La Ferme La Borie d'Imbert

I love a good goat farm!

Living in northern California, we are blessed with an abundance of farmstead cheeses. On a fine day, you can pop over to Sonoma county to meet the goats and buy cheeses direct from the producer. The same is true here in France. In fact, I think they invented the idea!

La Borie d’Imbert Farm is located just across the “county” border in the Lot and about one hour and 40 minutes from where we are staying in the Dordogne. That’s not too far to drive for goats, right?

I mean, come on, look at that face!

When we came by, most of the goats were inside having lunch.

It was a pretty big operation. There must have been several hundred goats on the farm in various barns and fields. Strangely, everything was open to the public without supervision. We just wandered around petting goats for quite a while.

How about this little gal? So cute, I could just put her in my pocket.

The farm’s creamery had a great interpretive center with videos about cheese making and animal husbandry. They also had windows into the different cheese making rooms. Here they are doing the “moulage” or molding of the fresh goat cheese into little rounds. They press the cheese into a form with about 4 dozen cavities, then lift the mold away to reveal the rounds.

The rounds are then transferred to racks to bloom. This type of goat cheese has a bloomy rind created by mold spores that grow from inside the cheese. Over time, the surface becomes wrinkley as the cheese loses moisture and contracts. The cheeses need to be flipped daily to keep the ripening process even.

Outside, some of the male goats were hanging out on a pile of rocks.

After a thorough hand washing and a squirt of hand sanitizer, we headed over to the farm’s store for some lunch provisions.

If this doesn’t remind you of northern California…. Everything you need for a super picnic: cheese, charcuterie, beers, cookies and even potted cassoulet. Well, maybe not the cassoulet!

We bought some of the little raw milk goat cheese they were making earlier in the cheese making room. Less than 6 Euros for the lot. What would these cost at Whole Foods back home?

They also had lots of fun goat merch! The text on the bag roughly translates to “You’re driving me crazy”. I’m not sure if that goat is striking a sexy pose or what. Sometimes I’m baffled by French culture.

Anyway, it was a great day out!