen Catapano’s goat milk skin care line is next. Her goat soaps are sold on the farm in her Goatique.

Catapano began in the summer of 2003 selling just two goat’s milk soaps and a few goat’s milk hand and body creams. She discovered goat’s milk soap while she and her husband, Dr. Michael Catapano, an MD at the Wainscott Walk-In Medical Care clinic in East Hampton, went upstate for a two-week goat cheese making class. They stayed at the facilitator’s house where she came across beautiful homemade soaps made from goat‘s milk. After two weeks of using them, she noticed an incredible difference in her skin. Catapano decided to bring the soaps back with her and sell them on the farm along side the cheese. In the very first month that they opened, she was back in the kitchen rolling Chebre, a soft goat cheese, and noticed the skin on her hands was soft, her nails and cuticles were healthy. She researched the benefits of goat milk in skin care products and was introduced to Terra Carlson, a local skin care veteran, and they struck up a great friendship. They became a great collaborative team and spent many months brainstorming. Working through trial and error and having Carlson on board with her vast array of connections helped Catapano in making the goat milk soaps. Catapano’s sister Hillary Sullivan and Dr. Catapano her husband, also help, and she hopes when her son returns from his three year Army term in October, he’ll assist in the family business.

None of this was as easy as it sounds since chemistry is involved Catapano explains, “It’s much like cheese making. You have to have a consistent environment. Cleanliness is of the utmost importance. In order to get the same results, you must do the exact same thing each time. You have to measure everything, you even have to count the amount of times you stir something. It takes 30 days before you can cure a bar of goat milk soap because they take longer to dry than regular soaps. A yogurt bar soap takes 45 days to dry.”

The yogurt bar was made by mistake when her husband Michael was making yogurt. “He had 100 cups of yogurt all over the kitchen and it needed a perfect consistency but wasn’t exactly doing what he wanted. He was going to scrap them, but then I said I would take them. I experimented and found out it makes the most wonderful woman’s shaving bar and soaps,” Catapano said.

It took eight months to bring it to fruition. “For every hit I had a miss. It was very difficult to incorporate goat milk into these soap recipes. The Arabian Nights batch of soap had a beautiful chocolate color and smelled great. But when we cut them open it looked like a galaxy of planets inside, oozing black holes with shooting stars.”

The soaps are cold processed and made with 100% pure virgin olive oil. Other soaps may have lard or tallow, which is beef fat. Catapano doesn’t use that. She uses organic bio-chemicals and fresh goat’s milk, (most companies use powdered goat milk for soap). An ounce of goat’s milk and shea butter goes into every bar. They also use vitamin E as the main preservative, because when products contain milk, bacteria can grow.

The Goatique carries The Delicate Doe, a pure goat’s milk skin care line with twelve traditional soaps in scents of Mango Passion, Irish Tweed, Tropical Breeze and others. It also has four specialty soaps, three shaving bars, the Kid Spa with banana berry bubble bath, lip protectant, face & body lotion and goat’s milk soap. The Delicate Face line has 7 steps, ranging from a scrub made with brown sugar and shea butter, face wash made with green tea, a face mask with milk, flowers and skin loving herbs, an under eye cream and even the Baby Doe Spa with a selection of seven different packages to choose from. For those bath junkies, there is The Delicate Bath & Body with seven more creams and scrubs to select from.

The Catapano Goat Farm is located in Peconic at 33705 North Road.  Their hours of operation are seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. April 1st to November 1st. If you can’t make it to the North Fork you can also find the line in Island Food on Shelter Island or visit their website, which should be up in two weeks, where they will offer weekly specials and package discounts at www.catapanodairyfarm.com