There has been I can't we had a really bad tomato tomato cheese score that was off to a strong start but didn't make the cut. Welcome back to another episode of Step Spotlight. I'm Sara and this is Bryce, and we are in Donaldson, Iowa, at the hinterland dairy farm. Bryce, have you ever watch that show how it's made? Yes. So we are going to learn how Hinterland Dairy makes their cheese. I'm Colleen Krogmeier My husband and I own Hinterland Dairy as well as Krogmeier Dairy, which is our working dairy farm. Well, I am Ralph Krogmeier I'm the owner. Uh, I spend most of my time on the on the cow milking side. We actually have two dairies, the Krogmeier dairies, where we've always milk cow that since 1979 I'm Shannon and I am the cheesemaker here at Hinterland Dairy. I also am involved on the farm site as well. So I get to milk the cows and help with the herd. And then we all kind of wear a lot of hats here on the farm I call myself the kind of the jack of all trades and master of none. And I kind of like that title because I kind of fill in where it needs to be filled in. a little bit of my backstory. I was raised on a dairy farm. My dad milked cows. north of Fort Madison. This is not the farm I grew up on. We moved. We bought some property in 1981 and then we moved the cows out here in 1985. growing up, like milking cows. I think in the back of my mind to have a value processing adding to the to the dairy, either making cheese or selling milk or ice cream or all that was kind of always kind of in the back of our mind, Hinterland Dairy is something that has been in the works for decades. Ralph and I always wanted to take our milk directly to the consumer. We've always had a dairy farm we did a lot of research. We traveled a lot. Any vacations that we ever took or travel or based around research for cheese or milk processing, right now. When I started, there was over 30 dairies in Lee County. Now we're down to three. I think it's primarily the lifestyle of the dairy farm, that it's the day, morning and night, you know, Christmas weddings, funerals, hangovers, you name it. You know, you've got to milk them cows. we always wanted to do something, but we didn't want to have to bet the whole farm on it. I always say we never had enough time, courage or money. And we finally got to the point after Shannon finish school and was worked out in the real world for a while. Then she came back to the farm. That freed up Ralph a little bit to start working on the cheese plant, So I went to Iowa State and I got my bachelors in AG Systems Technology. I was not going to return to the farm, but after about six months after graduation and being at a desk job, I realized I miss the smell of the cows and working with the land and making something with my hands. So I came back. I was glad to have the opportunity to come back and join my parents on the farm. And then about three years later, we realized we kind of wanted to diversify our farm and that it was the right time and opportunity hopefully we had enough hands to be able to build the operation and both have the farm side and the cheese making side. So it was in 2017, we started building our building here. We did a lot of the work ourselves and it wasn't until 2019 that we made our first batch of cheese. this is our pasteurize. Our here it is about a high. It holds about 135 gallons of milk up above or our pipelines that go to our raw both tank on the farm side of the building. We actually milk the cows in the rear of the building, and then in the morning we pump the milk over into our pasteurize her to that pasteurization. So it's a slow process, which is gentle on the milk, and we slowly warm it up to about 145 degrees for 30 minutes, which is enough to cook off any bad bacteria that may be in the milk after it is heated up and pasteurized for 30 minutes. We cool it back down to about 90 degrees for cheesemaking. So then we have a pump that gently takes the milk over into our cheese that where we add the culture, which has already been added this morning, which is the good bacteria that we want in our mouth to develop flavor and also create acidity to preserve that milk into cheese our equipment is about 135 gallons, which is approximately 1200 pounds of milk. We measure milk and weight. The gallons is easier to visualize, and this will make about 130 pounds of cheese today. It usually takes about 10 pounds of milk to make 1 pound of cheese, we have some great advisors. Dad is the cheese scientist, So he's the one that's taken the most courses in cheese making. so he helps with the recipe development. we develop a recipe with the between here, experimenting here in the operation. And then we have some great advisors that have been cheesemakers for many years as well that help us to create a recipe that fits our milk I don't know about being the cheese master. I mean, I was the first one to take a short course at the University of Wisconsin. but our first learning sessions to really know what we're trying to do. We went to the University of Wisconsin, took a cheese technology, short course quark as a product that we didn't know what did not know what it was tell is up there. that's a favorite that goes with beer wine about anything. Today we are making our Franklin Road farmstead cheddar. It's our yellow cheddar. It's become kind of the local favorite. And I'm very popular with my kids. Favorite to because it's yellow. Yeah, we started with our fresh cheddar cheese curds, mostly because you can take the cheese and make it today and tomorrow you get to enjoy it. Cheddar cheese curds, true cheddar cheese curds can only be found on cheddar cheese making operation. They are the fresh product, and after about a week, they're just non aged cheddar. So those true fresh cheddar cheese curds you can only find at cheddar maker. And then we turn those into an aged alpine. So that's aged about 9 to 11 months. So after we'd been in business about a year of cheese making, we were able to share our aged cheddar, our first aged white cheddar then we make a fresh bread Quark as well. Quark is a German style cream cheese. It's a soft spreadable cheese. I think it's got a little taste of texture and sunshine, and it really showcases the quality of milk that our cows produce and has a unique taste that's unique to our farm. then we make a happy Jack as well. We got into the cheese making process and a lot of people said, We want a pepper jack, we want a pepper jack. So we learned to make Monterey Jack style cheese. Since we're making it here on our farm, we decided we can call it Happy Jack. And then we've added different flavors to that. So we've got our help, you know, Happy Jack. Ah, French onion and chive and a mango habanero version of our Happy Jack as well. our flavored cheddar cheese curds are really popular. We have a garlic and herb. That's solid cheese that a lot of people like. That's our go to when we're sharing and tasting. We've got a wild buffalo that's fun and that one's been around a long time. We've got a fiery fiesta that's got a little bit more zing to it. We had a dill pickle for a while. Some people are really glad it's gone and some people are really miss it. how the operation works here, we start milking cows at 5:00 in the morning. And last night, you know, we milked in the cheese plant. We milk all the cows there. We started at about 430. It takes us around to two and a half hours to milk at night. They give a little richer milk at night, and that's why we use the evening milking here at the cheese plant. They don't give quite as much, but they give a little richer milk. And when you're making cheese and products, you want that solid portion of the milk. We bring about half the cows over. We can get them in a holding pattern. two young gentleman and Shannon was milking last night and do a good job. We run the cows in that parlor was designed by Iowa State University. It's called an Iowa trans parlor, you know, we try to get ten, 11 cows on the side and then we just flip flop them back and forth. in the cows, like this parlor, they come in good and they go out good. So once our cheese is made every week, then we just have to decide how to sell the cheese. So we direct market all of our cheese ourselves and none of it goes to a distributor. every other week we contact our retailers to see what their supply is, what they need. And then from there we go to filling our orders for them and delivering, and we do that every other week. So we send out to our local retailers. We have about five grocery stores that we sell to. We have a lot of little smaller shops, more specialty shops that we sell to, and then we have a restaurant that takes quite a bit of our cheese. They take our cheese curds and they also are taking some block cheese now that they have a very creative menu and they do wonderful things with. We've recently started doing the Des Moines Farmer's market as well as our local farmer's market. it's a lot more exposure, a lot of people, and we've made a lot of connections through that Des Moines farmers Market. we also do farmers markets in Fort Madison, Montrose and Burlington. then we have our retail shop here that we sell our cheese. We are only open on the weekends. We're open Friday, Saturday and Sunday. If you want to come out some other time, just let me know. Because we're usually either in the processing room that we can help you or we are on the farm somewhere. We don't get off the farm very much. So we're always around somewhere that we'd be happy to help people if they want to come out to the cheese shop. my favorite part of it is actually selling the cheese. You know, when we started, our friends and family would come out and they buy our cheese and local people that we know. But when it hit me one day was when we took our cheese to Franklin, the little town up the road, because RAGBRAI was coming through and people were lined up to buy our cheese and we didn't know any of them. So that was what was amazing to me. It's like, Wow, people are buying it and they don't even know us. So that was very rewarding, Our community has been so supportive of us. We we give back. We try to give back a lot to the community as far as donations and things like that. And because they have been very supportive of us and our business here, I think from being just, you know, primary selling as a dairy farmer, selling raw milk to seeing this come to fruition from the, labels, keeping all the bookwork paperwork. I think you have a appreciation for a lot of other occupations I think I had the hardest time with pricing. our goal was to sell all our cheese locally at a price point that people could afford to buy. So pricing is the hardest part for me because I want everybody to be able to buy our cheese you know, it's a challenge, but hopefully because we do have a fresh quality product, people are willing to pay a little bit more But the name comes from way back when I was actually milking cows and it was before the Iowa caucuses, and I believe it was the 1980 election and it was Cokie Roberts that said, well, I guess tomorrow we'll find out what they're thinking in the hinterlands. And I did not know what hinterlands meant. And he didn't know if she was making fun of us here in Iowa or complimenting us. So I looked it up. That was way before Google look it up in the dictionary and voila, it means out in the countryside. It's a German ethnic word and Krugman's a German word, or we have German roots. And so he thought, well, that fits us perfectly. And so from that time on, in our dreams, that's always been what we've called it, Hinterland Dairy Most people who have farms, every farm has its own name. So the Brooks Place was the first farm that we purchased the previous owner's last name was Brooks, so we call it the Brooks Place, And so when we had our first aged cheese and we thought, well, what are we going to call it? This is our first one. Well, the Brooks place was our first farm, so that's why we named it the Brooks Place. I think the Franklin Road is my favorite cheese. Brooke's place would be my next after that is the Happy Jack, which we sell quite a bit of it. seeing them, they're really good. They've been on the farm their whole life and then when they get to do the tours and while I'm not the greatest at giving the tours, they are really good at it because they are the true dairy farmers and seeing people experience that and my parents sharing that with them, I would say is one of my favorite parts of now having a creamery on our farm. I joke about that one because I would not make a very good dairy farmer because it takes two cups of coffee for me to really get going in the morning. So I told Colleen, if she ever wants to sell these cows, You asked me that first 10 minutes before the coffee kicks in and they'd go every morning, but after the coffee is in there, then, I don't know. I like seeing cows. I like I like feeding cows. I like at the end of the day, seeing them all lined up, eating at the end of the bunk, cows chewing their cud cow chew in their cud. That's a healthy cow. I'd say for the most part. You know, we all have our good days and bad days. But as far as what gets me up, I'd say, being fortunate, being healthy, being able to do this. So our cheese production here ranges from about, I would say, an average of £400 per week.
