Woodlawn Creamery

It means the cheese is made on the same farm where the animals are milked — nothing bought in. Woodlawn's cows are born, pastured, and milked on the family's own land, and the cheese is made right there.

Pawlet and Rupert are the Consider Bardwell recipes, made by the same cheesemaker who made them there, now with Woodlawn's own milk. Longtime fans should feel right at home.

All the aged cheeses are raw milk, aged well past the 60-day mark that makes raw-milk cheese legal and safe. The fresh products (like Emerson) are pasteurized.

Southwind — it's built like a raclette. Melt it over potatoes, into sandwiches, onto everything. Oxbow melts nicely too if they want smoke.

Wrap in cheese paper or wax/parchment (not cling film directly on the paste), keep it in the warmest part of the fridge, and let it come to room temperature before eating — cold cheese hides half its flavor.

Actually, most cheeses aged at least 60 days — which is all of our aged cheeses — have almost no lactose at all! That lactose gets broken down pretty early in the cheesemaking process.

Still, cheese is a brick of fat and protein with no fiber. It might not flow right through you — not the easiest thing to digest a lot of.

Raw milk dairy products are legal and safe if aged at least 60 days. At that point, the lower moisture level, higher acidity, and higher salt content will have killed off any unsafe pathogens that might have been in the milk. All the aged cheeses are raw; all the fresh products are pasteurized.

We make raw cheese in part because it saves us a step, but also because you can get some unique, unexpected, and often positive flavors from the wild bacteria that are hardier than most dangerous bacteria.

Milk comes out of a teat that's hanging just above the dirt and a stone's throw from a butthole. Farms are dirty places. Even though we're aging our cheeses, we're still abundantly careful and clean with every step of the process — testing bacterial activity, and discarding milk if it's not clean enough. Unless you know that's happening, you don't want to drink someone's raw milk.

Even still, raw milk is uniquely suited for growing the type of bacteria that have plenty of opportunities to get there. The negatives outweigh the positives. If they want good gut bacteria: eat aged raw-milk cheese, or just regular yogurt.

Even pure maple syrup sold in supermarkets takes shortcuts: they boil over a gas fire, and they use reverse osmosis to push extra water out of the sap so they don't have to boil it as long. That loses a lot of the minerality from the water, and the complexity.

This syrup is cooked over a wood fire — three logs a minute, for 13 hours straight.

Curing predates refrigeration. Cheese and salami were traditionally aged in caves and basements because they were insulated and held a cooler temperature more easily. Then the bacteria that grew on the food started to grow in the caves, and those caves started to carry a unique flavor and aroma suited to the specific food aged there — like a seasoned cast-iron pan.

In modern cheese and salami making, we age them in temperature & humidity controlled rooms, but they still develop that unique, seasoned biome.

SELL BIGGER PIECES OF CHEESE

1. Don't wait for them to ask for an amount. Pull out the cheese, hold the knife at about a 0.65 lb piece, and ask “How does this look?”
2. Don't hesitate to go down until they say ‘when’, but always start from a heavy point. 75% of people will ask “How much is that?” Repeat after me: “Little over half a pound.”
3. People look to you for clues on how to act. You are making it seem like that's the size of cheese most people buy, that's how much you eat in a week, etc.

SELL THEM MORE PIECES OF CHEESE

• As soon as they commit to a piece and you cut it for them, find a way to just keep on sampling them on stuff. Try giving them a bite of something else “while I wrap this piece up for you.” Tell them how well it goes with this one. Tell them they have to try this one.
• Just keep feeding them cheese until they tell you to stop.
• Again, you are acting like most customers don't stop at one piece — most people get two or three.

MENTION OR SAMPLE THE EMERSON, SYRUP AND SALAMI TO EVERYONE

Back when you had to speak to a human to order at McDonald's, they had workers ask everyone ordering just a burger “Do you want fries with that?”, and eventually “Do you want to make that a meal?” People didn't until they were asked to, because:

1. they are trying to fit the norm,
2. it's uncomfortable saying no, and
3. they had to admit that they did want fries, they did want a drink, so yeah, what the heck.

Once they've picked their cheese(s), mention — or ideally give them a sample of — as many other things as possible. Ways of doing this:

• “Have you tried our ____?”
• “This is a new batch of ____ this week, it's really great.”
• “While I'm ringing you up, have some ____.”
• Even just “Any salami or maple syrup this week?”

You can get away with being a little jokey-pushy because you're not asking for a monthly donation — you're giving them delicious food to try, and you're selling as much as you can for the farm.