Tom Perry: Shelburne Farms

Today we hear from Tom Perry, cheese sales manager at Shelburne Farms! 

Learn about their herd of Brown Swiss cows and how the milk they produce is transformed into delicious cheddar. We find out what a day in the life of a cheese sales manager is like and how the cheese at Shelburne Farms gets from the farm to the consumer. 

Pairing suggestions for this episode are Shelburne Farms 2 year cheddar with Maple syrup, and for those over 21, Shelburne Farms' 6 month cheddar with Great Bear from Four Quarters, and their 2 year cheddar with Mosaic from Frost Beer Works. 

https://shelburnefarms.org/

https://www.4qbc.com/

https://www.frostbeerworks.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:36

If you're going to type any suggestions, please jump us on today. And thanks for listening. Hello everyone. Welcome. Today we have Thomas Perry from Shelburne Farms. Tom, why don't you start by telling us a little bit about your role at Shelburne Farms and what a typical day or week looks like for you?

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Sure. Well, thank you for having me on, Amy. I am the sales manager for the cheese sector at Shelburne Farms. I am focused primarily on the wholesale and distribution aspect of our cheese sales. So that means uh selling it directly to retailers or to people that sell to retailers or restaurants. And typical day for me is getting in, usually around 8.30, and reviewing the orders that may have come in overnight or after I left work and putting them into our system and then printing those out and marking them up to get ready to be fulfilled either on that day or later in the week, and communicating with our shipping team to make sure that the cheese that we need to have go to our customers is able to go out. And if we need to add more inventory, also communicating with our production and processing team. And that's usually the case Monday through Wednesday. Those are the days that are busiest in my schedule. And when Wednesday rolls around, that's when things start to diverge. And there are also other meetings that will occur from an organizational perspective. So budget meetings, uh inventory control meetings, and other meetings that we have as we kind of communicate and solidify like our activity for the week or the near future on the farm.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

How many states is Shelburn Farms available in?

SPEAKER_00 2:53

I don't know the exact count, but we're available all through all of New England, New York, parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, DC, Virginia, and then there's a little bit of a gap. And we go jump into the deep south with uh Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, and the Florida Panhandle. And then we take another jump up to the prairie states and the Twin Cities and uh western Wisconsin and uh northern Illinois. Uh we're also available in Des Moines, Iowa, and then take another big jump out to the West Coast where we're available all up and down California and a little bit in the Pacific Northwest, primarily in Portland and Seattle.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

How big are like when you're making up the orders, is it like a big range in in size? Do you do you have like a minute, like a couple blocks to like pallet loads of cheese?

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Or it can go anywhere. So like our local retailers, you know, the co-ops and restaurants that we work with here in Chittenden County, uh Vermont, uh, we'll have relatively small orders, you know, case of 12 retail cuts or a 10-pound block of cheese, or you know, a couple of those different items and varieties of our chatter. Those will be relatively small. But for our distribution partners who are working with many customers throughout their particular regions, they're ordering typically anywhere from 300 to 1,000 pounds of cheese per order cycle.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

And how did you get into cheese?

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Uh completely by accident, which I have found, yes, is the best way for anybody to uh for a lot of people, I shouldn't say anybody, uh for a lot of people to get into any profession like this. And most of the people that I have met that are some of my favorite cheese professionals completely got into it by accident. I was a graphic designer for about 10 years, and in the mid-oughts, I was dating a woman that wanted me to go back to school. Uh, I think she meant something along the lines of like a Harvard extension or a community college kind of experience, but I didn't like college the first time I went, so I decided to go to culinary school. And with uh around that time, we had the first indicators of what would be known as the Great Recession, and I got laid off from my job, and I ended up getting a position as a catering manager uh using my you know nascent culinary skills uh uh from Augio Kitchen, which is probably one of the best cheese shops in the world, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And I didn't do a lot with like cheese mongering per se, but I would have to make up cheese boards for catering orders that were going to Harvard University and uh to people that lived in the neighborhood. So that's how I did become more familiar with what we would call artisan or specialty keys. And you know, as they would give me the cheese, I would taste it, I would ask them questions, and I just started a very slow burn education.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

So Shelburn Farms has their own cows, brown Swiss cows, correct? Can you tell us a little bit more about the cows and the milk and what the cows eat and all that fun stuff?

SPEAKER_00 6:30

Of course. So the Brown Swiss cows are uh having worked at several dairies, they are my favorite breed of cow. They're you know, they're large enough and you know, kind of gentle enough that you know, if you come up to them, they don't get freaked out. Uh jerseys are great cows, but they're very skittish. And I always say that Holsteins are kind of jerks, and Holsteins are those classic brown, uh black and white cows that you see dotting a lot of the American dairy landscape. Uh brown Swiss are pretty big, typically once they get the full age, they're anywhere from you know 1200 to 1600 pounds. They're what was known classically as a double threat cow, and what that meant is um they were great for dairying and great for drafting um and and plowing. So cows used to be rated uh on three metrics whether they were good for drafting milk or for their meat and beef production. And brown swiss are what are known as a double threat. And the reason that they're really well suited for dairy is they've been bred specifically for cheese production, they have really great protein structure in their milk. Um, they've got higher levels of butter fat. So even if you were skimming the majority of your cream for butter production, you could still get high quality milk to make cheese out of it. And I think a classic example of a brown Swiss, you know, cheese is the emetol that comes out of Switzerland, because that's a skimmed milk cheese where you know they'll sell the cream and make butter out of it, and they still make a high quality, relatively skimmed milk cheese uh using the brown Swiss milk.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

How big is your herd?

SPEAKER_00 8:27

So our milking herd is about a hundred and twenty give or take. They're uh but they're not always all in milk, uh so to speak. So that means they're not all providing milk. So our milking herd size that is actively in milk will fluctuate anywhere from about 85 to 110 at the peak, 85 being the low ebb because we do make cheese year-round. We used to be seasonal, but we uh got to a point where our volume just predicated that we needed to start making our cheese year-round to satisfy the demand. And we also have you know the next generations that will be coming up. So we have the yearling, which are the calves that you know are born that year and then will graduate in to be part of a larger herd, and then the heifers, which are about two years old, and they haven't had their first calf yet. And then we've also got a beef herd of about 50 cows, which are crossbreed of our brown Swiss, with it used to be red Angus, but uh we've recently switched to belted galloways uh for our meat production that we sell at our farm store. And then the heifer and yearling herd is usually about 40 or so cows per year.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

And they are pasture fed in the summer?

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Yes. So we we say we're a pasture-based dairy, and what we mean by that is the cows are either getting direct access to pasture, uh, especially this time of year, and then if they're not being or getting grass directly from that pasture, they're getting hay made from that pasture. So our pasturing season is from about May, and with you know, some of the climate changes that have been going on, we've been able to extend that out to maybe early November, which is kind of long for Vermont. But Shelburne and Chittenden County and Burlington is has a unique climate that kind of keeps things a little bit warmer, just a little bit longer, uh, than the rest of the state, especially up in the mountains.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

You are making all cheddars, correct?

SPEAKER_00 10:44

That is correct. Uh, I like to say we make cheddar, cheddar, and cheddar. Um, and that's pretty much all we've made here. We've had you know product forays into cheese spreads, and that was well before I was here uh that we were selling, and you know, we've looked into making those styles of cheese again, but we're really trying to focus on our core product of block cheddar.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about the some of the differences between the cheddars that you have?

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Sure. So as I like to say it, shelbered farms, you know, when we're making cheddar, we're just making cheddar. Uh, we're not saying we're gonna make one age profile, like a six-month one day, and then a two-year the next day. We're really allowing for the quality of the milk, the skill of our cheesemakers, and the microflora that is found in our raw milk to really come out and be showcased in every day's batch of cheese. We only make one batch of cheese per day, and that is comprised of an afternoon milking the day before, and then the morning milking of the day that we make a particular batch of cheese. And that's about anywhere from 4,500 to about 6,500 pounds of milk. I don't know what that converts to in gallons. Um, I should know that, but it's it's enough to make anywhere from about 11 to 16 blocks of cheese, uh, depending on the the protein yield and the butterfat content and just how well uh the curd structure is from the milk.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Um you mean 40-pound blocks?

SPEAKER_00 12:28

That is correct.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

But it takes about 60 pounds of curd to make a 40-pound-ish block, uh, because you're gonna throw that curd in and then we're gonna press it overnight, and that will expel about a third of uh the overall weight.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

And then you've got so your six month, one year, two year, you've got some cave age, some smoke cheese.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Correct. So what am I gonna say? Six months, one year, two year, three year. We've recently been offering a four-year cheddar a bit more, primarily regionally. We've got a cloth-bound cheddar that is primarily available through our direct mail order and our online uh our welcome center on the farm, uh, which is our retail store. And then we've got a K of H block cheddar that we call Marshall's Reserve. Those are smoke cheddar, and then a beer cheddar that we do in conjunction with Fiddlehead Brewing, uh, which is our local brewery in Shelburne.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

I want to add for listeners on the Shelburne Farms' website, they have a really great write-up of the cheddar making process. So if anyone is interested in finding more about that, they've got great pictures and really detailed descriptions. And I think that's a really excellent resource for learning more about that. Um I love trying your cheeses side by side, like different ages, and they're they're so different and it's so fun how different they are from that same original source. And I know we talked a little bit before about the the color, so sometimes the color is a little different in the cheeses. Can you tell us a little bit about why that is?

SPEAKER_00 14:07

For sure. Cows uh are the only ruminant animal, or I guess the only main ruminant animal amongst cows, goat and sheep, that are used in cheese production, where beta-carotene will carry through primarily the fat in their milk. So if you go to a store and you see, you know, either a farmhouse cheddar or a farmstead cheddar, or pretty much it should be any cheddar, but you know, for for the sake of you know, just making sure I'm completely right and uh you know saying something that might be incorrect, you should see color variations, and that's completely normal. So if you see a cheese that's you know, for one of the better ways to put it, bone white, you know, that means that that cheese was likely produced during like the fall, winter, and early spring, because the cows are either eating dry matter like hay or silage, balage, however you want to call it, grains, etc. And because all of or because many of the nutrients and and the beta-carotines have been aged out through um either the drying or fermentation process, that color is not getting transmitted through their milk. However, when they're out on fresh grass, there's all that chlorophyll and all those other uh nutrient components that you know make for more dynamic milk, but it also has the beta-carotene, and that will be expressed through the milk, and there will be a slightly yellowish hue. I had mentioned that I worked at other dairies before, and one of the dairies was all or primarily Jersey herd, and they have really high levels of butter fat. And there was one batch of cheese where when they came out of the make room, I thought that they were bringing butter out. That's how yellow it was. It looked like big pieces of butter, but it was just our cheese. So it's it's pretty cool, and it's neat to see the the the changes. You know, a a lot of people because we are close to the public during the uh winter and early spring, uh, they don't get to see that change, but like like if you start coming, if you visit the farm now, you know, you'll see a pretty like I'd say beige is the wrong word, but like a tan kind of color. And then as you come in the summer, especially if we have a good you know pasturing season, it'll just look very, very yellow. So it's cool to see that change.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Yeah. And while we're on the topic, people can come over the summer, correct? And watch your cheesemakers make cheese.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

That is correct. You can come to the farm, and uh, you know, if you're visiting us, you'll either walk up from or you'll take a shuttle tractor up to uh the main congregation area that we call the farm barn. And if you go into the hub, there's a big window and you can uh see cheesemaking going on. Usually most we open it up to the public at 10 o'clock and close it up at about four. And at 10 o'clock you're seeing us uh stirring the curd. So you're about the fourth step into uh our cheesemaking day. And if you come later, I always tell people to like come as soon as come and watch cheesemaking as soon as they get there, and then kind of do whatever activities they wanted to do on the farm because there's a lot of interpretive and educational activities that you can engage with right at that main focal point of our visiting experience. And then if you come back a couple of hours later, you'll see a completely different stage and transformation of the cheese, which I always think is very cool.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Yeah. And there's probably a good chance you can see some baby cows too, which are super adorable.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Yep. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

What is your favorite cheese that Shelburne Farms makes?

SPEAKER_00 18:20

My favorite cheese is the six-month cheddar for a couple of reasons. One, I feel it best embodies our farming practices and what we're trying to do at the farm. So our six month has uh uh from my experience and in in my opinion, a nice buttery flavor to it, and I attribute that to the brown sis cows that we've been talking about. Uh, they have that elevated level of butter fat, and I feel like that gets transmitted through the cheese. And then, you know, it might take a little imagination, but there's also a slight grassy note to our six-month cheddar that isn't necessarily as present in our other cheddars, and I attribute that to our pasture-based dairying system and that being expressed through the milk. Um, as a sales manager, I also like it because you know I'm able to get the quickest return on the investment we make in cheesemaking, but that's a very cynical and capitalistic kind of take on why it's my favorite. But it is my favorite. It also you gotta sell it, but it it's also a good versatile cheese, you know. It's one that you can use uh for snacking and you know sharing purposes. It's a great melter, yeah. It it does it all as far as I'm concerned.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

For those of you who work on the farm and eat a lot of cheese, uh are you able to pick up seasonality differences in the flavor of the cheeses?

SPEAKER_00 19:48

What I noticed the most isn't necessarily a seasonality change in terms of flavor as much. It's more texture, uh, where I pick up the differences in the season. So as we've been talking about the kind of feed and pasture of these cows during the winter, you know, because the nutrients have been aged out of the grass, the dry batter that we're we're feeding the cows, to balance out their nutritional diet. We give them uh what's known as a TNR, which is a total nutritional ration. This is grains, salts, amino acids, various vitamins, etc., that we add in with the the hay to balance out their nutrition. Because, and I think one thing that's important is the reason I always say pasture-based instead of grass-fed, is because I think that there's a very draconian interpretation of what people think of when they think of grass-fed dairies. You know, it's like, oh, I saw you feeding your cow this grain, you're not grass-fed, and it's very kind of polarizing. So pasture-based, you know, it's very honest, you know, we're basing our primary feed either off direct pasture access and consumption, or hay made from that pasture. And when the hay isn't able to deliver on the full nutrition to keep our animals healthy, uh, we do add this grain ration to support their diet and their health. Because that is what's going on for about six months, those grains do help contribute with more fat production. So that will get carried in over to the cheese a bit more. And you know, I will also say that a lot of people that eat cheddar cheese they often note that or say that our cheeses, in comparison to other cheddar cheeses, are very creamy. Um, and that is due to the butterfat. But during the winter, that is especially pronounced because that grain ration is helping with butter fat, but also there. This uh wonderful like kind of protein denseness that comes out, so you're getting these creamy, well-structured cheeses, and then as you go into summer, you're getting slightly drier cheeses because there's not as much fat being produced through the direct pasture diet, um, but they've got really good solid bones, like uh like like they're just you know uh a well-structured cheese, uh and but it it is a bit drier, but that's that's how I'm able to kind of tell the difference. The one thing that like we've noticed a lot, or that I've been noticing over the nine years, is with some of the extreme weather events we've been having at the farm over the years, uh especially with some of the extreme rain or the lack thereof, that will impact uh the cheese quite a bit too. So that is uh the the challenge of of farming. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

How do you decide when a cheese is ready to be packaged? Do you have a sensory program there?

SPEAKER_00 23:14

We do, but the most important day is the day after we make the cheese. Uh we have so you know, we'll we'll make the cheese, we'll we'll put it on the press overnight, it's spell out, you know, about 20 pounds of moisture from each block of cheese, and then from one block we'll take a core sample. Uh, we use this device that's known as a cheese tryer, and it's basically a handle that is attached to a half moon steel kind of rod. Well, I don't know, steel, uh, like kind of half moon, about seven-inch long pipe, but it's a half moon, so it's not a pipe. Anywho, um, and you twist it and you'll get a circular core out of that, and we'll grind that up in like a little little you know, small blender, and we'll put it on this machine, and the machine will basically heat up that core sample, that that that ground up core sample, and as the vapor like kind of expels off of it, it'll get sucked up into this machine, and it will spit out a reading um depending on a couple of metrics. I always forget one of them, but the ones that I do remember are protein level, acidity level, fat level, salt level, and moisture level. And there's one that I always forget, and basically it'll spit out a number and it will correlate with a basically a one to ten uh underscore sheet. Um, if it's from I think one to four, it'll be graded as a six month. If it's from about four to six, it'll be graded as a one year, from six to eight is a two-year, and eight to ten is a three-year and older. So if it's graded for six months to one year, because there's so little, you know, aging and uh microbial activity that's going on in that timeline, we don't do a lot of sensory panel with it because we know that this tea is you know aging at a pretty good clip and will produce some good flavors uh within six months to one year. And sometimes we're wrong, but for the most part, we we do get it right. Sometimes the one year in particular will age a little bit faster, and people will be like, this tastes more like a two-year. And I'm like, well, we can't call it a two-year because it hasn't been aging for two years. Um, so but once we do get into that two-year and above aging uh cycle, we do do more sensory analysis. And once the cheese is coming up on its two-year anniversary, so to speak, two-year birthday, we'll take another core sample from the tester block of cheese, and we'll do a more human sensory evaluation where everybody from the cheese team that would like to participate, and pretty much anybody from the farm if they really want to participate, but they've got their own jobs to do. This is part of our job, they can taste the cheese and give feedback based on what they're encountering from a flavor profile, and we'll determine whether that cheese is suitable for wholesale and distribution customers or mail order customers, or if we need to put it into another bucket that we call tractor, which uh is when the cheese doesn't go the way that we would like it to for that particular age profile. Uh, there's also the situation where we can upgrade the cheese, like, oh, this cheese could be aged for another year, or you know, this cheese is aging is slated to age for three years, but we think it should be cut now, or you know, we will try it at three years, and we're like, let's see if this can go for another year. So uh, but what will happen is we'll take that core sample and we'll we'll we'll cut it into a small piece and we'll we'll taste what we get. A lot of the times it's pretty much what you would expect out of a cheddar, you know, uh acidity, uh, some saltiness, maybe some brothiness, uh, some minerality, and like just a little bit of residual sweetness. That is kind of what we're looking for with our classic two-year age profile. And there are other flavors that will pop up, and we'll we'll make note of them and we'll see if they're kind of distracting or not from the main flavor profile that we anticipate the people would want from this cheese. And a lot of the times we we end up with some outstanding cheeses, and we end up in upgrading about maybe 10% of those to age a little bit longer.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

And where are you storing all this cheese while it ages?

SPEAKER_00 28:08

So we've got four coolers on the farm. There are two down by our dairy, and those are where we'll hold our two-year cheddar, because that's about the the majority of what we make. Uh, that represents about sixty percent of our inventory, is the two-year, because that's just the way it shakes out. You know, the the cheeses are reasonably good and they're suitable for long aging. For anything that's six months or one year, we'll hold those in an area in the farm barn, uh, which is the main gathering area. So if you're at the cheesemaking, if if you're looking at the cheesemaking through the window directly to your left, you'll see two small windows that will peer into what looks like a cooler. And that is our indeed our cooler where we hold the six-month and one-year cheddars. And then for our three-year cheddar, uh, there's a cooler that's also in that farm barn main gathering area over by the food cart where you can get food during the season. And it's very unassuming, but that's where our three-year goes uh because that only represents about five percent of our annual production. So it's uh not a lot to store for three years, and we're just grabbing inventory in and out. Then, in addition to that, we partner with our friends at Jasper Hill, which are up in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, uh in a town called Greensboro, just outside of Hardwick. And uh they age our cloth bound and our cave-age cheddar marshals reserve for us, but that's a pretty small uh amount of inventory in comparison, uh, maybe only about 2,000 pounds at any given time.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

How many people does it take to make all this cheese?

SPEAKER_00 29:59

So we've got a cheesemaking team of, I believe, eight people. And the reason for that is body health. When I first started, there were maybe five cheesemakers, and by July, two of them would have some sort of injury. And we were like, this isn't sustainable, this is unhealthy, and uh, we should look into this. And we hired as a consultant a you know occupational physical therapist, and they determined that we were putting too much stress on our cheesemakers' bodies, and that we should hire more people to make the cheese so that we weren't stressing out people's bodies by having repetitive actions.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

What is something that you wish more people knew about Vermont cheese or the cheesemaking process?

SPEAKER_00 30:54

Amount Vermont cheese. Well, Vermont cheese in particular is unique and dynamic, you know. Even though there's a good amount of cheddar that's produced in our state, you know, thanks to our friends uh at Cabot and uh Grafton and also at Vermont Farmstead, you know, which have plants dotted all around the state, there's also a a lot of kind of rugged individuality. And particularly the the the ones that started prior to say 2010 or so, they were doing this because they were interested in it, but there were a good number that were seeing the writing on the wall in terms of dairy, and you know, cheese making was a way to help maintain or keep the family farm running, or to you know, preserve the land as an agricultural production area. And they there were a lot of people that wanted to go in their own direction. So there are a lot of what we would call American originals that were made and developed in Vermont. And I feel that over the past maybe decade or so it's gotten a little more consolidated in the sense of you know, we've seen what the market reacts to, and there's been more of a like turning into what what I would call like rifts on classic styles of cheese. So, you know, your alpine styles, your bloomy rinded cheeses, etc. And that's great. And I think that there's a lot of amazing cheese that is made in Vermont from all of these myriad producers. I do miss some of the more unusual cheeses out there. But the other thing is, is you know, there's a lot of collaboration and a lot of support uh between our cheese making uh entities here in Vermont that are happy no matter who is successful. I think we all approach cheesemaking from different lenses and different uh hoped outcomes for our products and for our rationale for making cheese. But for the most part, we we all get along pretty well. And also for cheesemaking in Vermont is hard uh because you know we're we're only really given about what I think big air quotes would say is about five months of good weather, and the rest is either very snowy and cold or very muddy and you know not ideal for grass growing. Uh, there's a lot of mountainous terrain that isn't suitable for like arable or pastured land, and you know, anybody that is still taking care of animals in 2026 as a main source of income, God bless you, because it's just getting harder and harder, and the returns are getting more and more uh lean.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

Where are you located? So you're you've got your farm and your farmstead store in Shelburne, Vermont. Uh and where can people buy or cheese? You're pretty much everywhere now, right?

SPEAKER_00 34:26

We're we're we're we're in a lot of uh places throughout the state, all up and down Vermont, uh especially uh uh co-ops throughout the state, you know, all the way down in Brattleboro, Middlebury, uh the shops in uh Burlington, South Burlington. We're located. Uh we can be found in Shaws throughout the state as well, Shaw's supermarkets, good number of general and country stores, and then we'll get into the larger like Boston Metro, New York City Metro, Philadelphia areas, and and then we'll pop up in places I was like, how did that get there? And we'll we'll we'll end up in Des Moines, we'll we'll we'll we'll we'll be in you know Scottsdale, Arizona, and it's like how did this get here? So whenever I whenever I see or hear about you know somebody encountering our cheese in some of these more far-flung locales, I'll I'll do some detective work to kind of figure out how our cheese got to where it ended up.

SPEAKER_01 35:29

Yeah. And where can people find you online?

SPEAKER_00 35:32

They can visit us at www.shelburnfarms, and that's plural with an s dot or g. Uh that will lead you to uh our main website, which will talk about our nonprofit education activity, and it could also lead you towards booking a stay at our inn during uh the months of May to October. Uh you can also find the shop tab where you can either order online to have our cheese sent directly to your door, or to be picked up at our welcome center on the farm in Shelburne, Vermont.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

And do you have a favorite cheese pairing?

SPEAKER_00 36:10

I do. Um, it's our two-year cheddar dipped into or drizzled with maple syrup. Oh, yeah. Is a we feel a classic Vermont flavor. You know, you've got the the sharp acidity from from the cheddar, and then that is coupled with uh the sweetness from the maple syrup. Uh, and it's quite surprising to a lot of people because I think a lot of people don't associate those things going together.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

Yeah, I'll have to try that for sure. I feel embarrassed as a Vermonter that I have not tried that before.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

Well, you're not alone. Uh we completely discovered this by accident, uh only a couple of years ago, and we've been trying to spread the gospel on it uh ever since.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

So Yeah. Well thanks for sharing.

SPEAKER_00 36:54

Of course.

SPEAKER_01 36:55

Well, thank you so much, Tom.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

Thank you for having me, and uh looking forward to hearing more of what you're you've got on deck for guests in Deer and Cheese. For sure.