In Windsor, Making Vermont Cheese With a Personal Touch
August 01, 2026
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Liz Bleakley moved to Windsor with her family and didn’t know a soul. To meet people and get involved in her community, she answered an ad for an assistant cheesemaker position.
“I wasn’t prepared to really appreciate how fascinating cheese was. Once I started learning about the microbiology of cheese..I was completely hooked,” says Bleakley, who worked as a physician assistant in Georgia until 2018.
After becoming a parent, the demands of her job in medicine left her exhausted. Wanting a change, she and her husband, Nachiket Kumar, started farming in their Atlanta yard, using her background in biology, their mutual interest in farming, and her interest in nutrition.
They realized they needed more land for farming and they wanted to escape the Atlanta heat, so they set their sights on moving north.
“Vermont obviously came up on the list because of the more favorable weather, at least in my mind. Although some people say, ‘Well, it’s winter in Vermont half the year,’” she says. “Yes, that’s true. But there is a farming culture here, and it’s part of the identity of the state.”
-Liz Bleakley of Good Hands Creamery in Windsor makes cheese using raw cow’s milk from a nearby farm.
Becoming a Vermont Cheesemaker
The couple eventually bought a home in Windsor, despite never having been to Vermont or knowing anyone who lived in the state.
Bleakley answered an ad on Front Porch Forum for a cheesemaking job at Springbrook Farm in nearby Reading. Even though she had no experience, she quickly became fascinated by the work.
“This is an alive product with incredible complexity happening on the surface of the cheese and inside the cheese to create the flavors and the textures that we all love in Vermont cheese,” she says. “I realized that this is what I have to do. It was almost like a compulsion, like, I have to make cheese.”
The family now lives in a 19th century farmhouse not far from Mount Ascutney. There’s a large open meadow behind their home and a few pet goats in the backyard. They also have a tiny farm stand and a weathered barn next to the driveway. Nearby is a bright yellow shipping container where Bleakley makes cheese.
-Liz Bleakley holds cheese aging in a cave next to her home.
‘Good Hands’ Making Vermont Cheese
In 2023, she started Good Hands Creamery to make and sell her own cheese. But she soon put her business on hold as the couple faced the challenges of their young son’s illness in 2024 and a house fire in 2025.
“When those things happen, your world becomes really small. It becomes (about) surviving each day, physically and psychologically,” she says.
Their son fully recovered and the house was repaired. In March, Bleakley returned to making cheese in a shipping container creamery on her property. She works with raw cow’s milk from Spring Brook Farm and ages the cheese in a cave near her house.
Bleakley originally named her business “Good Hands” when she and her husband were running their small urban vegetable farm in Georgia. Making the shift from medicine to farming, she reflected on the value of her hands in her work.
“I was thinking of all the things my hands had done. I have sutured up people’s wounds. I have held people’s hands when they know that their loved one is going to die,” she says. “Those are really deep and meaningful things to do with your hands.”
That sense of meaning now carries over to her work as a Vermont cheesemaker.
“At my scale, I’m the only cheesemaker, and so my hands are in the vat, touching the milk, touching the curds, touching the wheels, and touching the cheese while I age it, brush it, and wash it,” she says. “It’s very personal.”
Learn more at Goodhandscreamery.com
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This story and podcast episode are part of a new agriculture series with funding by Vermont Dairy Farmers. Over six episodes, you’ll hear stories about local dairy farmers, their families, and communities, plus cheese makers, ice cream makers, and milk producers.
For more information about Vermont’s dairy industry, visit vermontdairy.com.
-Liz Bleakley outside of the shipping container where she makes cheese in Windsor. Photos by David Barron and Erica Houskeeper