The focus was cheese during Michigan State University's Kellogg Biological Station Farm open house last week as both farmers and neighbors came to sample cheese, examine the pastures and see the robot milkers at work.
While the grass-based 120-cow dairy farm always has an open door visitor policy, the open house welcomed guests who came to learn a bit more about cheese sourced from cows housed at the farm. Samples of specialty cheeses including award winning Gouda, Asiago and cheddar were available for tasting and purchase.
"Last year we sold around 300 pounds of cheese at the open house," said Howard Straub III, KBS dairy herd manager. "We keep thinking the sale will level off or start dropping but we keep selling more every year."
The open house, in its third year, makes the final connection in fulfilling the pasture to plate component of grant requirements which helped launch the KBS facility into a grass based system with a robotic milking component.
Guests like Amy Hagerman attend the open house because KBS is a part of the community and she appreciates how they open the facility and give back within the community. "We have a small farm of our own and the kids love coming here," she said. "I appreciate the educational component and I always leave with some new information and specifics about what we do, especially for forages for our goats."
Profitability is difficult to pinpoint on a university research farm, however, Brook Wilke, KBS Farm Manager said that the Kellogg Farm is an example of a dairy production system that can be used profitably. "The take home message is we want to be the people out here doing the leg work and figuring out the best methods to work with grazing dairy cows and doing the robotics system," Wilke said.
"A grazing system is a way that smaller scaled farms can compete with some of the efficiencies in larger farms. We don't want to say that grazing is the best or only way to do it but that it is a way, and maybe a more valuable way to do this (dairying) with smaller farms."
Each week between late May and into July, one day's milk production is transported to the MSU Cheese plant on Michigan State University's campus in East Lansing where approximately 80,000 pounds of milk produced during peak grazing season are turned into 8,000 pounds of cheese. The artisan cheese is aged for a minimum of one year and sold both through the MSU Dairy Store and the open house.
"We utilize and embrace traditional practices for making the cheese like hand washing the cheese, no wax rinds, cave aged in a temperature and humidity controlled environment," said MSU's head cheese maker, Josh Hall. "I think it's also very special and unique that we have identifiable milk source for these cheeses from cows with a controlled and special diet. It gives the cheese a special story which is important to a number of consumers."
That special diet tends to create cheese that finishes differently than normally expected. For example, because the milk tests higher in fat components, the Asiago cheese finishes after aging with a different texture than expected by competition judges. "They give us high marks for flavor but the body and texture are not consistent with their expectations," Hall said. Although the milk could be standardized for fat content, the exceptional flavor of the aged Asiago will keep any recipe changes at bay.
Hall has quickly catapulted the specialty product to national attention. In 2014 and 2015, a mere two years into the grazing system, the Gouda cheese placed second
in the American Cheese Society Championship in the American-International Dutch style cheese division. In 2017, a Gouda wheel will be entered in an international cheese competition in Wisconsin. Additional awards will bring even more credibility and improved standing to the university's artisan cheese program.
Tom and Klazine Welch of Mattawan brought a bit of history to the open house with their collection of antique creamery equipment. Mounted on a trailer, the equipment includes an antique cream separator, vacuum pump and fly wheel engine.
"So many people don't know what this stuff is," Klazine said. "We are proud of Tom's collection, we like to tell people about it and it's educational."
"The way these tools were made by hand and cast and their durability is simply amazing," said Tom, a retired cash register serviceman. "It's also a remembrance to older folks when they see these tools of what they did and had growing up."
Wilke does not attempt to stack grazing or small farms over confinement or large farms as one being bad and the other good. "We want to help people learn and be profitable, productive and efficient with a grazing dairy. We want to provide as much education as possible so they can be efficient on a less cost intensive system."