Our
Story.

Creekside Cheese + Creamery is a small farm-based creamery nestled into the mountains at the eastern end of British Columbia’s lush and beautiful Fraser Valley. A single-source creamery, Creekside Cheese + Creamery is located with and sources all their milk from Creekside Dairy, a certified organic family owned and operated dairy farm.

Creekside Cheese + Creamery endeavours to craft artisan, hand made cheeses using time-honoured methods and gentle handling techniques to express the true and natural flavours of the milk and terroir.  Our cheeses are aged in an underground cheese cave to mimic the traditional cheese aging techniques perfected in mountain caves in the European Alps. We are also proud to offer cream top, whole milk from our cattle herd available from a self serve milk dispenser.

Owned and operated by husband-and-wife team Johannes and Julaine Treur, Creekside Cheese + Creamery was established in 2020 after many years of dreaming and planning. Johannes comes from a long line of dairy farmers: he can trace his dairy farming lineage back through 6 generations.  Many of his ancestry also made cheese on their farms. Johannes immigrated to Canada from the Netherlands in 2002 and began dairy farming in the Fraser Valley a short time later. He and Julaine were married in 2005. Although Julaine was not originally from a dairy farming background, she immediately fell in love with the farm, the cows, and the farming lifestyle, wholehearted immersing herself in all things “dairy”. The couple began sharing their farm and farming practices with the world via social media in 2014, and as their online community grew to tens of thousands of followers keen to learn all about dairy farming, so did requests for milk and other dairy products “right from the farm.” In 2019, the Treurs added Saturday beef sales to their farming business, and soon their loyal customers were asking for more options, specifically milk and cheese. Curious about cheesemaking, Johannes began experimenting with making Gouda at home, gaining experience working with milk, collaborating with other cheesemakers, and tweaking his recipe to produce some delicious cheeses enjoyed by the farm family. In early 2020, Johannes and Julaine had the unique opportunity to purchase a complete cheese processing facility housed in a mobile home trailer from a French-born cheese maker in Quesnel, British Columbia. The sale was finalized in March 2020, and included a provision for hands on training from the previous owner in his methods and authentic alpine recipes.

Construction on the cheese shop and underground cheese cave began in November 2020, and the Treurs first began making cheese in June 2021. The cheese shop officially opened in August 2021.

The Treur family is excited to bring certified organic, hand crafted cheeses to the local market here in the Fraser Valley and across British Columbia. They look forward to continuing to share their farming and cheesemaking life with the public too. Follow them on social media to keep up to date on what’s happening on the farm and in the cheesemaking room.

Johannes and Julaine Treur purchased Creekside Dairy in 2011, although they had been dairy farming at another location since 2003. With a long line of dairy farmers in his lineage, Johannes had dreamed of dairy farming since boyhood; he grew up on a dairy farm in the Netherlands but was unable to realize his dairying dreams until shortly after immigrating to Canada in 2002. Julaine and Johannes were married in 2005 and began growing both their family and their herd.

Now with 5 lively and loveable farm kids in tow, they milk just over 100 cows on their clean and well kept farm in Agassiz.

The cows are milked twice a day, a process that takes about 5-8 minutes for each cow. a portion of the milk the herd produces is piped directly to the cheesemaking room to be processed into cheese or fluid milk for the milk dispenser, and the remainder is shipped off farm to large organic milk processing plants in the city. The milking process is gentle, pleasurable even, and most cows contentedly chew their cud as they are milked. 16 cows are milked at a time in the milking parlour; it takes about 1.5 hours to milk the entire herd. The rest of the day, the cows are free to do “cow things”: they’ll roam the barns or pasture, munch on their nutritionist-formulated feed ration or chow down on lush grass in the pasture, relax in a cozy sawdust bedded stall, enjoy a good massage at the cow brush, or spend some time socializing with their herd mates.  Often, you’ll find the farmers in the middle of the herd, watching them, perhaps cuddling their favourite pet cows, and just making sure that they are healthy and happy.

When dairy farming is engrained in your past and forms the backbone of your dreams for the future, it is only natural that caring for cows becomes a huge part of your life.

The Treur family have a close bond with their cows: they find great satisfaction and fulfilment in spending time with their herd ensuring their every need is met, and they treat their “girls” with respect and affection every single day.

When visiting Creekside Dairy, you might notice that many of their cows have a distinct brownish hue and rather large, furry ears. Since healthy cows and herd longevity are a main goal on the farm, the Treurs have spent the past decade and a half breeding their original Holstein (typical black and white milk cows) herd to Brown Swiss, a dairy cow breed known for their strong feet and legs, excellent grazing abilities, birthing ease, and superior milk fat and protein. As an added benefit (and one the Treurs had not anticipated at the time they made the decision), their milk is especially well suited to cheesemaking due to both the type of protein present in their milk, and the ratio of milk butterfat and protein content. A win-win situation for sure!

Sustainable farming and ethical animal care are top priorities at Creekside Dairy. Our animals and our environment provide us with life giving nourishment, and the Treurs feel that as farmers it is their duty and calling to respect, cherish, and value both their land and animals and do their utmost to provide food in a way that is both ethically and environmentally sustainable.

Since 2017, Creekside Dairy has been Certified Humane in addition to being Certified Organic and meeting the requirements put forward by Canada’s ProAction Initiative. Unfortunately the SPCA Certified Humane program has since been discontinued, but the family continues to strictly adhere to the BCSPCA former regulations. Although every Canadian dairy farm must meet the minimum requirements set out in the ProAction program, Creekside Dairy goes above and beyond those designations. Some “extras” included 8 hours minimum of daily pasture grazing time from April through October, low stocking densities in the barns, automated cow brushes installed in the barns for “cow massages”, colostrum and whole milk requirements for feeding calves, and mandatory staff training in proper animal handling. Every good farmer knows that a happy cow typically is a healthy and productive cow. It is in every farmer’s best interest to treat their cows well; beyond this, it simply is the right thing to do. Creekside Dairy is pleased to offer further, stringent, third party certified assurance that their cows are treated with respect and care. Furthermore, the Treurs are also committed to sharing how they care for their cows on social media.

The Treurs also do whatever they can to minimize their impact on the environment and do their best to improve their land. Mostly perennial crops are grown to minimize erosion, and cover crops are utilized following occasional annual cropping. Farm biodiversity is encouraged by maintaining natural habitats alongside the land and allowing native grass/herb species to coexist with planted varieties. No chemical fertilizers or herbicides/pesticides are used. The cattle herd is grazed throughout the growing season which reduces the amount of manure to store and spread as well as eliminating the need to harvest that grass with machinery. Grazing also benefits soil life (when done correctly) by not compacting the soil, introducing beneficial bacteria, increasing organic matter, and sequestering carbon. The Treur family believes that we inherit our land from our ancestors - but more importantly we borrow it from our children. The decisions made now to either build up our soils or deplete them will impact future generations of farmers AND consumers. Local food is the most climate friendly, but in order to continue being able to produce food for local consumers, our soils must be kept healthy and productive. Mono cropping and excessive use of chemicals will deplete soils, making it much harder to grow food for humans and/or animals.

Supporting climate friendly farmers helps to ensure a plentiful supply of locally grown, sustainably produced foods for both this and future generations.