The Deal on Dairy
Longing for the nostalgia of charms such as delivered milk or a noisy ice cream truck roaming your neighbourhood? Look no further than Limestone Organic Creamery, which is now delivering milk — stored in old-fashioned, glass bottles — to customers in West Ottawa and the surrounding area.
“All of the dairy products we produce are included [in the delivery offerings],” says Kathie Groenewegen, who co-owns the Kingston, Ont.-based business with her husband, Francis. “So that's skim, one per cent, two per cent, whole milk and non-homogenized.
“We have a chocolate milk that seems to be super popular; we use whole milk to make it and we have a hard time keeping up to it. We sell a 10 per cent coffee cream and a whipping cream that takes about 30 seconds to whip; it's really nice and thick.”
With the holidays quickly approaching, customers may also be interested to know that eggnog will be available. “We make eggnog at Easter and Christmas, and it sells out every year. Groenwegen says. She adds that other kitchen staples, such as locally raised meats, cheese and vegetables, are available for delivery, too, since Limestone Organic Creamery sells products from a wide range of Ontario-based producers.
“We have tried to involve a lot of local farmers; I think we're close to 40 local farmers and makers now that contribute to our farm shop and our home delivery service.”
Located in Elginburg, north of Kingston, Limestone Organic Creamery is a small family farm that was established in 1967. The business has been delivering to customers in the Kingston area for 13 years. Effective August 2024, Ottawa-area residents thirsting for high-quality, organic dairy can place orders from Perth, Almonte, Carleton Place, Mississippi Mills, Appleton, Stittsville, Kanata, Manotick, Greely, Metcalfe and Riverside South. Delivery orders are highly customizable, depending on the customer’s desired frequency for delivery.
“We've tried to make it really flexible, so you can sign up for once a month, twice a month or every week,” explains Groenewegen, adding there’s a $15 minimum order and a small delivery charge ($3.99 plus taxes). “You can also change your order each week, or have a recurring order. You can go on holiday and come back and start your order again. There's no subscription; it's very open.”
As for those glass bottles? Groenewegen says she believes it improves the end result. “We really feel like it stays colder in glass, therefore it lasts longer,” she says. “And it tastes so much better; I can't tell you the number of people that comment, ‘Oh, it doesn't taste like the plastic bag or the carton.’”
Incredibly, Limestone Organic Creamery is still using the same bottles from when it started offering delivery service 13 years ago. Customers wash their empty bottles — they’re dishwasher safe — and then they’re sterilized and refilled back at the farm.
“We feel like that is saving so much plastic and so much in the landfill, so we're happy we went that route,” says Groenewegen. If environmental benefits weren’t enough, the glass bottles are also a nod to a simpler time, which makes people happy.
“It's just nostalgic,” she says. “You know, we get so many people that say, ‘Oh, I remember when the milkman came.’”
Certified organic for 27 years, the cows at the farm are grass fed. “Because of organic standards, they have to go outside every day to socialize and exercise,” says Groenewegen. She explains the farm chose a compost bedding pack — a large “loafing area” for the cows to lie down — for environmental reasons, and because it was the most comfortable and clean environment for the cows.
“You can be really sure that these are extremely happy cows,” she says. “We have many cows in their teens. They're under very little stress; they're in and out of the barn. They're milked whenever they want to be milked, and you can taste that difference, I think.”
Limestone Organic Creamery
limestonecreamery.ca | 613.542.0732 | @limestonecreamery
Cheese the day
Since sleuthing out the perfect cheese for your charcuterie board can be daunting, Jacobsons Fine Food will do it for you — and deliver it right to your front door.
The Beechwood Avenue store provides a Cheese of the Month Club, offering customers the chance to expand their palates and explore a wide range of cheese from around the world.
“To encourage that pursuit of great taste and an understanding of the artistry of cheese is what we wanted to put into those boxes,” explains Dominique Jacobson, who co-owns the business with her husband, Marcus Minshall.
Subscribers to the club receive their boxes on the first Thursday of every month, Jacobson says. “We have people who've been with us in that program for years, and then we get some wonderful new people who come on board that are just starting their journey in cheese and want to try it, or share it with friends,” she says, adding that many subscribers like to reserve the evening of their delivery as a special night to indulge in the contents of their box.
Stuart Edwards, the store’s cheese and deli department supervisor, is responsible for “curating” the boxes.
“Every box of Cheese of the Month has a theme that we're trying to build around, or a specific product that we're trying to build around,” Edwards explains. “Usually, there's one [cheese] that is very well known, and one that is a little bit less well known, and the third one is completely new.”
He adds that most of the boxes include some form of cracker, baguette or bread, as well as a featured “accoutrement” such as a jam, jelly or honey.
“There are tasting notes in the boxes; we try and include a little history of the producer or the company itself,” Edwards says. “If there's room in the document, there will be a [wine] pairing suggestion, too.”
The Cheese of the Month Club has three options: the “Cheese Enthusiast” and the “Mommy to Be” boxes (featuring pasteurized cheese for expecting moms) are $225, whereas the “Cheese Aficionado” box is priced at $285, and typically includes a fourth cheese and a meat-based charcuterie option. Pricing reflects a three-month subscription.
For those willing to pick up in-store, Jacobsons offers the Signature Cheese Box. While the Cheese of the Month Club offers an element of surprise, customers know what they’re getting with the Signature Cheese Box, Jacobson says.
“The Cheese Box is a mini curated board that can be great if you’re short on time, you’re not able to come in and have a wonderful discussion with Stuart, which is obviously what we always hope you’re going to do,” she adds. “Stuart has [used] his expert eye to put some collections together in these boxes, where you can just pick it up and have everything to make your board at home.”
Signature Cheese Boxes offer two options, both priced at $80 per box. ‘La Parisienne’ features three French cheeses, while ‘Home Grazed’ serves up three Canadian-made cheeses.
“What's been very exciting over the past five years is just how many incredible Canadian cheesemakers have really made an impactful presence on the scene,” Jacobson says. “We’re so excited to have such a strong link to them and to be supporting them, as well as our French counterparts.”
For shoppers with a few minutes to spare, Jacobson warmly encourages an in-store visit — and a friendly chat — in order to find your next cheese. A central feature inside the New Edinburgh store is a cheese wall, featuring up to 80 cheeses from around the world. Jacobson emphasizes that her staff are eager to help, especially if a customer feels out of their element.
“It can be intimidating to go up to the cheese wall; it's actually quite intimidating not only to find a cheese, but then how do you put it together?” she says. “We really like to help with that, with ideas or options for people to consider. We want everybody to leave feeling very confident and enthusiastic, to know how they're going to put it together and to offer that same hospitality to their guests in their home.”
Jacobsons offers an English-style cheese service, for which Jacobson credits Ann-Marie Dyas, owner of The Fine Cheese Co. in the U.K., for helping her bring it to Ottawa.
“She just really exposed us to this world; she helped us to understand the major differences in international culture for the service of cheese,” says Jacobson, adding that Dyas brought her to farms to meet with cheesemakers and hear their stories. “She actually helped us get ready and set up our very first cheese counter, and train staff on the more English style of cheese retail that she serves.”
A cornerstone of that English cheese service is cutting cheese to order, which means cheese is shipped to the store in massive wheels. “The wheels are usually about 40 kilograms,” Edwards says. “Cheese is like a living breathing product. It’s ripening while it’s wrapped up, it’s ripening while it’s shipping, whether it's flown over or coming over on a boat from Europe.”
That’s why, he explains, a big part of his role is expert monitoring and handling of the cheese.
“What we do here is make sure that each piece of cheese, from each wheel, is in that kind of pristine condition when we're serving it,” he says. “So part of the operation is to pick up and touch each piece of cheese every day; look at it, unwrap it if we need to.
“You can tell how a cheese is doing visually, but smell has a lot to do with it as well. You can tell if it’s been wrapped up too long, or it's not ripe yet. You can have two pieces from the same wheel that you’ve cut at the same time; if you haven’t touched the one behind, it develops a [different] character than the one that's been unwrapped, touched and loved a little bit more.”
As the mercury drops and we head towards the holidays, Edwards says his cheese recommendations follow the season.
“From late November to Christmas into the New Year, we tend to have more stronger, bolder flavours on the wall and those firmer cheeses, bigger salt crystals to kind of match up with the Cab Sauvs and the Zinfandels,” he says.
Gruyère — or their French counterpart Comté — are prime candidates for a wintery charcuterie board.
“As they age you start to see some nuttiness develop, like a slivered almond kind of flavour,” Edwards says. “Around 18 months, they can develop like a milk chocolate-like texture; so they're a little bit firmer, but they kind of melt in your mouth and you start to get some salt versus a little bit of sharpness. And as you age past 24 months you start to get more of a farm-y, kind of like savoury but stronger flavour; that nuttiness becomes more like a roasted walnut instead of almond.”
The result of a finely aged cheese, paired with the right wine, seems not unlike a cosy sweater on a cold day.
“We bring in a 36-month Comté for the Christmas season that is firm like a cold butter with a lot of salt crystals, and it has this savoury onion or garlic kind of flavour to it,” Edwards says. “You don't need a lot of it; it's very rich and filling, but it makes you feel warm inside.”
Jacobsons Fine Food
jacobsons.ca | 613.746.6002 | @jacobsonsottawa
Pick up a pint
Fans of The Merry Dairy will be thrilled to know that pints are available in 10 shops across Ottawa and beyond — now that the beloved Hintonburg ice cream shop is a licensed dairy plant.
“We're back [to selling] in all of the original shops that we had before we stopped,” says owner Marlene Haley. She adds that her business offers its classic flavours — vanilla, chocolate, salted caramel, mint chip, cookies and cream — as well as one or two seasonal flavours each week.
Customers can find The Merry Dairy’s pints at businesses including Around the Block Butcher & Market, Chantal’s Fruit & Vegetable Stand, Grace in the Kitchen, Hintonburg Marché, Jacobsons Gourmet Concepts, Ottawa Bagelshop and Deli, Perth Pie Co., Pot & Pantry, the Red Apron and Thyme & Again.
Back in 2022, The Merry Dairy made headlines when an official from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) demanded it pull its ice cream from wholesaler’s shelves, threatening a $2,000 daily fine for noncompliance.
“It was deflating,” Haley says. “We had started doing wholesale during the pandemic because of businesses reaching out; people wanted to stock their shelves with a lot of local things and support small businesses.”
Haley readily admits that at the time, she didn’t realize there was a requirement to be a licensed dairy plant in order for her business to conduct wholesale transactions.
“We get inspected, we sell pints in our [own] shop; someone wanted to buy pints from us and sell them in their shop,” she explains. “I didn't even think to go and see, ‘Am I allowed to do this?’ because everybody was doing it. A lot of ice cream shops across Ontario were doing it.”
Following that initial visit, Haley heard horror stories from other businesses in a similar position. Initially, she didn’t think it would be feasible for The Merry Dairy to become a licensed dairy plant. “I just decided we're never going to do this in this 100-year old building,” she says. “But then I changed my mind, and I'm glad I did, because OMAFRA was great to work with.”
In January 2024, Haley invited OMAFRA to come and have a look at the store. “They gave me a list of some homework to do, like build this wall, a couple other checks and balances, how to document,” she explains, adding that The Merry Dairy and OMAFRA worked back and forth by email for a few months. “We wrote a lot of letters, and I think they listened in the end.
“We just tried to convince them, from the beginning, that we are not getting the milk directly from the cows and pasteurizing it on site; we’re getting it from a licensed dairy plant.” The Merry Dairy has been sourcing its milk from Laiterie de l’Outaouais for years.
“They're making our base, they're pasteurizing the mix for us, and then when we get it, we make ice cream by adding all the inclusions like caramel sauce and cookies and sponge toffee, that kind of thing. But we're not doing cow to cone in this building.”
Ultimately, Haley says, the changes required to meet the licensing requirements proved to be within reach. Fortunately, The Merry Dairy didn’t require too many pricey renovations.
“When we built our kitchen back in 2017, we did a pretty good job,” she says. “We have drains in our floor, and we were up to code for everything.
“The main thing was how ingredients are stored; we built a furnace room in the basement, so you're storing your chemicals and any kind of cleaning supplies far away, in a different room than where your food supplies are.”
She was also required to add a wall behind the customer service area, at the front of the store.
“Up in the shop, it was mainly just a really clear division between being a scoop shop and being a production facility,” Haley says.
After a final inspection in June 2024, The Merry Dairy was officially licensed.
“I'm really happy with the outcome, and... I was amazed at how supportive people were and the help that was offered to us in terms of understanding the Milk Act, advice and encouragement to keep trying,” Haley says, adding that it was a happy conclusion for her production team that makes the ice cream.
“It was very satisfying to go through something that was really a downer two years ago, and then have this happy outcome,” she says. “It feels like success, and we're thankful.”
The Merry Dairy
themerrydairy.com | 613.680.3144 | @themerrydairy
