Real Farms.
Real Cheese.
Real Community.
Natural cheese made in small batches with milk from local dairy farms. We don’t have a sales department, or HR, or fancy automated machines…we do have an amazing Executive Director (Brittany Bilte), three retail staff, two processing staff, and a nine volunteer Board of Directors. Cheese is thoughtfully made in 400 gallon batches with the highest quality ingredients. We want the best for our community!
How do you make cheese?
It start’s with milk! Cheese is milk, culture, rennet & salt!
We buy milk at a living wage price from three small farms ranging from seven to 25 cows. All milk is A2A2 whole milk that is easier to digest as it is the same dairy protein as human milk.
Then the magic happens! Culture & Rennet
Milk is vat pasteurized at 145F and then pumped to our 400 gallon cheese vat where we add cultures. The freeze dried cultures help give the cheeses their unique flavors. We then add pure natural animal rennet to coagulate the milk, and the paddle knives then cut the curd.
Final curds are made & salt added!
Specifically for cheddar: After draining the whey, we cut the curd mat in to sections and flip & stack them multiple times over 1.5hrs to get a lower pH and “cheddar” texture….this is actually called “cheddaring!” We then run cut slabs through a cheddar mill to make final cheddar curds. Note: For other cheeses, we don’t do the cheddaring process.
Fresh curds are squeaky!
Cheddar curds can be seasoned and bagged for fresh eating. We have many flavors and add new ones seasonally. Curds are just really fresh bites of cheddar cheese that are great for snacking, or in a variety of cold or hot dishes. Very popular on poutine! Yum!
Curds become cheese!
Curds can be put in a mold and pressed to form 20 pound cheddar blocks. These blocks are vacuum packed and cold aged for at least two months for mild or nine months for sharp.
Other cheeses too!
For other cheeses, they are all put in a mold, pressed, and vacuum packed. We mix in flavors such as jalapeños or sun dried tomato before putting the curd in the molds.