Our Cheesemakers
Benjamin J Meier
Born in Filderstadt in Germany, Benjamin Jonas Meier grew up in villages in and around the Black Forest. He spent many of his vacations in Switzerland as a teenager where he worked on small diverse dairy farms. After High School, he joined a marionette puppet theatre for six years and performed classical German plays and fairy tales while touring through Germany and Switzerland. Before cheesemaking, circumstances lead Benjamin to work at a conventional cabbage farm. He also trained and taught as a Waldorf teacher.
After moving to the United States, Benjamin's lifelong passion for farming and Biodynamics began to flourish. While working with a small community of people with special needs, Benjamin began caring for goats and making goat cheese. At the same time, he worked with dairy cows at the Temple-Wilton Community Farm, a biodynamic farm, where an overproduction of milk inspired him to build the Abbot Hill Creamery. Benjamin's deep passion for cheese making found expression as the seeds of his journey, perhaps sown in childhood amidst a strong cheese culture, bore fruit.
Since December of 2022 Benjamin has stepped away from cheese making to dive into his other passions of farming, bread baking, and cooking.
Imani Humphries
March 1, 2022 Imani started as an apprentice cheese maker with the hopes of apprenticing for two years then leaving to travel. During her time at the creamery Benjamin decided he wanted to take a break from cheese making. Imani stepped up to fill the roll of Cheesemaker to allow the creamery to continue. Having interacted with the beautiful community of cheese enthusiasts Benjamin had grown over his 10 years of cheesemaking, she couldn’t watch it end in 2022. This year will be an exciting and educational year of cheese for not only Imani, but Abbot Hill Creamery, and Temple-Wilton Community Farm.
Prior to Cheesemaking, Imani worked as a biodynamic farmer in the Hudson Valley of New York and in the High Country Mountains of North Carolina. Her plans are to still leave and travel come 2024 and eventually start or join a regenerative community farm.
Our Apprentices
Evan Smith (Fall 2023)
Hello I'm excited to be joining Abbot Hill Creamery. I started baking during the pandemic, until very recently when I met Benjamin Meier. I found cheese more interesting than bread and I'm a sucker for stronger cheeses, especially blues and washed rinds, like our Souhegan. Besides cheese and baking, I like hiking, mountains, cold lakes, trees, birding, linguistics, and poetry.
Jo Abbott (Summer 2023)
I'm excited to be coming to the creamery to learn about cheesemaking. This will be my first time in New Hampshire, although I've lived up and down the east coast my whole life. I've always loved cheese; when I was little sometimes I would ask for a cheesy snack instead of dessert.
My long-term goal is to open a community center, and in the meantime I want to collect experiences and make connections that will help me towards that dream. Abbot Hill Creamery seemed like a great place to continue to work towards that, and to learn something new that I'm interested in. In my free time, I like to make art, sing and play ukulele, and explore the outdoors. I'm looking forward to meeting everyone, making some cheese, and exploring a new pocket of New England.
Daniel Forrest (Winter 2023)
Daniel Forrest, a Temple local, spent most of his adult life in various types of work including baking, fine carpentry, and teaching students with severe autism and behavioral issues. Food has always been a major aspect of his life and is excited to be starting at Abbot Hill Creamery where he will learn about cheese making and the general operation of a small scale dairy over the next 4 and a half months. Afterwards he will be taking his culinary skills to a local bed & breakfast!
Imani Humphries
(Spring 2022— Summer 2022)
Imani was born in Washington, D.C. and split her time growing up in the city and in eastern panhandle of West Virginia. Her first job as an adult was as a cheesemonger in New York & although cheese was always at the front of her mind, she eventually left to explore working for nonprofits in the arts, education, and agricultural fields. After 8 years, Imani rejoined the cheese world here at Temple-Wilton Community Farm, excited to be making cheese amidst biodynamic farming and cow grazing practices.
Dane Felton (Winter 2021-2022)
Bio in progress!
Nila Ann Dudley (Summer 2021)
Nila was born in Texas, but comes to the farm from Seattle WA where she grew up. Recently she strengthened a long-held interest in agriculture while living at and attending school at an organic farm school in Vermont. Following that interest & recently graduating high school she found herself drawn to Temple Wilton Community Farm’s commitment to deeply-held respect & sincere care for animals, land and people. Nila is very excited to learn to make cheese in such a wonderful place, with wonderful people!
Becka Hendrickson (Spring-Fall 2021) (Nacia)
Nacia found herself captivated by the community and energy here at Temple Wilton Community Farm. Eager to be involved on the farm, she stepped in as an apprentice to fill the gap between Graham and Nila. That time working alongside Benjamin in the cheese world was fulfilling & thoroughly enjoyed. Which left her eager to be a more permenant part of the Abbot Hill crew during her continued stay on the farm with husband & vegetable apprentice, Andrew Hendrickson.
Graham Taber (Nov 2020-June 2021)
Graham comes to us from the western mountains of Maine where he grew up. He most recently worked as a carpenter and before that was a lobsterman fishing out of Portsmouth, NH. He has a passion for art, philosophy and spirituality. Since childhood cheese has been his favorite food so he is very excited to add cheese making to his list of arts and trades.
Jule Jacobs (April 2020-October 2020)
Jule Jacobs was born outside of Oxford, England, and has grown up living between the UK and New Hampshire. After high school, Jule has continued his education through semester courses, apprenticeships, farming jobs, and here, on Abbot Hill. Jule likes working on, and, with the land, as well as cooking and preparing food. After happening upon the farm, cheese making with Benjamin included a skill he wanted to learn, and his other interests that he could work on.