Artisans crafting unique cheeses in central Pa.

Tag : Native Produce

NEWBURG, Pa. Each morning from April to August, Lena and John Fisher herd about65 dairy sheep into their Newburg-area barn for milking on acarousel he devised.
That milk is the raw material for the Amish couple's primaryculinary venture - making cheese under the Otterbein Acres label.And we're not just talking about some ubiquitous cheddar, either.
In their shelf-lined underground bunker, which John also built, theFishers are aging dozens of wheels of asiago, manchego, peccorinoromano and a gouda-style cheese from sheep's milk.
"They call it Shouda, and it just blows everything else out of thewater," said Sandra Miller, spokeswoman for the PennsylvaniaFarmstead and Artisan Cheese Alliance and a neighbor of theFishers'.
The problem can be finding it.
In central Pennsylvania, it's literally easier to buy Stilton bluecheese from England or asiago hard cheese from Italy than to trackdown Shouda or any of the dozens of other delicious cheeses beingproduced from cow, sheep and goat milk on more than 100family-owned farms in the Keystone State.
So much for eating local.
The main problem is venues. Small cheese-makers pressing out a fewhundred pounds of curds and whey per week simply don't produceenough cheese to satisfy the demands of mega-market chains such asGiant, Wegmans and Weis.
So they are reduced to selling on site, in a handful of retailoutlets such as Olewine's Meat and Cheese House in Harrisburg andat small farm markets in towns such as Carlisle and Gettysburg. Thebulk of their cheeses go to the big East Coast cities, where theyfind a steady restaurant market.
Only a few have Web sites, and some Amish cheese-makers don't havetelephones. The Fishers have one, but it's outside the house "onthe other side of the blueberry patch," Lena Fisher said.
Associations such as PAFACA provide a collective Web site andsomething of a marketing umbrella, but it's still an uphill battle.
Bradley A. Parker, who makes goat cheese on a 16-acre spread nearGreencastle, markets his Pipe Dreams Chevre mostly outsidePennsylvania at restaurants such as Palena, an Italian restaurantin Washington, D.C.
Parker was selling his cheese at the farm markets in Gettysburg andMont Alto, but stopped recently because he was losing money.
"It's too bad, but it's just not worth it," he said. "I wish I hadmore sales closer to home. I really like to sell in Pennsylvania."
In Juniata County, Glenn Wenger runs an organic cheese-makingoperations called Mountain Meadows, where he makes cheddar, colby,jack and Swiss cheeses from the milk of grass-fed cows. Most of hisproduct goes to Philadelphia.
"It's getting hard to sell cheese," Wenger said of his efforts tomarket in central Pennsylvania. "I don't know if the market isflooded or what."
Most Pennsylvania cheese-makers entered the field in the pastdecade, primarily for economic reasons.
"The price of milk hasn't really changed in 25 years," Miller said."The light bulb went off big time when farmers realized they couldturn $200 worth of milk product into $1,500 worth of cheese."
Somewhere along the way, whether self-taught or formally trained,many have gotten quite good at it, and they produce cheeses unlikeany in the world.
Partly that's a function of process. One of the beautiful thingsabout cheese is that wild mold native to a particular place canjoin with injected cultures to produce the final product, so Swisscheese made in Newburg tastes different from a Swiss made anywhereelse.
Pennsylvania cheeses have won some major awards, and the state'scheese-makers aren't afraid to challenge the status quo.
Keswick Creamery, another small operation near Newburg that startedin 2001, makes a tasty array of cow milk cheeses, including spicyDragon's Breath and Blue Suede Moo, a salty blue-veined cheese.
"It's one-third science, one-third art and one-third luck, becausethe milk quality has to be there," said Melanie Dietrich Cochran,who runs Keswick with her husband, Mark. She took a brief course incheesemaking at California Polytechnic State University.
The couple age their cheeses in an old mobile home on their familyfarm, accompanied by a constant drone from the compressors thatkeep the interior cool. Such jury-rigged contraptions might be afar cry from the Combalou caves where French Roquefort has beenripened for centuries, but that doesn't mean they are lesseffective.
Miller, a former food writer for The Los Angeles Times, said thatas the reputation of Pennsylvania cheeses grows, markets nowdominated by Europe, Vermont and Wisconsin will open to them.
"It has the potential to be a huge growth industry," she said."It's an art, like beer making or wine making. You have to becomeknown for it. Pennsylvania cheese-makers are where microbrewerieswere in the United States 20 years ago."
For the time being, cheesemaking mainly helps family farms pay thebills and stay in business.
Parker, a stay-at-home dad with three children, said he made $9,000last year, $20,000 the year before. "That was a big year," he said."My wife is an architect in Chambersburg. She pays the mortgage."
But it's also a labor of love.
At Otterbein Acres, the entire Fisher family contributes to cheesemaking. John Fisher hand rubs each wheel of romano-style cheesewith extra virgin olive oil that he buys at a nearby groceryoutlet. He also goes underground to turn each wheel once a week,promoting proper rind growth.
"I'm the cave worker here," he said with a laugh.