SCENERY HILL - The tiny, wood-frame building hugging Fava Farm Road in rural North Bethlehem Township has seen several incarnations in its 100 years or so.
Alisa Fava Fasnacht was reminded of that when a violent storm struck while she was using the space for a home office. A strong gust of wind lifted the ceiling, raining feathers down around her.
The Co-Hill Farms outbuilding, it seems, also once housed a chicken population.
"If only these walls could talk," Alisa said with a chuckle one recent cool July evening.
The fowl feathers are long gone, and today, the building is home to Emerald Valley Farm's Artisan Cheese shop, owned and operated by Alisa and her husband, Alan Fasnacht.
With a good-sized chunk of young Parmesan cheese in tow, Alisa offers a quick tour of the one-room shop. Yes, she says, she can play the old upright piano in the corner, which doubles as a stand for seasonal displays. And she recalls the day the 8-foot deli case was delivered, and how a crew of men spent the better part of a day trying to squeeze it through a doorway that was just a quarter-inch too narrow.
Alisa confides that she and her husband never set out to become cheesemakers; it just sort of happened.
Both were born into the dairy business and decided to purchase a few cows to indulge their shared passion for the show ring.
Alisa grew up on Co-Hill Farms, still owned and operated by her father, Joseph Fava, and uncle, Louis Fava, and Alan worked on his grandfather's farm in Hickory. They live with Alisa's parents in the landmark, blue Victorian farmhouse on the Co-Hill property, adjacent to the cheese shop.
"We went out and bought the very, very best genetics we could find from the best breeder," Alisa explains as the tour moves inside the family's farmhouse. A spread of food befitting a holiday meal showcasing Emerald Valley's specialty cheeses has been set on the dining room table: lasagna; feta loaf over a bed of spinach and surrounded by various aged cheeses; muffuletta, a hero-style sandwich; bowtie pasta and biscotti. A sideboard holds a perfectly cooked piece of steak with two varieties of fromage blanc on the side.
"One day, I wake up and have this small herd of exquisitely beautiful cows that we are taking meticulous care of," Alisa explains. "Oh, their milk is off-the-Richter-scale good."
She decided to do something special with it.
Alisa and her mother, Antoinette Fava, who has created the evening's feast, had always talked about making cheese. Following the lead of home-cheesemaking guru Ricki Carroll, they settled on ricotta.
"It was funny," Alisa said of that first attempt. "We looked in the pot and said, 'Oh, it's doing something in there. Should you stir it, shouldn't you stir it?' We tasted it and said, 'Oh, my, this will make good lasagna.'"
She took the leftovers to Washington Communities Mental Health/Mental Retardation Center, where she's clincial supervisor of the children's psychiatric treatment facility. The cheese was an instant hit with her co-workers.
Alisa and Antoinette began experimenting with other fresh cheeses, making fromage blanc - a soft, spreadable cheese similar to cream cheese - on the stovetop and sharing it with as many friends and family members as possible for feedback. Antoinette since has developed eight different varieties using her homegrown herbs, and the fromage blanc has become Emerald Valley's signature item.
It wasn't long before the Fasnachts realized they could not rely exclusively on their small herd of Jerseys and holsteins to meet the growing cheese demand, so they tapped the milk produced by the 100-plus Co-Hill herd.
"Truly, it's a family endeavor," Alisa said. "They, like us, take extemely good care of the herd. The quality of the milk is outstanding. It just made sense."
A steady stream of Fava family members drifts in and out of the dining room as Alisa and her mother talk about the cheeses and how they can be used to complement assorted dishes. Alisa introduces each relative, and later explains how all of them have helped launch the fledging business.
In October 2005, about a year after the ricotta experiment, Alisa and Alan "took a big leap" and sent a load of milk to a mom-and-pop creamery in Berks County, where a variety of hard cheeses - cheddar, colby, farmers, feta, hot pepper, mozzarella and Swiss - are now crafted.
What sets the Fasnachts' artisan cheese apart from commercial offerings is its production. No hormones, food colorings, preservatives, fillers, glutens or binders are added, and nothing - cream included - is removed.
The raw-milk cheeses are brought back to the farm, where they age for a minimum of 60 days - some longer - in a cooler in the basement of the cheese shop. Among their most popular is the smoked cheddar.
"It's so exceptional that I don't have any," Alisa said, adding that a young cheddar will be ready in early August.
Much like wine, the flavor of some cheeses - cheddar among them - intensifies with age as it dries down. Other varieties, such as colby and Swiss, achieve maximum flavor after about six months.
The chunk of Parmesan that Alisa brought with her to the shop is a new addition to the product line, but is considered "a baby" at only a month old. The cheese is turned daily for the first month and checked for mold as it develops its protective rind. Olive oil rubs keep the moisture balance just right. The cheese will be ready for sale at Christmastime.
The Fasnachts encourage customers to experiment with their cheeses in a variety of dishes.
"Get creative with it," Alisa said. She told of one customer who created a luncheon dessert with a frozen scoop of Orange Sunrise fromage blanc served atop a Pepperidge Farm Milano cookie.
"I've always had this desire to bring the farm right back to the table," Alisa said, "just really good, fresh and done right.
"Honestly, everything we do starts and ends with the cow," she added. "We do everything we know to take as good care of her as possible. All the emphasis is on the cow, so all the emphasis is on the quality of the milk, because not all milk is created equal."