Columbus Day Weekend open house on cheese trail

The Finger Lakes Cheese Trail is pleased to announce their popular Columbus Day Weekend Two-Day Open House is coming up. The fall Open House is Saturday and Sunday October 12 and 13, from 10:00am-5:00pm both days. All 12 Trail members will open up their farms to cheese lovers on Saturday, with 10 of the 12 participating on Sunday as well. Many of the farms will be offering farm tours, and a few will have with extra activities created especially for the Open Houses. At Lively Run Goat Dairy in Interlaken for example, visitors can bottle feed the baby goats. And Sunset View Creamery in Odessa, site of the 2014 Finger Lakes Cheese Festival, will be hosting several local vendors and offering self-guided farm tours.Shtayburne Farm will even be in two places at once. They will be sampling and selling out of their beautiful newly expanded tasting room and cheese shop on their farm on Chase Road. And also at Kirtons Farm Market on Route 414 in Hector on Saturday. The 12 Creameries that will be hosting the Open Houses on their farms are: Dutch Hill Creamery, Chenango ForksEngelbert Farms, NicholsFinger Lakes Dexter Creamery, King FerryHillcrest Dairy, Moravia* Jerry Dell Farm & Store, FreevilleKeeley’s Cheese Company, King FerryKenton’s Cheese Company, TrumansburgLively Run Goat Dairy, InterlakenMuranda Cheese Co., WaterlooShtayburne Farm, Rock Stream* Sunset View Creamery, OdessaVanillen Dairy, OvidIt’s important to note that Shtayburne Farms and Hillcrest Dairy will not be open on Sunday, so people wishing to visit them should plan to visit on Saturday. The key to making the Open House enjoyable is pre-planning a route. Trail reps advise going to the website, looking at the Google map, and planning a route by grouping four or five creameries together per day. Then add in a few places to stop along the way for food, like Kirtons Farm Market in Hector, Man in the Moon Bake Shoppe & Café in King Ferry, or Crystal Lake Café at Americana Vineyards in Interlaken.”The Cheese Trail is not like a Wine Trail,” reminds Carmella Hoffman, of Sunset View Creamery. “You don’t pull out of one driveway and into another. It can be a good 20 or 30 minutes between farms. You are truly touring. So plan on enjoying some leaf peeping and maybe making a few stops in between and you’ll have a nice day against the backdrop of beautiful fall foliage in the Finger Lakes.”