Story originally printed in the Westby Times or online at www.westbytimes.com
Published - Monday, April 20, 2009
Better this whey: Hardworking artisans help keep Wisconsin king of cheese
WESTBY — The cheesemaker begins her day the same way it ends.
Obsessive cleaning. Each piece of equipment rinsed, washed, rinsed again and sterilized.
The milk arrives in the vat white and frothy, in 15-second spurts from the hose, as her husband empties 15 steel cans into a funnel above. There’s three days’ worth, including what was milked that morning.
The alchemy is imperceptible and takes half an hour as the milk — stirred, warmed to 90 degrees and ripened with cultures and rennet — congeals.
When she plucks the floating thermometer from the vat, it leaves a crater on the surface.
She sticks a finger into the slab and checks the break. Yellow whey seeps from the cut.
In her white rubber boots, smock and hairnet, Brenda Jensen moves between the stainless steel implements, named for her Bohemian grandparents. The pasteurizer is Lucy, who also was stout with short legs. The 400-gallon vat is Louis, who was long and lean.
Her equipment has touch-screen controls, but her craft is ancient. She works her hands through the silky white curds, just as Wisconsin cheese makers have done for generations.
A tradition rebounds
A century ago, every coulee and crossroads in the state had a cheese plant — nearly 3,000 of them, according to the state Milk Marketing Board. Between 1920 and 1960, nearly three quarters closed. The slide continued, and by 2005 there were just 114.
Farms, too, folded as the dairy industry moved toward larger concentrated feedlot operations.
But in the past decade, even as California threatened to overtake Wisconsin as the nation’s cheese capital, a new generation of artisan cheesemakers have stopped the skid.
Factories still account for the majority of the cheese production — about 2.5 billion pounds last year — but handmade, small-batch cheeses and those made on the farm now account for a 16 percent share, according to the marketing board. And Wisconsin today produces nearly 45 percent of the nation’s specialty cheeses.
The movement began in the late 1990s, as struggling dairy farmers looked for ways to capture more profit from their milk while competing with large-scale producers, said Norm Monsen of the state Department of Agriculture. With the infrastructure and heritage already there — and a consumer demand for interesting flavors — the artisan cheese trade has flourished.
“Everything is cyclical,” said Jeanne Carpenter, communications director for the Dairy Business Innovation Center. “Wisconsin is returning to its roots and becoming a farmhouse artisan cheesemaking state.”
The cheesemakers
Brenda Jensen didn’t plan to be a cheesemaker.
Though she grew up on a hobby farm, the 48-year-old Jensen worked in sales and marketing for foundries and later as the manager of a printing plant. She went to school at night to earn her college degree, and later an MBA.
The sheep were her husband’s idea.
“I smiled and nodded and thought he would come to his senses,” she said.
Then a truck pulled up to their Richland Center home with 50 sheep.
Dean Jensen, who is 58 and works as a mental health counselor, grew up in Beloit but had been infatuated with farming since his days at the UW-La Crosse, when he would visit Amish country.
Brenda and Dean have been married 22 or 23 years, depending which one you ask. Neither is good with dates.
They met at a foundry, where he was a manager and she a sales rep. Both had children from previous marriages. He took a job in Canada, but they stayed in touch. The wedding was spur of the moment, while Brenda was visiting him in Maine.
The couple at first bred sheep for meat. They decided to start milking after moving to Westby in 2001. Fortunately, Dean said, their Amish neighbors were there to help.
Brenda soon was working 10-hour days in Lancaster and driving 1½ hours home for the evening milking. Dean milked in the morning. The milk, which went to yogurt and cheesemakers in New York, was fetching only about 58 cents a pound.
Brenda knew she needed to get more value from the milk. Hoping to find a cheesemaker to hire, the Jensens took a three-day class in January 2005. As she worked her hands through the curds, Brenda “got swept up in the whole magic of cheesemaking.”
“I can do this,” she told Dean.
She used her vacation that spring to take more classes and apprenticed at Westby Creamery to earn her license. She took her first batch of cheese to the La Crosse farmers’ market, where, to her surprise, it sold. She put together lists of restaurants in Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago.
In June, she quit her job to be a full-time cheesemaker. Four years later, the business remains small, with no employees, but it makes money.
Award winner
And Jensen is making award-winning cheese. Her first entry in the biennial U.S. Cheese Championships won gold. She will collect another gold this week, along with two bronzes.
Jensen makes soft fresh cheese, feta and an aged washed-rind cheese. Each name is plucked from the landscape. Driftless, Ocooch, Bad Axe. She’s experimenting with a blue cheese called Bohemian — a nod to her heritage and those who disregard conventional standards of behavior.
Hidden Springs Creamery is built in what was to be the basement of a house on the Jensen’s 76-acre farm about 6 miles from Westby. The couple live just up the hill.
A pole shed shelters a steel-wheeled mower, wagon and sleigh. There is no tractor — Dean, 58, uses a pair of draft horses for the field work.
Their flock is a blend of high-producing East Friesians and Lacunes, which have fewer lambs but give richer milk. They graze pastures in summer. Their milk is thicker than cows’ and higher in protein and calcium.
“It’s much more nutritional,” Jensen said. “That’s why we picked the sheep.”
The Jensens these days pay their Amish neighbor, John Henry Miller, to milk 100 ewes. Dean drives each morning to the 94-year-old barn across the gulley, where Miller’s family milk another 60 by hand, and loads the steel cans in his Chevy pickup.
Better with age
When the milk has set, Jensen dips her cheese knife into the vat and pulls the vertical blades around the perimeter. She repeats the process with a horizontal knife until the curds resemble faceless dice.
Once they’ve expelled enough whey, she will drain the liquid, press the curds and scoop them into round plastic forms, where they will become cheese.
Though scooped from the same batch, each wheel takes on a life of its own as it ages.
By law, raw milk cheeses must age at least two months. Jensen’s 2-pound wheels of Ocooch Mountain spend at least four months on cedar boards in her cave, a concrete bunker below the plant. She keeps the temperature at 55 degrees and waters the floor.
This is where the flavor develops.
Every day, Jensen washes each wheel with a solution of salt water and Brevibacterium linens — b. linens for short — a common bacteria that grows as white mold on the rind, adding complexity to the flavor.
After three weeks, she will switch to a dry wash, using her brush to scrape away evil black mold.
Two wheels from the same batch, sitting side by side, will grow different molds and develop different flavors.
Jensen likens them to children. She loves them all but finds the older ones more interesting.
In another four months, they will be grown up.
Cheesemakers conference
The Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association will hold its annual conference Wednesday and Thursday at the La Crosse Center. Western Wisconsin cheesemakers will be well-represented Thursday at the medal ceremony for the biannual U.S. Championship Cheese Contest, held last month at Green Bay’s Lambeau Field.
Cheesehead central
Artisan, specialty and farmstead cheesemakers in the region:
Butler Farms, Whitehall
The first licensed Grade A sheep dairy in the nation. Known for its mixed-milk Camembert and Aged Tomme.
Carr Valley Cheese, LaValle
A fourth-generation cheesemaker, Sid Cook is among the world’s most decorated. From old-fashioned bandaged cheddar to sheep and goat’s milk cheeses, Carr produces 70 varieties.
Castle Rock Organic Dairy, Osseo
This family farmstead dairy makes cave-aged blue, raw milk cheddar and Colby cheese as well as nine flavors of ice cream.
Hidden Springs Creamery, Westby
Award-winning soft and cave-aged cheeses from locally grazed sheep.
Mt. Sterling Co-op Creamery, Mount Sterling
One of the country’s largest goat milk co-ops, producing award-winning cheeses and butter, including raw and pasteurized goat milk cheddars.
Nordic Creamery, Westby
Al Bekkum, the former head cheesemaker at Mt. Sterling, makes his award-winning Capriko and other goat-milk cheeses at Cedar Grove Cheese in Plain, Wis., and plans to build a plant on his Westby farm.
Organic Choice, Mondovi
Raw organic milk from this group of farms is made into cheddar and Colby and mozzarella at Cedar Grove.
Organic Valley, La Farge
The nation’s oldest organic co-op contracts with Wisconsin plants to produce cheddar, pepper Jack, Colby, feta and ricotta cheeses.
Pasture Pride and Natural Valley, Cashton
Old-world tradition goes into these washed-rind, cave-aged and semi-soft cheeses handcrafted from cows milked by hand.
Swiss Valley Farms, Mindoro
This four-state coop of 1,100 farmers produces some of the world’s best blue-veined cheeses, including gorgonzola, Danish-style blue and a blue cheddar.
Wisconsin Sheep Dairy Cooperative, Strum
This 15-member co-op is the nation’s largest source of sheep milk and produces artisan aged sheep and mixed-milk cheeses.
Source: Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, Dairy Business Innovation Center, individual businesses.
All stories copyright 2006 Westby Times and other attributed sources.