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Cows (Courtesy of Looking Glass Creamery)

The cheese cellar (Courtesy of Looking Glass Creamery)

Andy and Jennifer Perkins, owners of Looking Glass Creamery

Cheesemaking (Courtesy of Looking Glass Creamery)

Sign in front

Customers enjoy panoramic views outside the farm store

A visitor feeding goats on the farm

Customers enjoy the ambiance inside the farm store

Farm Store

Creamery

Who doesn’t love ice cream, especially on a hot summer day? But as you’re licking the drops running down the side of your cone, did you ever think about the work that goes into making that delicious delight or the succulent cheese you enjoyed in a dish at your favorite local restaurant? 

Let your curiosity guide you to Looking Glass Creamery. It’s a 226-acre dairy operation in the Green Creek community and one of the largest working farms in Polk County, but it’s far more than just a place that raises cows and produces milk. For visitors, it’s a destination that offers education. 

“Just getting a full, real working farm experience, particularly a dairy farm, which, as everybody knows, small dairies are disappearing from the landscape quickly, so we hope they get to see that, experience it, and enjoy the products we make,” says co-owner Andy Perkins. “We have people who come for 15 minutes and grab something and leave, and we have people who stay two hours and explore, enjoy, and hang out.”

It all started in Fairview, North Carolina, when Perkins and his wife Jennifer built Looking Glass Creamery next to their small cabin. They didn’t have cows but instead bought and processed about 50 gallons of milk a week from local dairies to make cheese. They sold it to Asheville restaurants and secured a contract with Williams-Sonoma, which bought and featured a collection of their cheeses and shipped it to customers nationwide. In 2013, the Perkins added a cheese shop and began welcoming visitors to buy their cheese and enjoy wine and cheese boards. 

Early on, the Perkins had two visitors to the creamery, Doug and Al Harmon, who owned and operated a dairy farm in Green Creek. The Harmons were on a learning tour, asking the Perkins about their operation. It turned out to be a serendipitous visit. Years later, the Perkins were looking for new sources of quality milk, found the Harmon’s phone number, and drove down from Fairview to visit the Harmon’s farm, thinking along the way that it was too far of a drive to buy milk. 

“And then we drove up to the farm, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is beautiful.’ The cows were beautiful, and they were very welcoming,” says Andy’s wife and dairy co-owner Jennifer Perkins. “We walked into the milking parlor, and I was sold before I left the building. I was like we need to be buying this milk. We’ll drive farther and do it.”

By 2016, Looking Glass Creamery had outgrown its small operation in Fairview and needed more production space and a reliable milk supply. 

“We were planning to expand, but we didn’t know what that looked like, and it didn’t include buying a dairy,” says Andy. “It was probably going to be an urban creamery concept where would have milk trucked into a very popular destination where you get a lot of walk-in traffic.”

Then, the Perkins got a call from the Harmons, who wanted to know if they were interested in buying their dairy. It was an answer to the Perkins’ questions about how to expand their operation sustainably and have the quality milk they needed to make quality cheese. The Perkins purchased Harmon Farm in 2017 and immediately began building a new creamery. 

Cheese production moved down from Fairview in August 2018, and construction began on the farm store, which opened in late 2019. 

At the end of 2019, the Perkins switched to a seasonal dairy model, taking a break from late December until calving begins in mid-February. It gives both them and the cows a break and allows time for maintenance and repairs. 

“We stop making cheese, but having a cellar full of cheese enables us to never have to tell people we’re out of cheese,” says Jennifer. 

The Perkins say that the seasonal model is how many small family dairy farms operated before they were pressured to grow and milk more cows and milk year-round by the milk cooperatives. The Perkins don’t sell to milk cooperatives, so they don’t feel that pressure. They remain seasonal and small because they use all the milk from their cows to make cheese on their own farm and sell most of it directly to their customers. 

“We don’t want to just get bigger and bigger. We want to do different things and manage what we’re doing here,” says Jennifer. 

The Perkins milk about 25 to 30 cows, mixing a blend of breeds which they say makes for better cheese. They produce about eight different kinds, including their own versions of popular cheeses like brie, cheddar, feta and Swiss. 

In 2020, Looking Glass Creamery added hard apple cider, feeding the spent apples to the cows. In 2021, the creamery started making pickles and preserves and planted a demonstration garden for visitors to enjoy. In addition to the hard cider, pickles, preserves, and cheese, the store sells grilled cheese sandwiches, custom charcuterie boards, a selection of specialty foods, wine by the glass, and, of course, ice cream, with the usual favorites like chocolate and butter pecan and some not so usual flavors like blueberry basil and lemon poppyseed. 

The Perkins are proud to carry on the tradition of dairy farming that the Harmons started here more than 75 years ago while also inviting the public to enjoy what they’ve created. 

“It’s not one experience. I think it’s kind of choose your own adventure,” says Jennifer. “If you want to immerse yourself and go for a hike and pick flowers and do whatever, knock yourself out. If you want to just pop in, say hello, grab an ice cream cone and go, that’s fine too.”

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