Course: WVA 101 Local Food and Cuisine

Reading

(1/2)
Illinois Dairy Producers: Prairie Fruits Farm and Creamery and Ropp Jersey Cheese

Leslie Cooperband and her husband, Wes Jarrell, are the proud owners of Prairie Fruits Farm and Creamery. Wes is a retired professor of soil and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Leslie, who also has a Ph.D. in soil science, works full time on the farm. Together, they cultivate some 350 organic fruit trees and several hundred berry bushes, and operate Illinois' first farmstead cheese-making facility on a 22-acre farm just outside Champaign. The couple's 70-plus Nubian and La Mancha milk goats, fed on a diet of rotationally grazed pastures and home-grown hay, provide milk for a variety of fresh French-style cheeses, including fresh chevre, bloomy-rind cheeses and a raw milk tomme-style cheese.  Leslie and Wes also produce several styles of sheep milk cheese using milk they purchase from a nearby Amish sheep dairy.

Click here to access Prairie Fruits Farm and Creamery website.

Read the following sections about their farm on their website:

- About Us
- Our Farming Philosophy
- Our Heard
- Our Products