Killeen Farmhouse

Dutch-born Marion Roeleveld has been making Killeen’s goat’s cheese at the Killeen Millhouse outside Portumna since 2005. Before coming to Ireland Marion trained in cheesemaking in her native Netherlands. In-depth formal training of this sort is rare amongst Irish farmhouse cheesemakers and Marion’s technical expertise enabled her to develop cheeses for a number of different producers.

Marion makes a number of different goudas under the Killeen label. In addition to the plain Killeen Goat and Killeen Cow Marion makes a number of flavoured cow’s cheese. Killeen Goat’s is made using milk of her own herd, whilst she buys in cow’s milk from a local farmer. When she started out Marion sold the majority of her goat’s milk and made only a small amount of cheese from the remainder. Increasing demand for her superb Killeen Goat’s eventually led her to stop selling liquid milk and use all it all in cheese production. Sheridan’s in Galway started selling Killeen Goat’s a number of years ago and since then it has gone on to become one of our most popular Irish cheeses.