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small cottage industry, making the cheese in 20-gallon pots and draining it in cheesecloth in their family kitchen and selling it to friends who couldn't find authentic Mexican cheese in their local markets. "My dad had a friend who worked at a farm, and that was the source of the milk," Francisco recalls. Eight years later, the Ochoas moved to Eugene because it had a bigger Hispanic community, and thus a bigger market for the cheese. Francisco started working in the family business as a part-time sales and delivery man when he was 15 or 16 and began working full-time at 18 or 19. After his father's sudden death, friends and customers began asking Francisco, his older brother Froilan and Zoila if they were going to continue making the cheese. Francisco and his brother decided that they needed to find a way to make that happen in some more formal way – with a real company and a cheese facility outside their family home, and Froilan started looking for a place to do that. That's when he met Ken Shiflet, a commercial real estate developer who told the family that he wanted to invest in their business. He provided funding to develop a commercial creamery where they could process up to 200 gallons of milk a day, still cooking the curd in the same 20-gallon pots they'd been using on their home kitchen stove. "He financed the pasteurizer, the packaging, the whole thing," Francisco recalls. "Before I die, I want to help somebody like he did." The business had already begun growing when a friend visited, saw their 20-gallon pots and told them they ought to get a real cheese vat. He had one, a 400-gallon vat, that he was willing to lend them until they could outfit themselves with a vat of their own. "From there, we learned large scale," Francisco said. By 2009, they'd grown out of that Eugene facility and Francisco moved operations to Albany, where he'd found space for a facility that would allow them to process up to 4,000 gallons of milk a day in first one and then a second 1,000-gallon vat. They continued growing, eventually increasing production up to 8,000 gallons of milk a day by getting up early, taking delivery of milk from Lochmead Dairy, making cheese, sanitizing all of the equipment and then making a second batch on the same day, according to Oregon State University Dairy Processing Extension Specialist Lisbeth Goddik, who called Francisco the hardest- working man she knows. Current production is back at 2,000 gallons a day, but Ochoa's Queseria has now outgrown its Albany facility to a point beyond Francisco's ability to accommodate his production needs by simply working more hours, and once again, he's moving operations, this time 30 miles north along Interstate 5 to Salem, Oregon, where a new 8,500 square-foot cheese factory is under construction in a location that's just a couple of miles from the highway. "It's going to allow us to produce more cheese more efficiently," Francisco said. "It'll give us the opportunity to do other cheeses." The Ochoa's Queseria product line already includes Queso Oaxaca, a cheese whose curds are heated and hand- stretched into a rope that's coiled into a ball for sale to chefs and home cooks who use it to make quesadillas, as the family does at home, according to 16-year-old Liliana Ochoa, Francisco's daughter, who packages cheese after school and during her summer break. "I've been helping out at the cheese factory all my life," she said. "It's a family business. A lot of family works here." She pointed to a portrait photo on the wall of the small store at the plant's entrance. "That's Froylan," she said. "That's why the business is called Don Froylan. 'Don' means 'Mr.' in Spanish, so it's named after him.... It's always growing – more stores, more restaurants, more orders." The rest of the product line, according to Liliana, includes fresh cheese and aged cheese, Botanero with fresh jalapeño and cilantro. Queso Fresco, "which is a good crumbly cheese," and Cotija, which she says is "aged like a Parmesan – you grate it." The new Salem plant will offer enough space for an aging room, so the creamery will be able to add Cotija Añejo to the range, her father added. "I want to make fresh mozzarella as well.... I want to do everything. I want to do a line of organic Mexican cheeses as well.... The cheese that you thought was really good over there [in Mexico] – I want to make it here.... I just want to make people happy with my cheese." The Cheese Guide 15

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