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OCG Show Daily 2 9 Sunday, June 10, 2018 Gremmels said. Everyone who partici- pates 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 provide," 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 alter- native 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 offset," Gremmels said. In 2013 alone, Rogue Creamery's Nellie Green program saved more than 12,000 commuter miles, and the successful program has been emulat- ed 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 generation, it's sales and marketing to be sustainable," 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 sustainability and community involvement that drew him to the company when he was hired here in 2005. That includes annual spon- sorships for the Ashland Independent Film Festival, which produces the posters that decorate the hallway outside Plowman's office; 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 sponsorship 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 community- 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 Creamery for 31 years – well before Gremmels 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 accomplishments 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, Production Supervisor Chris Shannon stopped in to feed her some p r o d u c t i o n data. He's been with the compa- ny for six years. He grew up in the neighbor- hood and had been employed as a roofer for a f a m i l y - o w n e d company When he went looking for another job, he start- ed 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 – wrap- ping 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 apprentice- ship. "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 com- munity involvement and its commitment to environmental sustainability. "They're always here for their employees," he said. "And I love their products ... I want- ed to be part of that." Midway through my day at Rogue Creamery, Gremmels walked with me a few blocks from the office and ware- house 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 facilities. 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 grant- ed easements and planted trees, and chil- dren who used to walk to school along the railroad tracks that parallel the high- way 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 them- selves that the festival was bringing peo- ple into the community, bringing their Blue Cathedral (Cont'd. from p. 28) money with them. That demonstrated for them what they might not have known before – that Rogue Creamery is more of an eco- nomic power- house than its modest location along the high- way 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 sand- wiches made of Rogue Creamery TouVelle, an American Original named after a local park that showcases the peace and beauty of one of the most pris- tine river valleys in the country, Moss said. It's the creamery's best melting 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 Production Manager, is a fourth-genera- tion Oregonian who grew up in Portland and went to college for a degree in eco- nomics. 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 beginning of a cheese business. He still needed more work, so Gremmels hired him as a cheesemonger and assistant cheesemak- er, and then Gremmels asked him to oversee the cold storage and packaging operation. Today, in addition to being the creamery's full-time production manag- er, 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 Gremmels 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 agri- culture 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 company. Now, 85 percent of the production has been moved to organ- ic," 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 surrounded by other small towns, so the kids aren't subjected to big-city influ- ences. The climate is mild enough to allow a 10-month growing season, and that's encouraging artisans and people who want to learn sustainable and biody- namic farming to settle here. That gives him a unique opportunity to help reshape the food system around caring farmers 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 improve- ment, 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 show- case for the right way to do agriculture – and the small way to do agriculture." Aldrich, 26, got her introduction to dairy science and cheesemaking as a high school student 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 curriculum, she went on to the University of Vermont for a degree in chemistry that she wanted to apply to food safety and regulatory com- pliance. Eventually, she decided to leave Vermont and move to the West Coast to start her career. After a couple of years in California, she decided 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 Mexico 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 peo- ple." 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 quality 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 sus- tainability," she said. "We're committed to minimizing our fuel use by ridesharing and bicycling. ... We really put that as a priority for our own business." Rogue Creamery has given her opportunities to learn a wide variety of knowledge related to quality control, from thinking about how the grasses in the dairy's pastures affect the flavors of the cheese to working on the cream- ery'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 company has allowed me a lot of freedom." Her ambition for her career is to stay in quality control for as long as she possi- bly 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."