The leaves are just starting to change colors, which always gets my family thinking about autumn activities and ways to share the Adirondacks with visitors, family, and friends. One of our favorite things about those cool nights and crisp days is making comfort food, which usually means cheese.

For the fifth year, three local cheese farms are welcoming cheese lovers, cheese likers, or even those (gasp) who have never tried cheese, for a self-guided local tour of the farmstead operations into the daily cheese.

The Essex County Cheese Tour takes place on October 7, from 10 am to 4 pm, so that everyone can enjoy the seasonal changes. Upper Jay’s Sugar House Creamery, AuSable Forks’s Asgaard Farm and Dairy as well as Keeseville’s North Country Creamery are opening their doors for farm tours, animal greetings, and cheese samples.

Each location has their own specializations. Asgaard Farm and Dairy’s Alpines, Nubians, and Saanens provide goats milk to make their farm fresh chevre, soft-ripened cheeses, feta, and hard cheeses. North Country Creamery uses fresh milk from their stock of Shorthorn and Jersey cows to make delicious soft and aged cheeses as well as fresh yogurt. Sugar House Creamery’s Brown Swiss cows provide the milk to make raw milk aged cheeses as well as pasteurized milk aged cheeses. All three locations also have farm stores open year-round.

Enjoy the Adirondack scenery while following the shoreline of the AuSable River from farm to farm. It is a nice opportunity to meet the farmers, ask questions, and find more about each location’s artisanal cheese making process. Please keep in mind that the farmers ask that dogs are left at home during the tour. Cheese!