Stream of Consciousness #61 - Al Bekkum - Nordic Creamery

 This week on Friday’s w/ Dan, I sit down with Al Bekkum of Nordic Creamery — a licensed cheesemaker, buttermaker, and the heart behind one of Wisconsin’s most beloved family dairies. We talk about his family’s century‑long farming legacy, the craft behind award‑winning cheese and butter, life in the Driftless Region, and what it takes to keep a small creamery thriving. It’s a conversation about tradition, hard work, and the pride of making something by hand that brings people together. 

Nordic Creamery Wisconsin Cheese | Goat Cheese | Gift Baskets

@DanBackes-Omaha

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:03

All right everyone, we are live with Stream of Consciousness with Dan. I'm joined today by Al Beckham of Nordic Creamery in Wesby, Wisconsin. A licensed cheesemaker and buttermaker carrying on more than a hundred years of family tradition. His cheeses and butters have earned gold and silver medals at the American Cheese Society, the U.S. Cheesemakers Association, and the World Cheese Awards. We're talking process, farm life, and the craft behind great cheese, butter and all things Wisconsin. So let's slice into my conversation with Al Beckham. How are you doing today, Al?

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Very good.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Good. Well, I'm doing uh extremely well myself. So excited to talk to you and learn about you know what makes you guys so special. So but before we get into the cheese making, I kind of want to go back to the very beginning. Uh just to how you know you got this farm in the first place. Like we talked about, it's been around since 1917. So just touch a little bit about the history.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Uh so the the farm has been in uh my wife's family for over a hundred years. Um we uh uh my wife and I actually met in a different dairy plant um almost 30 years ago. Um we both worked there. Uh we uh we started dating, uh, got married, uh, had kids. Um both uh actually left that plant, and uh my wife has got more of a medical background and uh went more into that business. And I uh went to another plant and ran that for a while. And and we kind of thought, you know, it'd be nice to uh we we built a brand new house on uh on the family farm here, and we thought, you know, it'd be kind of nice to build something that uh our children, uh we have five boys and one girl. Yeah, something that they would uh maybe look at uh taking over from us uh at some point in time and and we could kind of go into retirement and help them uh with the next chapter of uh of dairy. Um so I think it was probably about uh uh boy, I I I hate to throw out a number, but it must be about 17 or 18 years ago. Um we uh broke ground and and built the plant on this farm uh that was in my wife's family, and uh took a leap of faith. And I I worked uh here full time. Um my wife uh still kept her job um in the healthcare sector uh for a few years, and then all of a sudden it just got to be too much here, and and she joined me full-time, and uh slowly we've added uh uh or the children have gotten older, we've added them to the the shake of uh uh of this and and quite a few employees too, and and built it up.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

Well, that's great. So I wanted to kind of talk about the region where you're at because I had a conversation with um Luke Zom. Are you familiar with Luke?

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Yep, right down the road from us.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Great restaurant. Um, and he just talks about how that region is just so rich in in nutrients and soil. And do you think that plays a big part in why your cheese and butter is so good?

SPEAKER_00 4:03

So, yeah, we are in the driftless region of Wisconsin here. Um, we have a lot of uh small smaller farms. Uh, you know, we our our land is very uh hilly uh with with some pretty good valleys in it and some ridges and stuff like that. So we don't have the the capability in this area to have larger farms of uh several thousand cows or or what have you, just because it's just not enough uh nice land to um to be able to farm in a in a bigger style. So we still have a lot of uh smaller farms here uh and and the and the ground and the earth uh uh around us is just crazy rich uh with nutrients and stuff, and and we just believe that uh our products uh really gain a lot of taste from from this area.

SPEAKER_02 5:12

Yeah, well that's awesome. Like I said, my uh conversation with him kind of sparked this whole thing, so that's really neat to hear. And my my uncle actually worked on a farm out in Casanovia not too far away. And yeah, it's just a gorgeous area of the state. Um I love it very much. So when we kind of talk about your childhood, did you always see yourself as a cheesemaker, or did you have any other aspirations? Or yeah, just kind of talk about your childhood a little bit if you don't mind.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

So I'm uh I'm actually a first generation cheesemaker. Uh my my wife, uh, the farm here was a uh a dairy farm, and she grew up kind of in that. I did not. I grew up uh actually uh my first few years of life. I grew up in town uh as kind of a a small small town of Westby, but still a city kid. Uh 2,000 people, you know, we thought we were city kids, but uh so I I grew up in uh in town. Uh my parents moved out into the country when I was uh a young teenager, and uh I kind of got a taste for farming there. Still, it wasn't in the dairy, uh, but I still I got a taste for farming. I I went and worked with uh some of my aunts and uncles on their dairy farms and and got kind of interested in it a little bit, but not real crazy. Uh when I was a uh young adult, I uh I was working construction actually, and uh we I got laid off in the fall, uh, which is kind of normal for the upper Midwest here. Uh there's not a lot of houses and stuff being built uh in the winter time. And I got laid off and and was looking, uh, I guess uh maybe wasn't smart enough to go after unemployment, or maybe it wasn't as easy to get. Um, but I I was looking for a job to to get me through the winter. And uh a friend of mine told me that the uh local dairy was was hiring, and I thought, well, you know, that wouldn't be so bad. Go in there and work inside for the winter, and then uh when the weather got nice in the spring, I'd go back into construction. Well, that was uh probably 35 years ago. Uh I I never went back to construction, I've been in the dairy business ever since.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

Oh, that's really cool. Um, well, I I think I'd much rather work in a dairy than work in construction, too.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

So well, it does have its days, though, too.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

So it's uh uh it oh I was just gonna say I'd probably weigh like 500 pounds if I worked at a dairy.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

So yes. Oh gosh. I've tasted more cheese and butter in the last 35 years than I even dare to think about. I still I still enjoy it uh in my meals, but uh I've spent a lot of time uh of tasting it and making sure that the product that's going out the door is uh the best that we can do.

SPEAKER_02 8:40

I love that. I absolutely love that. So I want to just stick on kind of just small town Wisconsin and just Wisconsin in general. I'll ask the simple question that I like to ask everyone who I interview who lives in Wisconsin is just what being a Scottie means to you. Because I think we're a very special state, everyone's proud of their state, but uh I'm super proud of it. So I just wanted to hear it from you, what you think being a Scottnie means.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Well, I think it even living in different parts of the state, I think people have different opinions on what it feels like, you know, if you're if you're in the Madison area or or Milwaukee or something like that. But uh here in the uh southwest uh uh corner of Wisconsin, uh we are we're down to earth. Uh we have great family values in this area. Um you know, we get really proud of uh everybody uh thinks they've got a strong work ethic, but most of us that grew up in this area, at least my age and and older, um you know, have a strong uh physical work ethic, um, not just the mental part of it that most people use nowadays, but we have more of a stronger uh physical part of it. And it's uh uh it's humbling to go out and uh to go out into the rest of the country or even the rest of the world and and see how blessed we are to to live in this area that we do live in, where you know it just like the glacier coming through, sometimes we're kind of untouched by uh other things in the world that aren't so nice, and uh we're kind of uh we're we're protected from it, and it's a it's a great feeling. It's a great place to raise kids as well.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Um I've only lived in Wisconsin for I think I was five when we moved to Kansas, but I consider myself Wisconsin through and through. It's uh a culture to me where, as you mentioned, we're very proud, but we're not arrogant. Um I think we work hard for everything and you reap what you sow. So yeah, I really like that answer. And I wanted to touch on um speaking of you know that pride, obviously you take pride in your cheese and you want to make the best cheese, not only in Wisconsin, but in the in the country. But I feel there's a very good uh kind of cheese culture in general that you're cheering for others, you're learning from others, you have good relationships with other creameries, and I just think that's really neat. So I don't know if you have an opinion on that or wanted to expand on that.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

But we we uh if you go if you travel anywhere in the United States and you talk about the the people from the Midwest here, whether you go out on the East Coast or on the West Coast, they'll always say that the people in the Midwest are so honest, almost to the point of they can't believe how honest we are and and how polite we are and stuff like that. And that is in our our dairy industry as well. Not only are we honest people, uh, and we're you know, we're trying to make a living as well, but we're helping each other out. I've got so many friends in this industry that I've had uh for for many, many years that uh if I've got a question about uh a certain cheese that you know that I want to try to make or or that a certain process isn't working quite right for me, uh all I gotta do is get on the phone and I've got so many resources to help me with that situation. Or vice versa, I've got people that call me all the time uh weekly. Uh, you know, we're we're thinking about starting a dairy plant, or we're we're thinking about uh converting some of the milk from our farm into dairy products, and and you know, we've got your name from the Department of Ag, or we've got your name from the uh Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association, and and we want to uh pick your brain a little bit and see uh what uh what you know and what you can help us with. And uh, you know, this has been going on, you know. Uh like I said, I've been in this for over 35 years. Uh, this has been going on ever since I've been in it, and probably a lot longer than that. But uh it's it's a great industry to uh to be in and to uh really work with each other to uh to put a product out there to uh uh people across the country that really do enjoy it and and love Wisconsin cheese.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

Yeah, another great answer. And I really wanted to give you the floor right now to talk about what it means to actually be a licensed cheesemaker and buttermaker because not all states do that, and it is a very uh pretty strenuous uh process to get licensed, and I just wanted to kind of give you the floor to talk about that because it's not just a label, it shows a lot of hard work and a true craft.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

So I so I was uh uh a few years after I I had my uh license, uh I I got the opportunity to go out and run a uh cheese plant in Ohio for I think four years I was out there. And and I guess I was you know still pretty young yet. I was in my mid-20s and and and probably pretty naive, but I got out there and I I couldn't believe that you didn't have to have a license to make cheese. I couldn't believe that uh anybody could walk into a dairy plant and start doing it. I said, Well, that's not the way we do it back in Wisconsin. Have an apprenticeship, you have to be uh have uh somebody from the state come in and give you a test after your apprentice is up and and make sure that you know what you're doing and and uh not scold you, but uh you know, basically some of the couple of them that gave me a test said you know this is uh something to be proud of, and we hope that you uh for many years uh have this license and and are proud of what you're doing, and and I have been, and uh yeah, we are the only state in the country that requires a a license to make cheese or make butter. Uh I know I don't know where they're at right now with butter buttermaker license, but uh I know when I first got mine, I I believe there was only uh 30 some uh licensed buttermakers in the state of Wisconsin. Um and I I wore that uh uh on my chest like a badge, I think. Uh I I was pretty proud of that. Um I I they've they've made it a little bit easier for for some of these guys to get buttermakers' license, but I'm guessing that if if a guy looked it up on the state website, uh it's it might be a little bit more than that, but it it it probably isn't much more than that.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Well, yeah, so I just wanted to uh hear that from you because uh like I said, it's not just a label, it's not just uh I'm a cheesemaker. Like it's a true badge of honor, like you said. So I'd love to hear that pride. And when you're buying a product from your creamery, you know you're getting it from someone who truly understands uh the process of cheese and the craft that goes into it. So oh, I absolutely love that. Um so I I kind of want to shift gears and talk about the animals themselves because happy cows and uh you have goat as well, right? You have goats.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

So we we uh did milk cows here on the farm um up until about I think 10 years ago, and then it got uh too much for us, so we uh source all of our milk from local farms, but we we don't buy any milk from farms that have uh our biggest uh dairy herd is 30 cows. Um wow, okay. So we we have uh I think like eight farms that we buy milk from right now, and they're all small uh farms that are within uh 10 miles of the plant.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

Well that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Yeah, we pay them a premium. Uh we we don't uh you know, I get guys that call me all the time because somebody uh says uh Nordic Kramery is paying so much for the for our milk and you should try to get in there. Well, you know, we just can't take everybody on because we're we're a small plant, uh, but we the farms that we have, we we pay them a premium and they do a a crazy nice job um as far as the quality of milk coming in here. I can't I can't believe how blessed we are with the farms that we have.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

Well, that's so cool. You said 10 miles, eight farms and ten miles. Yeah, that's awesome. And I mean you're supporting all of those farms, and like you said, you're uh doing it the right way. You don't have to pay that premium. You could sell out, and you know, but that's not what Nordic creamery is about, and that's why your cheese and products taste so good.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Well, we you know, we we wanna we wanna make a living um for ourselves, but we we we know that the guys that are shipping in here and and the dairy economy is is so volatile and and it's not very good right now. Uh but uh but our farms and and even the people that work in the plant with us, uh we've got uh two boys that work uh full-time with us, and uh and we have uh about a half a dozen other employees. And I would guess that most of them would say, hey, they're they're really fair on what they're paying us. And our farmers, I know, would say that they're you know, we we pay them more than they could get other places, and uh we realize that if we can do that, if we can pay maybe a little bit more than the next guy, that we can keep the best workers in here and we can uh have that quality milk coming in here that uh helps us uh put out a superior product.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

I completely agree. So we're gonna get into the the nitty-gritty of cheese now. So you'll probably get a little excited. I just love I just love asking this question because uh for a simpleton who just goes to the grocery store and buys, you know, a block of cheese, they have no idea how it's made or what all goes into it. So I'm not asking for anything proprietary or secrets or anything like that, just uh the basics straight from the cow's mouth, so to speak. How do you make cheese?

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Well, for me, it's getting up early in the morning. I am a an early riser. Um, I get up uh uh this morning it was three o'clock this in the morning, and I am lucky lucky in some way that I can walk over to work from my house. Um, it takes me about uh I'm guessing about a minute and a half to walk to work. Um I run I come in here and I uh have usually I'm I'm pretty good at getting everything set up the day before. So when I come in, I can open a few valves and and turn on a pump and start uh I got everything set up to start running uh milk into my pasteurizer. Um but it's it's taking uh Uh milk that's come in the day before, and we're running it into a pasteurizer, heating it up, and then from there we're running it into a cheese vat. We're adding uh cheese culture to it. Uh, we use different cultures for different types of cheese. Um, and we uh run that for it. It takes me about uh an hour to an hour and a half to run my milk for one bat of cheese. And uh then I start my my process. I add my culture, I let that incubate for about an hour, I add my rennet, that's what uh thickens thickens the milk up almost to like a jello state.

SPEAKER_02 22:51

Oh, gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

And then I've got uh wire knives that uh thin, real thin wires that I use to cut the uh that jello type milk into cheese curds, uh real small, uh like a half inch by half inch cheese curd. Um, and then that curd separates from the whey, and we uh warm that up a little bit more, drain the whey off, and then we're left with just the curd in the vat, and we salt it, and then it goes into a whatever type of form we're we're making uh that day. It could be a 40-pound block that we do here or a 10-pound wheel. Uh, we go down as far as uh two-pound wheels, and uh our cheese a little bit different. Most of most of the time we leave our cheese sit on a press overnight uh to actually let that culture uh work a little bit better, and then we come in in the morning, we take it off the press and put it in the cooler and age it.

SPEAKER_02 24:03

Oh, I'm getting hungry. Um so also I'm curious about is what you do with the whey. Do you sell that out, or uh what do you do with the leftover whey? Because I know there's quite a bit of it.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

So we are um uh we are pretty small dairy, and uh for the longest time we've we've taken that whey and we fed it to pigs, or we've actually fed it to cattle as well. They they love the taste of whey, and and we can raise uh animals on that. Um we we have a distillery that opened in uh Westby um last fall. He started taking some whey from us and is making it into uh alcoholic drinks now uh with our sugars from our from our whey. So we have uh a lot of whey going into into this distillery now to to make product.

SPEAKER_02 25:12

Oh, that's so cool. I'm pretty sure I saw an episode. It I don't think it was that distillery, but on the Wisconsin foodie with Luke Zom, they were talking about using whey to turn it into alcohol. That's just so cool. Um, I mean, we're Wisconsin, we have to have a little bit of alcohol in our lives, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:31

Uh a little bit sometimes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:34

Oh well, that's really neat. Um, so I was just gonna ask before I throw you a little curveball. Um, what would you say your best product is and what one you're most proud of?

SPEAKER_00 25:51

Uh I get that question. Anybody that uh that wants to take the time to find out about cheese making or butter making, and I've got that question so many times over the years, uh, and it usually starts out the same way. It's it's uh it's like trying to say which one of your kids do you like the best. Um so it depends on what day it is. Um, I have uh kids that I I like better than others on certain days because they pull their weight more or they do more. Um I have uh different products that we make that I enjoy more or um really like as far as as cheeses, we uh we do um a lot of uh A2A2 uh milk cheeses right now, and that is probably at the top of my list because it we we sell a lot of it and we have a lot of people that uh email us or call us and tell us how great that cheese is and how much it uh helps them to be able to eat cheese again, uh, because it uh you know some of them are lactose intolerant and and like cow cheese, but they can't handle it, and they can with the A2. But um it's it's a a very nice uh product there. We're we've been doing a little bit with uh baby Swiss the last couple years, and I really enjoy trying to to do some uh artisanal uh baby Swiss right now. And uh, you know, we're kind of trying to catch our uh our gear with that and finding the recipe that we want to use to bring that product to the market.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

Gotcha. Well, I'm on your website right now looking at some of your products. Um while I'm doing that, I also completely forgot to ask you. You talked about how to make cheese, but how do you make butter? Because it's another very just kind of staple in your fridge that you take for granted. So, how do you make butter?

SPEAKER_00 28:20

So, butter is a lot um, it's a lot easier to make butter than it is cheese. Um, basically, you're you're separating your cream from your milk, and you're putting that cream into a butter churn and spinning it until your uh butter separates from your buttermilk. Um, it's a lot easier process. Um and it's there's not a lot of variance in in that process as as much as there is in the in the cheese making, but the the trick to uh a really nice butter is to use uh the best milk, to use the freshest cream, and to not let it sit around for too long before you're putting it into butter. You know, we've we've done it, uh, you know, we we do uh in the summertime, we do a uh our summer butter when the cows are out in pastures, so it's a grass-based butter, and you can really uh tell the difference in the diet that the cows are on with that green grass, it it really comes through in that butter. And we've gone to uh uh when we first started uh doing that, we'd go to a farmer's market down in Chicago for, I guess we did that for many years, but we'd take coolers full of uh summer butter uh down there on Saturday morning, and we'd fly through it like there was no tomorrow. And I I couldn't believe how well um a really nice butter uh that you just couldn't find out there in the marketplace would uh just have people standing in line waiting to get it. It was just crazy.

SPEAKER_02 30:26

That's so neat because again, it's just like I said, it's one of those things you just get at the grocery store, you don't think about, but we've been kind of eating some Kerrygold, which is a very good butter from Ireland, and so I'm I I'm tasting kind of in my mind what yours would taste like because it's about you know the good grass and everything like that. So yeah, I can't wait to go online and buy some of that because that's gonna be delicious. And it's just an incredibly eye-opening, like you said, when you have an actual good butter where you can almost taste the grass.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

It's it's not just like a salty, oily but butter, like yeah, and we'd and we'd get in some kind of we'd get in some trouble for it because you know we um we make our you know, it's a seasonal butter. We only make it when the cows are on pasture. Usually we figure um mid-appril or late April till around the first of October every year is when we make our summer butter. And it and it ends, we we decide by taste how it ends. Um and then we'll have people that'll call us up in November and say, Well, I wanted uh some summer butter for our Thanksgiving, and it's not on your website. Well, we don't make it. Well, can't you put some of it away? I said, We don't do that. We we make it uh when it's in season, we sell it when it's in season, and when it's done, we go to our harvest butter. It's uh simple process, uh, but people there are people that do get upset about it.

SPEAKER_02 32:13

But well, it's called summer butter, so why do you want summer butter in November? I mean, yeah, yeah. Come on now.

SPEAKER_00 32:19

And there and there are people that uh that love when our our harvest butter starts in the in the fall, and it gets just a little bit different taste to it. And they're like, Well, when are you gonna make harvest butter? Well, probably in October. Well, I might send an order because I want that, you know.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

Oh gosh. All right, well, you ready for the curveball?

SPEAKER_00 32:40

Yep, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 32:42

All right, so it's a really fun segment. You'll love it. Uh, it's just called the Mount Rush Moore of Cheese. So I'm not asking for the best cheeses in the world or a brand or just your top four cheeses, and we'll just kind of riff back and forth uh and just talk about your favorite type of cheese. And I don't know if you want to go first or if you want me to go first.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

You go first.

SPEAKER_02 33:08

Okay. Um, I'm gonna start very, very simple. It is just a classic mozzarella, just a fresh, classic mozzarella. It's kind of to me, just cheese at its rawest form. It's so delicious and melty, and uh yeah, I you just can't go wrong with a fresh ball of mozzarella.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

And and I would uh I would have to throw in a uh very nice Swiss cheese. Uh Swiss cheese to me is uh and it varies a lot from place to place. Like if you go out to Ohio, you can't beat them boys out there for their Swiss cheese as they know how to do it and they've been doing it forever. And uh, but a really, really nice Swiss cheese is is right up there for me. I think that'd probably be my number one cheese.

SPEAKER_02 34:04

I can't argue with that. Uh Swiss cheese is yeah, it's oh again, I I love this segment, but I also hate it because then I get so hungry. Um I'm gonna go for what I think is a very underrated cheese, uh uh Munster. It's just very versatile. You can put it on a deli sandwich, you can uh grate it and melt it into a mac and cheese. It's I just really like a good Munster cheese. I don't really know how much to uh expand on that. I just love it.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

We we sell a lot of Mster Cheese. Um we uh we do a goat monster that uh people just go crazy for it because it's a very nice, subtle goat cheese that uh that really uh fits into uh different sandwiches and stuff like that there. And we do a smoked monster as well. That uh there's not a lot of people out there do it. So that's another one that we um really uh sell a lot of. Um so I'm gonna go to cheddar next. Um everybody likes a good cheddar, but there's such a wave of different cheddars from uh cheese curds to uh uh 10 and 12 and 15-year-old cheddar. There's so many different uh cheddars out there that uh you know you can say, Well, I I love cheddar, but there's just hundreds and hundreds of different styles of cheddar. So that's one that you can say, Well, I like eating uh Nordic Creamery's cheddar, or I like eating Carvalley's cheddar or somebody like that there, but um there's so many different cheddars throughout the damn world that um it's a crazy, crazy cheese to uh really pick one one type of cheddar that really stands out because there's so many variances in it.

SPEAKER_02 36:15

I just love that you mentioned that because so my wife is from Nebraska, that's where we're at now, and so she's just used to eating, you know, just crappy grocery store sharp cheddar and it's not sharp cheddar at all. And we went to Wisconsin for the first time together, and she ordered something with a sharp cheddar, and I'm like, dear, you might uh be a little surprised that it's actually sharp cheddar.

SPEAKER_00 36:47

It's uh it's sometimes it might bite you bite you back a little bit, it's so sharp.

unknown 36:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:54

Uh so I'm like, maybe you should try the medium and then work your way up from there. Um so I'm gonna go classic Wisconsin brick cheese for my number three. It's uh I don't know what it is. It's simple, it's um growing up, I used to go to Whidmer's all the time. Obviously, Widmer's brick, very famous. Uh Joe and Joey are great out there. I talked to Joey. Um yeah, I'm gonna go brick cheese.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

And there and that's the that's the brick that I would uh uh really Whitmers down there. I mean, they they've done it for so long down there with and even with the traditional bricks that that is the way to go. Um, but there's there's such a variance in brick too, that there's there's stuff that uh people call brick that I wouldn't call brick, and and others that's uh so so strong that it's uh about make your eyes water, it's crazy. Um you know, and so the I'm up on number three now. Is that what I'm you're on three? Yeah, Swiss and cheddar. Um, I would probably do a uh cheese that uh that I invented, uh, which is our Caprico. It's a blend. It's a blend of cow and goat cheese. Okay. Our cow and goat milk. Um it uh uh the first time I I made this, it's a recipe that I didn't change from the first time. Um it's it's kind of a cheddar style. Uh it starts out where you and I don't know why it does it, but you can uh taste that cow milk in that cheese right away, and then it finishes off real subtly with the uh goat cheese. Um and that is a cheese that uh we've been blessed that we've done very well with and won uh many awards. And it is just a cheese that if I'm gonna if I'm gonna take a cheese, uh I would have I would have taken, I would have said Munster probably before this, but you used it, so I thought I won't. But I would take Caprico and make a mac and cheese with that Caprico, and it is just the most phenomenal uh mac and cheese that I've ever had in my life with that cheese. So that would be probably uh my third cheese on my list of uh cheeses that I love.

SPEAKER_02 39:47

Well, I wouldn't ex I would expect nothing less that you pick one of yours, but I'm looking at it on the website right now. Um, and I'm a huge mac and cheese fan, so I cannot wait to get my hands on some of that and try it. That's very interesting. Um, my fourth one. Oh gosh. It's so hard. I'm actually going to go Fontina. I had never had it before, and I got some sent to me, and I tried. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm I'm switching, I'm switching, I'm switching. It's the bread cheese. I don't know if there's like a specific name. It's just like bread cheese.

SPEAKER_00 40:38

Yeah, there's a lot of uh different companies that make it. My uh my sister and her husband uh ran a cheese plant up in Cashin for many years, but they still make uh bread cheese up there. Uh so the first time I was introduced to it, I thought it was phenomenal too. It it is really kind of a buttery uh type cheese uh that is uh very versatile, very versatile cheese. Um my fourth and last cheese that I will go with is a smoke cheese. Don't care what type of cheese it is, if it's got a great smoke to it, I think it really enhances the flavor of whatever cheese you got, whatever whether it's a uh cheddar, a Swiss, uh we do a smoke munster, uh and our own cheeses. Uh, we do smoke goat cheese, but uh we we use a specific smokehouse down uh south of Madison that's been smoking cheese for me ever since we started. And I really truly believe you have to have the right type of smoke going into your cheese, but when you have it and you put it into it doesn't matter what type of cheese it is, you know, I've had some great smoked blue cheese. Um I've had uh just about every type of cheese you can think of smoked, and I think that it is phenomenal to do that to cheese, to smoke it and use that as a flavoring in cheese.

SPEAKER_02 42:31

Well, I think those are pretty uh two good Mount Rushmores, if you ask me. Um yeah, I just love to hear kind of you know, someone who knows as much cheese as anyone in the world talk about, you know, what their favorites are. So I I love doing that piece. Um so I kind of want to talk about the future um for Nordic Creamery. I know you said you had what five sons and a daughter? I can't remember. Yep. We have five sons. Five sons?

SPEAKER_00 43:03

One girl, yep.

SPEAKER_02 43:04

Um, so what what does the future look like for Nordic Creamery? And yeah, I just kind of want to give you the floor of what you kind of are looking forward to in the future.

SPEAKER_00 43:15

You know, we like I said, when we when we built this, we we intended for for one of our kids or all of them to to jump into it and and take it over. And and a couple of the older boys have gone on to to different careers and are very successful in what they're doing. Um I don't know what the what the final outcome uh will be for our plant. Um we're gonna keep on as long as as we're healthy. Uh my wife and I. Um I'm uh I'm 50 57. I guess I'll be 58 years old the end of this week. um i still think i'm relatively young uh i i feel relatively young even though we've got uh uh five grandchildren um you know we're gonna keep doing what what we're doing um and trying to uh you know we're not trying to make the most product we're trying to make the best product is what we're kind of our deal is um we're not looking to take over the world with what we're doing we're trying to make a great product we're trying to make a living for ourselves uh some of our children that are are in the business our employees and our patrons that ship milk in here and and for right now i mean that's that's our thing we're just gonna keep trucking where we're going uh we're not looking to expand you know we we have product going all over the country uh but in in a small scale and we're not looking to you know we're not looking to get into uh a chain of Walmart stores or or uh or stores like that there we're we're just looking to uh to to move the amount of milk that we're bringing in from our farms that we have and we we try to command a a premium price for it so that we can pay a premium price to our employees and to our patrons and we're gonna keep doing that as long as God will allow us to to do what we're doing and and we're gonna make the best product that we can I love that and clearly you're doing a great job so I do want to give you the floor one last time before we sign off to uh inform my audience where they can buy their cheese buy your cheese excuse me um whether it's through your website or local retailers um because I want everyone to get their hands on your cheese. So we we are our biggest markets are Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis is is our biggest uh markets for our product uh you can go on to our website uh Nordiccremery dot com and order directly from us or you can find a list of stores that's on there um where where you're able to purchase our product um if your local store doesn't have us and you're in the upper Midwest here by golly tell them they ought to have carry that product and get it in there so it's easier for everybody to to enjoy it but um you know get out uh we're in we're in a lot of co-ops throughout the upper Midwest here as a as uh big stores for us and uh it's a great uh great atmosphere to buy many products from many cheesemakers throughout the upper Midwest here and and find our products in there as well.

SPEAKER_02 47:15

Oh yeah absolutely I was just looking at your website and I love that you have that list of every state and every store that's really helpful. So yeah everyone go to the Nordiccreamery.com and if you're not in one of those markets like Al said please order from their online store I can guarantee you will not be disappointed with the taste of the cheese. So yeah Al again just thank you so much for being here today uh you brought just a level of insight and professionalism to the conversation and just for everything you're doing for you know those farms in southwestern Wisconsin uh I'm proud of you I'll be cheering for you and I will definitely definitely be placing a hefty order online.

SPEAKER_00 48:06

Well we I appreciate you um trying to uh share our story with the people uh and uh hopefully that you know even if uh maybe you can't find our product uh in your local store uh if you're if you're shot out shopping uh at least buy it from another small dairy uh that's trying to do the same thing that we're doing and keep these small farms going and and give them a a uh a a living wage to to keep uh keep the lights on in the barn absolutely well again Al thanks so much for your time I'll let you get back to hopefully make it a nice batch of cheese and uh geez I can't believe you get up at three in the morning that's I enjoy it all right well I'm going to stop recording and if you don't mind just talk offline for a couple minutes. Okay