‘Little
BY DEBBIE STILES-RENZI
Staff Correspondent
BIRCH RIVER, W.Va. - Verena
and Greg Sava moved to Nicholas
county, West Virginia, 10 years
ago. Soon after, the couple pur
chased a goat-because they wanted
to have their own milk, and their
largely undeveloped woodlot and
neglected farmland homestead did
not have enough pasture then to
support a cow.
Now, a generation (of goats) or
so after the acquisition of “Bar
bara”, their foundation doe, the
Savas have a total of 24 goats, with
11 milking at present. And they’re
in the process of completing West
Virginia’s first-ever goat cheese
dairy.
“First we just made it (the
cheese) for ourselves,” relates
Verena Sava. Then, Greg’s mother
tried it, liked it, and wanted to buy
some. And others tasted the hard
cheese, which the Savas named
Swiss Mountain, and liked it, and a
steadily growing network of
customers was formed.
Now the Savas make 1000 pounds
yearly, not nearly enough to
satisfy a growing demand for the
guard livestock
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Switzerland’ welcomes
mild cheese. Swiss Mountain gets
it name from the culture used in
making it; the Savas obtained it
from the mountain country of
Switzerland.
The Savas make cheese once
every six days. They had been
doing ten gallons at a time, which
makes one eight-pound wheel of
cheese, but with their new
building, soon they will be able to
handle 100 gallons of milk at a
time. Cheese production will
remain at about the same level this
year, but the Savas expect
production to increase con
siderably in years to come.
Now the Savas are considering
getting into the soft cheese-making
business. After doing some market
research, Greg Sava has con
cluded that Chevre, soft, cream
like cheese, is in demand locally by
gourmet-type restaurants and
similar clientele. Approximately
two pounds of Chevre can be made
from one gallon of goat’s milk
(twice the amount possible of hard
cheese); and with the wholesale
price erf Chevre at $5 a pound, a
profit margin is definitely there.
“Our ultimate goal is to get
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everything from the farm,” says
Greg. They are looking at the goat
cheese business not as a way to
become rich, but as a means to
make a steady, comfortable in
come from their 160-acre hillside
farm.
How will they accomplish this,
with good breeding animals
garnering $5OO to $lOOO a head?
“What we’re doing is cuttmg down
on our outputs,” explains Greg
Sava. To this end, the Savas try to
feed the best diet possible in order
to minimize health problems.
“We’re not trying to get huge
amounts of milk,” Verena Sava
emphasizes, “but instead, we’re
concentrating on keeping a healthy
animal.”
Although it’s somewhat the trend
now to feed rather large amounts
of gram to maximize production,
the Savas stick mainly to high
quality hay and their own pasture,
which they are gradually im
proving. Verena explains: “We
stay away from that (feeding lots
of grain); in Switzerland, where I
am from, you just don’t have the
grain.” Perhaps West Virginia’s
other nickname, ‘Little Swit
zerland’ is quite appropriate m
these circumstances; the Swiss
forage utilization philosophy ap
pears to work as well on the steep
mountainsides of West Virginia to
reduce costs for the Savas.
In another cost-reducing
measure, Verena has returned to
teaching (both she and her
husband were teachers in upstate
New York before settling in West
Virginia) in order to pay for the
construction of their new dairy,
negating the expense of taking out
a loan and making interest
payments to a bank. The Savas
also have a small sheep flock, a V<-
acre PYO strawberry operation,
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and Verena also sells bedding
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The Sava’s new dairy is a
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ig jmonstro js the docile nature of his herd buck,
a purebred Nubian purchased in California.
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