Our Story
A vision pursued…
Hi, we are Moussa and Victoire. In early 2020, after much dreaming, we moved onto a 70-acre farm in North East Victoria with our two children to pursue the vision of living a simpler life on the land. The property was a blank cheque of opportunity for a dream to be brought into being. Moussa’s love for goats and Victoire’s interest in the science of cheese making made it clear to us that our project would be raising dairy goats and handcrafting their milk into unique specialty cheeses.
A history embraced, a culture re-lived…
(Moussa) – Being a romantic, I yearned to live something of the ways of my people who tilled the soil and grazed their goats in the mountains of Lebanon where grows the mighty Lebanese Cedar and where my childhood memories were made. After working for 15 years as a mining engineer I yearned for a lifestyle that reflected the beauty of past ages. Goat cheese was and still is a strong feature of family life in Lebanon, and so my preference was to make goat cheese as they did in my native country.
(Victoire) – I studied Agricultural sciences in France and came to Australia in 2013 to complete a PhD in animal science, aiming to reduce methane production in sheep to decrease their greenhouse emissions. When Moussa began milking a couple of goats for our household I experimented with making some cheeses. My dormant French cheese genetics sparked into life, and I found myself greatly enjoying the magic of turning milk into beautiful cheeses.
A tradition shared…
Hospitality is a significant part of our native and family traditions, and so is also a key aspect of our farm life. Sharing enjoyable goat cheese through markets and bulk sales is only the threshold of what is meaningful to us. What gives meaning to our work very much includes receiving and getting to know guests at our farm-home. It’s our honour and our privilege to spend quality time with guests in a homely down-to-earth setting in the context of pleasant food and drink. When time permits we love to share with and learn from guests in a mutually enriching interaction. Our aspiration is to enable our guests to leave our farm in a happier and more peaceful state than when they arrived.
Why “Little Cedar”?
“Little Cedar” is the name of our farm business. The name is inspired by our pre-married lives. Moussa’s native village of Bsharry in Lebanon harbours a remnant forest of ancient Lebanese Cedars where some of the trees are over a thousand years old. It also happened that Victoire’s parents’ yard in France contains a historical Lebanese Cedar that is hundreds of years old. Moussa proposed to Victoire under that cedar tree, and at the wedding reception each table had in its centre a little cedar tree seedling that had sprouted just in time under that large tree. And so both in our marriage and now in our business we see ourselves as something like a little cedar that is small and delicate but that with the passage of time has the potential to grow into a mighty cedar tree that can withstand the pressure of the ages.
Our Farm
The objective of our farm is to work alongside the natural rhythms and processes of the fauna and flora under our stewardship. Some examples of how we do this include rotational grazing to keep the herd free of intestinal worms without using chemical drenches, planting browse bushes to minimise imported hay and add to the farm’s ecosystem, allowing kids to suckle their mothers until the age of weaning and beyond.
As with all good goat farmers, we love our animals! They are small enough in number that we know them by name and our children give sufficient cuddles to the new-borns so that they are friendly to us and comfortable around us as they grow up.
