The Collective Creamery Cheese Podcast

Summertime is when cheesemakers and dairy farmers are at their busiest — and that’s saying something. So we’re taking a little break to make hay (literally!) while the sun shines, with brand new episodes with more cheesemakers we admire coming at you this fall. In the meantime, catch up on our back catalog, be sure to subscribe, and please rate and review us — it means so much. Thanks to all of you for your support, and we’ll be back in your ears soon with more cheesy content!

Startup dairy, diversifying the industry, creative milk marketing, racism, income inequality, the urban-rural divide — we dig into all these important topics and more in today’s interview with our good friend Rebecca Seidel, farmer-cheesemaker at the forthcoming One Horn Farm! She’s a third-generation dairy farmer reviving her family’s Berks County dairy who brings a really unique perspective on dairy thanks to her agricultural upbringing, off-farm education, and a decade of experience in dairy and cheesemaking. Such an inspiring chat! Follow Rebecca on Instagram @caseinmicelles and Twitter @casein_micelles for her thoughts on ag and news about One Horn Farm’s upcoming debut.

On today’s episode, the cheese dames chat with Mark Gillman, second-generation cheesemaker at Connecticut's Cato Corner Farm! Mark is one of the crew of cheesemakers collaborating on the Cornerstone Project, using an open-source recipe for making cheese with native cultures harvested from his own herd to best express the terroir of his farm. He’s also an award-winning cheesemaker — and his Bloomsday, a cheddar-esque washed rind wheel, is a featured guest cheese in Collective Creamery shares this coming week!

Our cheesemakers are back from their whirlwind trip to Vermont, where they got the chance to sit down with a true OG of American artisan sheep cheese, David Major of Vermont Shepherd! David has been raising sheep and making award-winning wheels on his Putney farm for 30 years, and now, the third generation of his family has joined in on the cheesemaking fun. In this episode, we talk with David about what it was like to start a sheep dairy way back when (buying plastic bowls from the drugstore and drilling holes in them for molds, for example), cheese marketing, and how much the sheep cheese scene has changed.

When we first interviewed Kate Turcotte at the American Cheese Society Conference last summer, she and her husband were preparing to take over cheesemaking operations at Vermont’s iconic Orb Weaver Farm. Now, they’re up and running as Orb Weaver Creamery and experimenting with new cheeses, so we went back up to Vermont to get an update. Plus, you’ll get to hear from our amazing producer, Jordan Heil, on mic for the first time!

Don’t forget: Collective Creamery subscriptions for Summer 2019 are on sale now! Households in Southeast PA and Spring Lake, NJ can sign up for our summer season of cheese (shipping to surrounding states will return when the weather cools in the fall). Click here for more info.

Our cheesemakers spent this past weekend cruising through the farm fields of New England, gathering even more maker interviews for future episodes — so we’re busting this interview with Sean Fitzgerald of Cherry Grove Farm out of the archives! This episode is a perfect companion to our last ep featuring Sean’s co-cheesemaker Paul Lawler. We hope you enjoy!

For Pennsylvania folks: our Summer Cheese Share is now open! Find out more and sign up for a season of cheese with Collective Creamery here.

Our cheesemaker crew stopped by Cherry Grove Farm in Lawrenceville, NJ to interview their longtime head cheesemaker, Paul Lawler! (You can hear his colleague Sean Fitzgerald on one of our earliest episodes.) Even before he was a cheesemaker, Paul was a cheesemonger working to help makers in the region get their products to consumers in Philadelphia, and now, he makes some of the best cheeses in New Jersey. Get the scoop on their cheeses (and hear what cheesemakers listen to while they’re working) on today’s super-sized show!

On this episode, the cheese dames sit down with longtime southeast PA goat farmer and cheesemaker Pete Demchur of Shellbark Hollow Farm! He and Sue were two of the earliest artisan cheesemakers blazing a trail in the region’s artisan cheese movement more than a decade ago. Enjoy — and stay tuned for the Spring-Summer Collective Creamery cheese share to open very, very soon!

We want your feedback! If you listen, please take our brief survey about the podcast: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/V7LDT29

In this episode, the Cheese Dames look north to Maine, where a campaign for food sovereignty has made the state a haven for artisan cheesemakers. We sat down with Jessie Dowling of Fuzzy Udder Creamery discuss the opportunities and challenges Maine’s regulations around dairy and cheese — the most permissive in the country — have created for the state’s bustling cheesemaking community.

We want your feedback! If you listen, please take our brief survey about the podcast: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/V7LDT29

The cheese dames sit down with Rynn Caputo, head of the amazing Caputo Brothers Creamery! Their frozen cagliata curd and 95% whey ricotta — made with local milk from a neighboring Animal Welfare Approved dairy — have changed how we think about Italian-style cheeses and what “fresh mozzarella” really is.

We want your feedback! If you listen, please take our brief survey about the podcast: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/V7LDT29