Hi all, I haven't been on the forum in a while, unfortunately haven't been making much cheese lately, but...
My husband and I are very seriously considering starting a dairy farm and cheesemaking business in Piemonte, Italy (where we live)
I would like to know from you experts a ton of info, but the very most important:
1. Can we reasonably believe that we will make enough money to maintain our family (2 kids)
2. Can we be successful learning on our own, or will we just be set up for disaster?
We are thinking some sheep and mostly goats. The initial idea was the opposite because goats tend to get into more trouble, but it seems that they yield way more milk than sheep do. My husband is convinced that if we want to make enough money tow maintain our family we need a lot of animals, he is thinking 800 goats and 200 sheep, which to me sounds like an insanely large number especially for people who don't have a lot of experience raising these animals. I have NO experience, and my husband used to go to the Alps in the summer with some cows and like 10 goats for the season, but he was little and was essentially a helping hand, I don't consider him to have experience. Obviously with these numbers we will need help, so we will also need money to be able to pay a couple of helpers.
I am the one who will be making the cheese, and am trying to decide exactly which cheeses to make, but we will definitely make fresh cheese (robiola) a Toma, a blue, and maybe 1 or 2 other aged cheeses. I would like to know if one produces one type of cheese each day, and you produce on rotation, or do you produce the fresh everyday plus 2 other types?
How much milk can one person realistically work alone each day? How much time would we have to consider to make the cheese? Would I have enough time to actually sell the cheese? Would we have time to spend with our kids or would we be slaves to the farm?
We have found a covered stall near our house (6 covered stalls each one is 1,200 square meters, the owner said they used to have 1,000 cows) and are negotiating a rental agreement, the owners are evaluating if they would be interested in renting because they wanted to sell, but haven't thought about prices for either type of solution.
Does anyone have some resources to point me to to really study this? I know that not many people on here are from Italy, but I've seen some Europeans, and a lot of my questions are probably international-time and experience necessary to not be shooting ourselves in the foot.
Thanks to all, I'm trying to keep this short enough to get some answers