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[bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

We were discussing this earlier & I just ran across this article in today's 
wsj.  It is about small full-time cheesemakers, artisan stuff.  The lady 
featured in the story makes her cheese from Sheep milk ...bobford


______________________________________________________________________


 
Courtesy Brenda Jensen
Cheesemaker Brenda Jensen stands on her Wisconsin farm.

At this year's annual American Cheese Society competition, aficionados and 
producers were dazzled by a newcomer: Hidden Springs Creamery of Westby, 
Wis., won six awards, including two first-place honors.

Tasters may have been puzzled by how this cheesemaker emerged from nowhere. 
Just two years ago, Hidden Springs did not exist and its owner, Brenda 
Jensen, was working as a manager at a global packaging company.

Today, Ms. Jensen can be found milking sheep and hand-crafting two-pound 
wheels of cheese. After 25 years in the corporate world, Ms. Jensen, 47 years 
old, decided to quit her job and start a creamery. Her first-place Ocooch 
Mountain cheese, a European Bufont-style aged cheese, is gaining prestige in 
the artisanal cheese world. Her creamy sheep's milk cheese, Driftless, which 
comes in flavors ranging from basil to lavender, has garnered a number of 
local and national awards, including three at the 2007 American Cheese 
Society competition, which is considered the U.S.'s premiere cheese festival.

"Brenda sends me this almost flawless cheese that is consistent and sharp," 
says Lenny Rice, the buyer for Cowgirl Creamery, which carries Ocooch 
Mountain and Driftless cheese at its stores in California and Washington, 
D.C. "One of the reasons is she has put a lot of care into the milk."

 
Courtesy Brenda Jensen
Ms. Jensen in her cheese cave.
Ms. Jensen is among a growing number of dairy farmers who have left corporate 
jobs for the allure of the cheese world. According to the American Cheese 
Society, which represents artisanal and craft cheesemakers, the number of 
cheesemakers who have joined the organization has more than tripled in the 
past seven years, from 426 in 2001 to 1,346 in 2007. And cheesemaking has 
attracted producers from non-food backgrounds. Jeff Roberts, author of "The 
Atlas of American Cheese," found that almost a third of artisanal 
cheesemakers in 2006 had come from other careers ranging from doctors to 
dotcommers.

"It's a desire to do something outside of the corporate world, to do 
something with nature, to do something on your own," says Mike Gingrich of 
Uplands Cheese Company, in Dodgeville, Wis. Mr. Gingrich spent several years 
as an executive at Xerox Corp. and on a venture capital team before settling 
into the dairy business nine years ago. His Pleasant Ridge Reserve cheese won 
two American Cheese Society "Best in Show" awards. "I have never been in a 
business like this where your customers are helpful, where your competitors 
are helpful. It's not as cutthroat."

Adds Laura Werlin, author of "Laura Werlin's Cheese Essentials": "The 
lifestyle appeals to people. I think we revere cheese makers in a way that we 
don't other agricultural producers. It's harder to stand out if you are a 
really good blueberry maker than if you are a really good cheesemaker."

A demand for artisanal cheese has helped foster these new cheesemakers. The 
rising cost of transporting cheese from Europe, in addition to the weakened 
dollar, has driven up the price of imported cheese by as much as 30%, forcing 
many consumers to look to cheaper domestic products. In addition, Jeanne 
Carpenter, a spokeswoman at the Wisconsin Diary Business Innovation Center, 
points to a shift in American taste towards bolder and farmstead cheeses.

"We have gone from the 1970s when everybody wants to eat this commodity Kraft 
cheese to one where they want a cheese that is funky and has a story behind 
[it]. The artisanal cheesemaker provides this," Ms. Carpenter said, noting 
that the number of farmstead cheesemakers in Wisconsin has increased from 10 
to 44 in the past decade. "It's really been consumer driven."

To be sure, becoming a cheesemaker is no simple task. Average start-up costs 
are about $250,000, says Ms. Carpenter, and cheesemakers must take a series 
of classes to become certified. And once you're knee-deep in cow manure, the 
lifestyle may not seem quite as romantic.

Brenda Jensen's Tips for Making a Career Change to Cheese
Ms. Jensen made three attempts within a year to walk away from her job as a 
manufacturing manager, but each time her employer convinced her to stay with 
extra pay or time off. She finally walked away to become a full-time cheese 
maker in June 2006.

Support: Support—financial and moral—is a big thing. That has really helped 
me.

Courage and Determination: You are going to mess up and make mistakes, and 
there is no one else to blame but yourself. And you think, Oh my god, what 
have I done? That's when you just have to believe and be determined.

Be Prepared: Getting in touch with people [for advice] was important. It's 
not less hours, but be prepared for the time of your life.
"You got to really love it," says Ms. Rice of Cowgirl Creamery. "They might 
be wealthy coming into it, but they are not going to get wealthy making 
cheese. We have a seen a couple of instances of people who worked in the 
dotcom industry, sold out their stock and opened a dairy farm -- and they 
were quickly humbled by the lifestyle. Those animals become your children. 
You're up at 3 o'clock in the morning to tend to them."

Ms. Jensen was the manufacturing manager at Milprint, a division of packaging 
giant Bemis Co. in Lancaster, Wis, before she decided to leave her 
$80,000-a-year job for the cheese world in 2006.

"I always knew that I would live in the country and have a barn," says Ms. 
Jensen, who grew up on a "hobby farm" in Benoit, Wis., where she and her 
brothers helped tend to chickens, rabbits, horses and a milk cow. "But I 
didn't know much beyond that. I never thought I would have sheep."

For fun, she and her husband, Dean, a mental health physician, decided to buy 
about 50 milking sheep for their 76-acre farm four years ago. In November 
2005 she attended a three-day cheese-making and started experimenting with 
cheese.

Today, Ms. Jensen's retails Hidden Valley Creamery cheese for $20 to $40 a 
pound at specialty stores across the country. She made about 6,000 pounds of 
cheese in 2007 and expects to make a total of 12,000 pounds by year end. Ms. 
Jensen says she is $20,000 away from being profitable.

"It was the whole romance of it," she says. "The smell of the milk, the feel 
of the cheese -- I didn't realize how intimate you could become with the 
cheese making process."



http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122522555661077237.html