Portfolio & Project samples

supporting the Ladies

Different cheesemakers all have very different reasons for why they like to make cheese.  Some love raising goats or cows.  Some like the smell of whey during the making process.  For many I’ve talked to, they like the magical process of turning milk into a completely different product.  For Molly – it is a love of cheese, that magical making process, and the routine that comes from making cheese. 

“I was doing wilderness therapy out in Utah when I was 22 … maybe 23,” she tells me while checking the milk temperature in the stainless-steel vat beside her.  “I basically complained to many friends that I wanted to be a cheesemaker, and they were like, ‘what are you talking about??’

“When I went to college I had studied psychology.  I didn’t really know that I liked making things.  Then when I started working in the therapy program, I became aware that I really liked working with my hands.  I loved the really physical work.  It was probably about eight years after I started saying that I wanted to be a cheesemaker that I actually got into a cheese house to make cheese.”

When she began making cheese, she kept thinking she’d do it for a while and probably get tired of it or eventually hate it.  Then she kept doing more.  She still liked it.  She’d try new things.  Still liked it.  And eventually she found herself in Vermont, where she now works. 

Molly’s been making cheese full time for 5 years now.  I asked her if, after years, she has ever gotten tired of her work.  She told me that if you help run a small cheese making business, there isn’t time to be bored.  You’re just too busy.  There is making cheese, aging it, and then there’s paperwork, social media, sales and marketing, and sending your cheese off to whoever has put in order.

“The challenging part here at our business is just that:  This is a business.  It’s different than if you’re making cheese in retirement or as a hobby.  The people working here need to be paid for us to succeed.  We have to do a good enough job that our product sells – and I like that drive.  

“Before I understood some of the business side of things, I thought we  made four types of cheese because we just wanted to make four types of cheese."  She smiles and looks at me.  "I’m very dreamy when I think about making cheese – the experience.  My partner on the business end of things would tell me that we need to put our milk somewhere in the winter months when we know our cheese won’t sell as much.”

In the U.S., people tend not to buy much cheese between January and March.  For dairy farms like the one Molly works on, whose cows still produce milk in winter, they need a way to capture the value of the milk even though people aren’t buying cheese.  They can’t make the styles of softer cheese they usually make in summer, because those camembert-like styles only have a shelf life of two to three weeks, and the cheese will go bad when no one is buying.  Making cheeses that will age longer during the winter months without needing to be sold immediately is one way cheesemakers and dairy farmers keep that winter milk from going to waste.  Molly explains, “So now – with more experience – it’s more like, ‘Oh we make these four styles of cheese to manage cash flow!”

As I stood watching Molly spread soft custard-like cheese curds into molds that shape the curds into round wheels, she turned to me and offered me a sample to taste.  I complimented her on the flavor.  She tossed the compliment back to the cows and milk, which is what she says is the real source for the farm’s award-winning cheese.  “It’s all the ladies … I like to say that our job as cheesemakers is to preserve their good work.”