Oser Communications Group

8 The Cheese Guide school," he says. "It would have paid pretty hefty for a 22-year-old kid." At the same time, Karen's cheesemaking was going well back home at Valley Ford. "People liked our cheese, and I could tell it was a passion that she had and I had too," he says. "It didn't take a whole lot of thinking for me to turn down the Leprino offer and come home and try to build a business." Today, Karen remains the President and Founder of Valley Ford Cheese, while Joe, Jr. is the Plant Manager and has taken over the cheesemaking duties. "Outside in the dairy, my grandpa is still here working in the dairy every day." Also outside in the dairy are Joe's uncle and Jim, who graduated from Cal Poly with a degree in animal husbandry and then followed that up with an internship in New Zealand in which he learned pasturing and grazing techniques that he's putting into practice on the farm today. "The cows have access to 640 acres of pasture year round. If it's pouring down rain, then they have the option of staying in the barns, but we typically have relatively mild winters in Sonoma County," Joe says. Valley Ford Cheese specializes in Italian-style cheeses: Estero Gold, Estero Gold Reserve, Highway 1, and newest is Grazin Girl. Estero Gold is the original cheese – it's an original recipe in the style of Asiago and Montasio. "That's aged about six months, a harder to semi-hard cheese that, as it ages, quite a bit of it is held over and aged for two years to become the Reserve," Joe says. "At that point, it's similar to a Parmesan Grana that's good for grating and pairs well with red wines." Highway 1 is a fontina-style cheese, typically sold at about five months. "That's a little bit of a milder cheese, a semi-soft, really good for melting," Joe says. "We sell a lot of it for foodservice, and they'll melt it on anything." Grazin Girl is a dolce-style Gorgonzola-style cheese, aged 60 days at time of sale. "It is the first cheese of ours that I developed. My mom had already developed, made and sold Estero Gold, Estero Gold Reserve and Highway 1 before I came home from college," Joe says. "It's been the hardest cheese I've ever made in my life. It's been three years in the making, but we're there.... We've been selling it locally at farmers markets and it's been flying off the shelves, so we're feeling pretty good about it." At the moment, Grazin Girl is only being sold locally, but Valley Ford has just completed an expansion of cheese plant and purchased a second cheese vat, which has provided the capacity to grow Grazin Girl to a wider market as well as opportunities to research and develop other new products. Master Cheesemaker in the Making at LaClare Family Creamery Katie Fuhrmann is planning to become her family's first Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker. She's a scion of LaClare Family Creamery, one of four children of Larry and Clara Hedrich who are involved in the family's farmstead goat operation, along with her sister Anna, who runs the farm; her brother Greg, who runs the creamery along with Katie; and her sister Jessica, who runs the retail cheese store and cafe. "My dad's the General Manager, so we all work directly with him," Katie says. "My mom is actually our on- site midwife, and she is so good at it. She is phenomenal at it, and she also manages our agritourism effort, so this is a way for her to continue to teach ag, which was her career, but not have to do it inside the classroom walls." She grew up on the home farm that her parents bought in 1978. "My parents bought that farm with two goats on it, and that's where that started. They bought the farm because they wanted to give their kids the work ethic that would go along with that," she says. "They didn't want to milk cows, and since the farm came with a couple of pet goats, Brandy and Whisky, they ended up just going with that and creating a goat dairy." Katie was introduced to cheesemaking in 2008. Her parents had started having cheese made from their goat milk by another cheesemaker, and they entered Evalon, their first cheese, in the U.S. Cheese Championships. Evalon was a second-place in its class. "My parents had to milk the goats, so they asked me if I would be interested in going over and getting the award," she says. She went to Lacrosse to attend the awards reception, sat down by herself and, by chance, sat down next to Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker Gary Grossen. "We started talking, and I said, 'This is it. I have to make cheese,'" she says. "I fell in love with the passion. It wasn't something they did. It was their life.... I left early and had to call my dad so I could tell him, 'Dad, I'm going to be a master cheesemaker.'" Her dad said that would be fine with him, so she figured that her next step would be to learn something about making cheese. She asked Saxon Creamery for an internship. "The plant manager at the time, he and I, we just hit it off right away," she says. "He let me come in and learn." By September, she was begging him for a job. "I helped out with the make. I helped out with the aging. I helped out with the packaging," she says. Eventually, she came back to the family business. LaClare Farms, as it was then, didn't yet have a creamery, so Katie started making the family's cheeses in other Wisconsin creameries. "I was kind of a gypsy for the first few years," she says. By December of 2012, the creamery had been built, and Katie was able to move in and start making cheese. "I made the first vat of cheese on December 12, 2012 – that was chèvre, actually, of all things. It was kind of funny, really, but Katie Fuhrmann

• Cover