Time was when Long Island had dairies that delivered milk to the doorstep, fresh and cold each morning. Long Island cows gave the milk for those dairies.
These places have disappeared, but Dr. Michael Catapano, his wife, Karen, and their 80 goats are pioneers in a new kind of dairy operation in Peconic, turning out goat cheese and yogurt. This season, they moved from Mattituck to a larger, 5-acre property, and they have built a state-of-the-art cheese-making room. Customers will be able to watch through a window as cheese is being made.
"We couldn't keep having the baby goats in a greenhouse," Karen Catapano said one recent muggy morning. They had kept the mother goats and kids, as the babies are known, in Michael Catapano's family greenhouse in Southold for warmth.
The couple is gambling that the job of caring for goats, milking them and making cheese can be full-time work for them. Karen, who had been a nurse, already works full-time at the dairy, and Michael has cut back on his hours at Wainscott Walk-In Medical Care Clinic. Although the doctor's father had had a vegetable farm and his father's father had raised goats in Italy, he had not given a thought to farming.
His wife, however, had a hankering to raise horses. Instead, they found a faltering goat farm that had 18 animals and took it over, spent a week visiting a goat farm upstate and then struck out on their own.
Besides cheese, the Catapanos sell goat-milk-based fudge, soap and spa products. And they are hedging their bets: Besides the goats, they raise and sell cocker spaniels and rag-doll cats.
In a local synergy, Sang Lee Farms sells the cheese at farmers' markets, and a trucking company that brings produce from the East End to the west has put in an order to distribute. In addition, Satur Farms in Cutchogue delivers the cheese to some of its produce customers.
"It's starting," said Karen Catapano. "We're here for the long haul. So we're going to try to increase our productivity ... and make ourselves a premier cheese-making operation. We're still local people doing local things, but we're looking to make it bigger and better. We can't grow overnight."
