This week’s inspection took us to Celebrity Dairy in Siler City.

For nearly 40 years, Celebrity Dairy has been raising goats to make award-winning varieties of cheese ranging from fresh Chevre to aged bloomy rinds, along with skyr, gelato, and fudge. Our farm guide during our visit was Lena, who you may recognize from running the Celebrity booth at our market. Lena is the assistant operations manager, which means she does just about every task the farm has to offer. From delivering babies, to milking goats, to making cheese, to working farmers markets, she plays a role in all of it. At only 19, it may seem like a lot of responsibility, but Lena has been at Celebrity for over 4 years now. Her grandma saw an ad that Celebrity was giving away free kittens, and when she went to pick one up, she fell in love with the farm and asked to volunteer there. She kept coming back and before she knew it, she was an official employee. As we walked through the pastures with the goats, her connection to the animals on the farm was palpable. They flocked to her like she was their mama, nudging their noses against her legs, bleating for her attention. Given she was the first person many of them saw coming into this world and also the person who bottle fed many of them as babies, their love for her makes a lot of sense. It was also clear that love is reciprocal. If the quality of an animals life correlates to the quality of the product they produce, it’s no wonder why Celebrity’s cheese is so good. Although it’s a pattern as old as time, we hear a lot of folks from older generations complain about the lack of work ethic in “kids these days”. One of the most inspiring parts of these inspections is watching this next generation of farmers prove them wrong. Whether it’s the children of generational farmers, the enthusiastic college students working to make agriculture more sustainable, or a 19 year-old helping run a goat farm, we see a generation willing to put in the hard work. The problem isn’t them. It’s that if we don’t find a way to reduce the barriers to entry and make farming a financially sustainable career, they won’t ever get the chance to prove it.