Each month, your Neighboring Food Co-ops feature our region’s artisan cheesemakers by offering a specially selected cheese at great price. Look for the “Cave to Co-op” sign in the cheese section at your local food co-op. To find one near you, visit www.nfca.coop/members.
This month’s special cheese is MT ALICE from Von Trapp Farmstead, Waitsfield, VT
The Sound of Music has made “von Trapp” a household name across generations. The family didn’t traverse the Alps on foot with all their instruments, but they did leave Austria to tour around Europe and the United States, eventually settling in Stowe in the 1940s.
Werner and Erika von Trapp started the von Trapp Family Farm in Waitsfield, Vermont in 1959. Erika (lovingly called Oma, like the cheese made in her honor) had studied agriculture in Austria and was a main force behind establishing and growing the farm.
Now over 60 years later, von Trapp Farmstead produces sustainably raised meat and dairy; live-culture yogurt, and award-winning artisan cheese from their own milk. Until his recent passing, Martin, one of Werner and Erika’s six children, and his wife Kelly operated the organic dairy. Now Martin and Kelly’s eldest son Sebastian and his wife Molly run both the farm and the cheesemaking side.
Mt. Alice is named after a distinct mountain peak southeast of the farm. This bloomy rind Camembert-style cheese is an elegantly smooth, milky delight 
made from the farm’s organic pasteurized cows’ milk and aged for three to five weeks. Mt. Alice is perfect on a cheese plate and makes a great easy lunch, thickly smeared on a crusty baguette. If you are feeling more adventurous however, here are a few recipes that highlight its mushroomy and milky flavor.
We featured Mt. Alice over the years. For excellent recipes, link to these pages: 2018, 2021 and 2023.
Cave to Co-op is a partnership between Provision International and the Neighboring Food Co-op Association (NFCA) to support local, artisanal cheese producers in our region and make their products more easily available to co-op shoppers. The NFCA is a network of more than 40 food co-ops in our region — including yours — that are working together to advance their vision of a thriving regional economy, rooted in a healthy, just and sustainable food system and a vibrant community of co-operative enterprise. For more information, please visit www.nfca.coop.