Gammelgården Creamery
Stina Kutzer grew up in Middlebury and moved from Arlington to Pownal in 1984, where she raised three children and now has three grandchildren. Since the 70s, she had dreamed of starting a small dairy. In 2004, Stina’s husband Peter gifted her a calf named Babette for her birthday. Babette gave birth to twin daughters, so by 2006, Stina had a small herd of cows. At the time the local food movement was just beginning to take hold. She began making butter, since jersey cows are known for their butterfat, but wanted to find a purpose for the leftover skimmed milk. In the kitchen Stina experimented with straining and different combinations of cultures, and once she found one that she liked, she began sampling the yogurt-like product at Mighty Food Farm, where her daughter worked at the CSA.
Stina created Gammelgården’s signature SKYR, modeled after an Icelandic cheese. One of Stina’s sisters, who lives in Middlebury, gave her a couple of gallons of tapped maple syrup, and Peter suggested that she try putting it in the SKYR. The samplers loved it! Today, Maple is the most popular flavor of SKYR. Another is SKYR with jam, which Gammelgården gets from Sidehill Farm in Brattleboro.
With the help of her sister and business partner, Marta Willett, Stina opened the farmstead Creamery in 2010 on 10 acres in North Pownal. Since then, SKYR has become one of the area’s favorite local products. Gammelgården SKYR is ubiquitous in neighboring Williamstown and can be found in over twenty stores in New England, including two stores in Boston. Impressively, Gammelgården remains a modest operation; all Gammelgården products are handmade and hand-packaged by the Creamery’s five employees, and Peter handles the deliveries. Stina makes two to three batches per week. Each takes about 56 to 85 gallons of milk and consists of about 600 single serve SKYRS and 150 larger containers of popular flavors (Maple and Plain). They also make butter and buttermilk. When Gammelgården needs more milk than their small herd can supply, they purchase it from other dairy farmers in Pownal.
For more information, visit https://gammelgardencreamery.com
Milk processing facility & creamery
Stina pulling a milk wagon in the winter.
3 of the 5 dairy cows at Gammelgården
A batch of hand-packed Skyrs ready to be delivered!
