Cheddar is Better

There's another place in the heartland where innovation and ingenuity are being rewarded - Vermont. It's known the world over for some outstanding dairy products. In fact, the Green Mountain state is probably one of the cheesiest places in the Heartland and we mean that in a good way.

Vermont is already well known for its maple syrup. But you may not know that Vermont also claims the largest number of cheese-makers in the country. And Cabot Creamery, in the town of the same name, is by far the largest in Vermont. Founded in 1919, Cabot Creamery is a cooperative of dairy farmers who wanted to do something more with their milk. Jed Davis is the marketing director for Cabot Creamery, "And what we are is a way for farmers to come together. And improve their livelihood by working cooperatively, pooling their milk and then trying to find the best value for that milk."

For these Heartland farmers that means turning their milk into a "value-added product such as aged cheddar cheese or creamery butter and yogurt. Davis says, "And to the extent that we're able to be profitable year in and year out that profit comes back to our farmers."

Small family farms make up the membership of the Cabot Cooperative. There are some 13 hundred of them and they take real pride in the milk that goes into making this cheese. Paul Percy milks some 650 cows on his Vermont dairy farm. He joined the coop in 1965. And he says it works for him, "Guarantees you a market, it guarantees you payment. I can produce whatever I want for milk and I got a place to ship it every day and it's pretty important."

When it comes to cows for his dairy operation, Paul has some definite ideas on what he likes best, "If you want to buy cattle you can buy Holsteins a lot better than any other breed. Jerseys are harder to buy than Holsteins. But Jerseys produce higher butterfat, higher protein."

The Cabot Creamery Plant uses up to half a million pounds of milk on an average production day. The milk heading for the production line gets tested for bacteria and butterfat content before it even enters the plant. It's then pasteurized to kill bacteria. After that the cream is skimmed from the milk and the whey is separated out by reverse osmosis.

The milk is then processed in long open vats. Cheese cultures and an ingredient called rennet cause the milk to "gel" into curds. Those curds are then tightly packed and drained. The result here? Cheddar cheese. But Creamery plant manager Marcel Gravel says there's another important step, "You can do everything right from the farm right through to the cheese making. But if it's not handled correctly after it's made, and I'm referring to the aging. You can cool it too fast. You can cool it too much. You can not cool it to the right temperatures; so therefore it doesn't age out properly."

It takes about ten pounds of milk to make one pound of cheese, and the total time from the vat to the aging rooms is about three hours. Cheeses that require aging spend anywhere from two months to three years in cold storage. Like a fine wine, this cheese will be watched as it ages. But just because they've found a successful format, Marcel Gravel says the cheese makers here aren't afraid to experiment, "We're constantly going out to seminars and stuff and learning new things that are out there and trying new stuff. I mean we're always fooling around with a new type of cheese. Whether it be a tomato-basil or a horseradish."

And reacting to market demand, Cabot produces "light" cheese with less fat in addition to a dozen traditional varieties. Cabot Creamery not only markets them to wholesale and retail outlets, but at their visitor center as well. Visitors come from across the country to tour the plant. Fall is a particularly busy time with visitors who come for autumn colors as well as cheese. Some of their comments? "It's hard not to like something that comes from cows. It's beautiful country. And we've enjoyed ourselves up here. Come up here at least once or twice a year." Marketing Director Jed Davis says they relish the feedback from visitors, "There's a lot of pride in this from the farm straight through to the making of the cheese. We want it on display and even though all roads don't lead to Cabot, Vermont we have between 35 and 50 thousand people a year who make that trip."

Today's cheese industry in Vermont continues to grow. The state is turning out 70 million pounds each year and Cabot wants to make sure that number just keeps on growing.

Cheddar Cheese Facts
A number of cheese varieties fall under the "Cheddar Cheese" umbrella. During Victorian times, cheese makers in England used carrot juice and marigold petals to create the yellow cheddar color. And Britain's Queen Victoria received a cheddar cheese wheel in 1840 as one of her wedding presents. It weighed more than a thousand pounds.