DURHAM

Sarah and Gary Spring make their home in a 1848 farmhouse set atop a knoll with sister oak trees serving as sentinels.

The Springs are joined by six hens, led by the elder Mrs. Getty, who is about 10, cat Murphy, and Emma Bovary Goldman, a springer spaniel who weaves through the Springs’ field, gardens and small orchard on their 5-acre property.

Sarah said there are no right angles in the house, a marble will roll down the kitchen floor, and when they moved in following a Christmas snowstorm, Sarah remembers huddling on the couch under blankets because the house wasn’t retaining heat.

But they loved, and love the house. It was the first property they looked at when deciding to move, and they kept coming back — looking over the land and peering in the windows.

Sarah operates her business, Spring Day Creamery, at their Durham home, which she started focusing on full-time in 2011. She was a French teacher for many years, and before she made the full transition from teaching to making cheese, she worked late into the night after school, making cheese and aging it in a cold guest bedroom upstairs.

She said at that time, the kitchen area was consumed by her cheese making, so much so nobody could get a glass of water, and all surface areas showcased the various stages of the cheese-making process. That’s when Gary suggested it was time to consider starting a creamery.

Her operation was licensed in a tiny room she now uses as an aging room, and she said the creamery came together organically, with used equipment and additional space added piecemeal. After 38 years teaching 100 students a day, the solitude and calm of cheese making is a nice counterbalance, where in any season she can look out the window and feel cozy, and in her element.

Sarah said it is an art, and once you learn how to make cheese, there are many kinds and variations you can try, which is the creative side of cheese making. She said when trying new cheeses, sometimes it comes out as you hope and other times — the chickens have a feast.

“They love seeing me coming,” she said.

The name of the creamery pays homage not only to the Springs’ last name, but to the Day family, who built the farmhouse and lived and worked the land for generations. Truman Day, the last of his family to live in the house, has a Tomme cheese named for him. Tomme is a raw cow’s milk cheese with a natural rind. Sarah said by all accounts, Truman was an eccentric character, and said she still finds little artifacts of his from time to time in the house.

She now makes 4,000 pounds of Frenchinspired cheese a year, with blue being her favorite to make and eat. She makes four kinds of blue cheese, one named for her cousin, Fraffie, who recently passed away. “She lived a good life, and the cheese is like her — larger than life, sharp and sassy,” she said.

Sarah makes cheese three days a week, and said she can get caught up in long hours in her cheese-making room, sanitizing, checking the temperature, stirring, draining, flipping and brushing the cheese. Most cheeses she makes age for about three months.

In addition to the blue cheese, Sarah commonly makes a cow’s milk brie called Evangeline, and La Vie en Rose, which is a cross between a brie and a muenster cheese, and Le mistral, a raw cow’s milk cheese named after a fierce and cold wind that whips across France in the spring and winter.

“When you really love what you’re doing, it just feels as though it’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s immensely satisfying to me,” she said.

Gary is the muscle behind the operation, helping to carry heavy orders of milk from family-run Bissons Farm in Topsham, which she said delivers a clean, simple product. “He is my most valuable unpaid employee. He can rent as many movies as he wants, and I take him to dinner a lot,” she said.

The cheeses she makes will take on a life of their own, and the same cheese will have different flavors, depending on the time of year, coinciding with what the cows are eating or what is in the environment, commonly known as the terroir of a place, Sarah said. She said the same cheese made in different environments will take on their own taste and personality.

Sarah lived in France for 15 years, where she raised her family in a small village an hour south of Paris. When asked if she first learned to make cheese in France, she answered, no — she learned to eat cheese in France. With seven types of cheese on the table every day, she said she developed, and retained her palate.

Her life in France came during very formative years, and impacted everything she has done since, including making uncomplicated food with fresh ingredients, and baking her own bread. In the village, people grew their own food and tended animals. She recalls putting her young son on the back of her bike and riding to a nearby farm to pick up fresh milk to make yogurt.

Returning to the United States, she missed French cheese and bread, which was ordered each week and delivered by the baker, and placed on the thick stone windowsills of houses. If the weather appeared ominous and threatened rain, the bread would be protected by shutters, secured by the baker.

“It had a big impact on me,” she said of the way of life she lived as an adolescent and young adult abroad, and the culture of growing and preparing fresh, seasonal food. “It changed everything, and stayed with me, definitely,” she said, recalling with a laugh that her stepdaughter, still in France, would send through the postal service wheels of cheese to her in Maine.

Setting up shop at the Brunswick Farmers Market, Sarah said she will speak French four to five times a week with customers. “We find each other,” she said, adding it is an honor for a native of France to taste her cheese and tell her it tastes like home.

She also sells her cheese to restaurants in Portland, as well as local markets.

Sarah said she cannot envision herself not continuing to make cheese. “I’ll probably fall into the vat the day I die. I’ll be the weird 80- year-old woman carrying a basket of cheese,” she said.

“It’s definitely a passion, and having a passion is good,” she said.

The next project may include bringing some Nigerian dwarf goats into the mix.

To learn more about Spring Day Creamery, visit springdaycreamery.com.

jlaaka@timesrecord.com