Our Workshop: Lark Goat & Sheep Milk is still on the calendar for May 29 in Ayrshire, and as of this week we have not changed the format or the venue. We want to be upfront about that instead of letting the date sit quietly on the events page while everyone wonders what we're planning: it is currently scheduled as an in-person session, and we are watching the same travel and gathering restrictions you are.
We know several of you registered back in February, before international travel became the complicated, jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction question it is today. If you're one of them, please don't buy non-refundable flights this week. We'd rather ask you to wait a little longer for certainty than have members stranded with tickets to a workshop that has to change shape at the last minute.
What the workshop actually covers
For members who haven't looked at the syllabus yet: this session focuses on the handling differences between goat and sheep milk and cow milk at the vat — protein structure, fat globule size, and how both change your set time, your curd texture, and your yield. It's hands-on content, built for people who are used to cow-milk cheesemaking and are adding goat or sheep milk to their line for the first time, and it pairs closely with our Goat & Sheep Milk Cheesemaking course for anyone who wants the fuller curriculum rather than a single day.
If the in-person session isn't able to go forward as planned, we are not going to simply cancel it and refund your registration with no alternative. We're already sketching what a remote version could look like — shipped milk samples plus a live instructor session is one option we're testing internally, though we're not promising it yet because the logistics of shipping fresh milk across borders are their own headache. What we can promise is that anyone currently registered will hear from us directly, in writing, at least two weeks before the date, whichever way this goes.
It's worth saying why we haven't just moved the date instead of sitting in this in-between state. Spring is already the busiest stretch of the year for dairy operations in that part of Scotland, between calving and the start of the milking season, and several of the small creameries hosting parts of this workshop are managing that alongside their own restrictions on who can be on-site at once. Farm advisory groups in the region have also flagged a wider issue this spring: milk buyers on the wholesale and food-service side have been placing smaller cheese orders as restaurants and hotels stay closed, even while some retail-aligned contracts have held up better. That's the same demand split our members here have been describing, just on the other side of the ocean, and it's part of why the hosts asked us not to lock in a firm decision before the end of this month.
What to do if you're registered
Hold your travel plans. Watch your inbox for a direct update from us rather than relying on the events page alone — we'll update the page, but a member with a flight to book deserves more than a status change on a website. And if your own local restrictions already make travel to Scotland unrealistic for you regardless of what we decide, let us know now; we're tracking how many registered members are already ruled out, and that number is part of what will decide whether this goes forward as planned.
We'd rather run fewer things well this year than run everything on schedule and manage the fallout after the fact. More on this one as soon as we actually know more, and thank you for your patience with a calendar that keeps needing an asterisk next to it.
The International Cheese Federation (ICF) and More Cheese are entirely fictional. This post is demonstration content created for MemberJunction. All people, organizations, events, courses, certifications, figures, and quotations in it are invented, and nothing here represents a real association, a real business, a real person, or real professional advice.