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NATURALLY HEALTHY www.gourmetnews.com n MARCH 2018 n GOURMET NEWS N H 1 2 2 valuable resources," Gremmels said. Every- one who participates is eligible for a monthly stipend to help offset their costs – the higher car payment for a hybrid vehicle or extra time at daycare for a bicyclist who has a longer commuting time on those days. "It's a nice healthy gift every month that we pro- vide," Gremmels said. Participation is tracked on a board in the company's break room, and Rogue Creamery measures the total mileage clocked up by the employees using alternative transportation and uses that as an offset on the company's carbon footprint. "That's one of the metrics we track for our contribution to a carbon off- set," Gremmels said. In 2013 alone, Rogue Creamery's Nellie Green program saved more than 12,000 commuter miles, and the successful program has been emulated by the Rogue Federal Credit Union, Cowgirl Creamery and Vermont Creamery. Rogue Creamery Marketing Director – or as the company's website calls him, Cheese Narrator – Francis Plowman is one of those who mentioned the Nellie Green Pedal Power Program to me as a point of particular pride. "It sounds corny, but for my genera- tion, it's sales and marketing to be sustain- able," he said. He pointed out that the program has put more than 100 bikes on the road, and it's part of an overall culture of sus- tainability and community involvement that drew him to the company when he was hired here in 2005. That includes annual sponsor- ships for the Ashland Independent Film Fes- tival, which produces the posters that decorate the hallway outside Plowman's of- fice; the 17 people involved this year in the annual Day of Caring, participation in the local United Way chapter, the annual Central Point Street Cleanup and a major sponsor- ship for the local Boys & Girls Club. "It's not enough for just David to be involved," he said. "We try not just to say we're commu- nity-minded and green, but we have some things we can say we've done." Helen McCann works just down the hall from Plowman's office. She's been with Rogue Cream- ery for 31 years – well before Grem- mels arrived on the scene – and her title, according to the company website, is "Original Rogue." She's actually a second- generation Rogue Creamery employee, since her mother worked here for 60 years. "There's nothing that Helen hasn't done at Rogue Creamery," Gremmels said. Her ac- complishments include that she's the fastest blue cheese wrapper in history, he added. "I just think it's a wonderful place to work," she said. "I love the people. I love my boss. And I love cheese, too." While I was visiting with McCann, Pro- duction Supervisor Chris Shannon stopped in to feed her some production data. He's been with the company for six years. He grew up in the neighborhood and had been employed as a roofer for a family-owned company When he went looking for another job, he started his search locally, and he was glad to hire on in the warehouse at Rogue Creamery. He started out the way most Rogue Creamery employees start out – wrapping and boxing cheese for shipment, but he didn't stop there. It wasn't long before the company noticed his hard work and sent him into a cheesemaking apprenticeship. "They saw that I was a hard worker and sent me over to make because make is a hard job – more of a manual labor job," he said. When he started work here, he didn't know much about cheese, but he knew about the company's reputation for community in- volvement and its commitment to environ- mental sustainability. "They're always here for their employees," he said. "And I love their products ... I wanted to be part of that." Midway through my day at Rogue Creamery, Gremmels walked with me a few blocks from the office and warehouse facility along Oregon Highway 99 to Rogue Creamery's creamery building and retail shop, where I was due to meet Production Manager Brian Moss and Quality Control Supervisor Emily Aldrich for a tour of the cheesemaking facil- ities. Gremmels has worked with the city of Central Point and other businesses to turn the stretch of highway through the center of town into an artisan corridor that celebrates local food and wine and that's also the home of the annual Oregon Cheese Festival. Lillie Belle Chocolates, the Ledger David Winery and Rogue Creamery joined together with the city and state to build sidewalks along the highway and reduce the speed limit on the highway from 50 to 35 miles per hour to make the area safer for pedestrians as well as bicyclists. The property owners granted ease- ments and planted trees, and children who used to walk to school along the railroad tracks that parallel the highway can now use the sidewalks. "It was just a critical mass of small businesses that said they wanted to jump in," Gremmels said. He persuaded the city to cooperate by inviting the city fathers down to the Oregon Cheese Festival site just a little way down the highway from City Hall. There, they could see for themselves that the festival was bringing people into the community, bringing their money with them. That demonstrated for them what they might not have known before – that Rogue Cream- ery is more of an economic powerhouse than its modest location along the highway would suggest to people who aren't familiar with the strength of the artisanal food movement. "There's power in cheese," Gremmels said. Aldrich and Moss showed up to meet me in Rogue Creamery's retail shop, where we dined together on grilled cheese sandwiches made of Rogue Creamery TouVelle, an American Original named after a local park that showcases the peace and beauty of one of the most pristine river valleys in the coun- try, Moss said. It's the creamery's best melt- ing cheese – sort of Cheddar and Jack meet Gruyere, sweet and light on the palate with nutty notes to give it extra depth. It made a perfectly gooey and delicious grilled cheese sandwich. Moss, 34, who is Rogue Creamery's Pro- duction Manager, is a fourth-generation Ore- gonian who grew up in Portland and went to college for a degree in economics. He was working in software development when he got a yen for open spaces, so he went to work for a Capay Valley organic farm, where he met his wife. The two of them decided to pull up stakes and go out on their own with a few acres and a few goats as the begin- ning of a cheese business. He still needed more work, so Gremmels hired him as a cheesemon- ger and assistant cheesemaker, and then Gremmels asked him to over- see the cold storage and packaging oper- ation. Today, in ad- dition to being the creamery's full-time production manager, he also has beef cows on the 40 acres of Rolling Sky Farm in Ashland, where he's also still making cheese. His first focus in life is as a father to Cameron, John and Susanna; then as a husband to Jennifer – a family nurse practitioner in Ashland; then as a farmer and only then as a team member at Rogue Creamery – an order of priorities that raised a nod of approbation from Grem- mels when I mentioned it to him later. "I've had three kids since I started working here, so they've grown up with Rogue Creamery," Moss said. "It was this lifestyle – a family commitment to know what we're eating, to support local agriculture and local food. Slow food. ... When I moved here, I knew all about Rogue Creamery. It wasn't until I was here that I realized how comprehensive that really was." "About four years ago, he [Gremmels] told us we were going to be an organic com- pany. Now, 85 percent of the production has been moved to organic," he added. "None of those things were happening when I started here. ... Even bigger than his personality is his vision." Southern Oregon has turned out to be a good place to raise a family on the land, Moss said. Ashland is small, and it's sur- rounded by other small towns, so the kids aren't subjected to big-city influences. The climate is mild enough to allow a 10-month growing season, and that's encouraging arti- sans and people who want to learn sustain- able and biodynamic farming to settle here. That gives him a unique opportunity to help reshape the food system around caring farm- ers and entrepreneurs. "There's a lot of peo- ple with a similar mindset, so it's about supporting farmers, doing it the right way. ... At Rogue Creamery, we're always focused on continuous improvement, both for myself and the company," he said. "I feel like we've been on the forefront of cheese for a long time. I feel like we have the potential to do some pretty incredible things in the next few years. ... I feel like we could be a showcase for the right way to do agriculture – and the small way to do agriculture." Aldrich, 26, got her introduction to dairy sci- ence and cheesemaking as a high school stu- dent at the Putney School in Vermont, a progressive school with its own dairy herd and a strong belief in the value of work for its own sake. After a high school education that taught her a lot about milking cows as well as the more usual high school curricu- lum, she went on to the University of Ver- mont for a degree in chemistry that she wanted to apply to food safety and regula- tory compliance. Eventually, she decided to leave Vermont and move to the West Coast to start her career. After a couple of years in California, she de- cided that she wanted to come back to cheese and started net- working with that in mind. She got in touch with an old friend in Mex- ico City who put her in touch with Gremmels. "That friend was a close friend of David's, as it turns out," she said. "He [Gremmels] got me into my dream job, and I'm pretty grateful for it. I think he does a lot to make things happen for people." She's putting her education to work as a quality assurance supervisor for the creamery, running analyses on the milk that comes in from the creamery's dairy and working with the farmer to ensure that the cows are raised and the milk is produced with the cheeses' needs in mind. "The quality of our milk has so much to do with the qual- ity of our cheeses," she said. "If our grass isn't right in the pasture, the cheese isn't going to have the flavor we want." She's also an enthusiastic participant in the Nellie Green program. "We work towards setting our own goals for sustainability," she said. "We're committed to minimizing our fuel use by ridesharing and bicycling. ... We really put that as a priority for our own busi- ness." Rogue Creamery has given her opportuni- ties to learn a wide variety of knowledge re- lated to quality control, from thinking about how the grasses in the dairy's pastures affect the flavors of the cheese to working on the creamery's HACCP plan to ensure that the cheese is safe. "I don't think that I would have gotten that at a smaller facility or at a bigger company," she said. "The size of this com- pany has allowed me a lot of freedom." Her ambition for her career is to stay in quality control for as long as she possibly can, she said. "I fell in love with the cheese world as soon as I walked into it," she said. "Everyone is so awesome and passionate and generous." Blue Cathedral (Cont'd. from p. 120)