Sam Rasmussen Sam Rasmussen

Cheese Pairings 

Searching for the yin to your favorite cheese’s yang? Read on to learn what drinks pair well with five of our Hoard’s Dairyman Farm Creamery cheeses. 
Have you ever wondered what drink would serve as the perfect pair to your after-dinner serving of Hoard’s Dairyman Farm Creamery Three-Month Cheddar? Or what to serve alongside your Gouda-Belaire cheeseboard? What about with your sweet baked St. Saviour? Then again, are any of us going to realistically splurge on trial and error experiments to figure it out? 
Luckily, our team at Hoard’s Dairyman has done the research and defined optimal wine, beer, and spirit pairings for five of our main cheeses, so all you have to do is sip, sit back, and reap the palatal rewards.
St. Saviour — our buttery, soft-ripened cheese — pairs well with any acidic wine. Think: Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Pinot Noir, dry rosés, and champagnes. It also goes nicely with ciders, fruity sours, and Saison, a dry and spicy pale ale. For spirits, consider an apple brandy, such as the French Calvados. 
Gouda’s complex flavor profile means its highest caliber pairings include Riesling, Chardonnay, Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Sangiovese wines; amber ale, brown ale, Pilsner, and stout beers; and vodka, brandy, and cognac.
Wines that accentuate our Three-Month Cheddar include Tempranillo, Syrah, Malbec, Merlot, and Rioja. Beers include Hefeweizen-style wheat beers, Kolsch, malts, and pale ales. For spirits, try any bourbon, brandy, whiskey, or vermouth. 
The creamy, subtle profile of our Belaire cheese requests the compliments of a rosé, Pinot Gris, or Moscato wine; a blonde ale, lager, or pilsner beer; or a splash of vodka, brandy, or cordials. (A cordial — also a liqueur — is a neutral spirit that has been redistilled with additional ingredients, such as Baileys Irish Cream liqueur.)
Lastly, Sark — a cheese that, according to my mother, “tastes like nostalgia” — may be accompanied by Chardonnay, Riesling, or a favorite lager. 
It’s hard to go wrong with any of the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm Creamery cheeses no matter your drink of choice, but for a top-tier flavor experience, consider following this guide next time you reach for the cutting board.
Read More
Sam Rasmussen Sam Rasmussen

Down on the Farm: Cow care

Cows on the Hoard’s Dairyman farm.

At the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm, the genetics of our Guernsey herd can be traced all the way back to the original herd raised by W.D. Hoard when he bought the farm in 1899. For over a hundred years, our farm has been providing quality milk to producers far and wide. 
What’s more, in 2021 (the most recent data currently available) the herd ranked first in the nation in milk, fat, and protein production among Guernsey herds with more than 60 cows. How is this achieved? How does the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm continue to stand out? 
When W.D. Hoard moved to Wisconsin as a young man, he saw the people of this state making the same agricultural mistakes of those in New York: planting doomed wheat crops year after year, degrading the state’s shallow, glaciated soil. Using his knowledge both as a dairy farm apprentice and an admirer of Oneida Chief Thomas Cornelius, he began a crusade for land-conscious dairying with the idea, “We can raise good butter and good cheese, without killing our land, but rather enriching it.” 
Hoard didn’t stop there. Beyond advocating for enriched soil, he also famously declared the cow to be the “foster mother of the human race.” He considered it the dairyman’s responsibility to be as attuned to their herd as they were to their crops. 
In spirit of this vision, cow care and land management at the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm are seamless, interrelated processes. 
Our cows are fed a total mixed ration (TMR) of corn silage, haylage, ground corn, a protein mix, whey, vitamins, and minerals. Fermented feed is stored in plastic silage bags on the property.

The high-quality feed fed to the Hoard’s Dairyman cows.

Manure produced by the cows is repurposed. Both freestall barns have automated alley scrapers that push the manure into a flush system, which then sends it to an above-ground manure storage structure. This concrete structure holds 5 million gallons of manure, which is used as fertilizer.

Further, every cow has an electronic tag that allows farm managers to track steps and milk production. And, since the herd is registered with the American Guernsey Association (another aspect of dairying made possible by W.D. Hoard), each animal has a name in addition to a number.

“The rule to be observed at all times toward the cattle, young and old, is that of patience and kindness,” said Hoard. “Remember this is the home of mothers. Treat each cow as a mother should be treated.”

Hoard believed in a trailblazing future of agricultural practice for the state of Wisconsin, and he believed the cow to be the map and key to making that happen. At the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm Creamery and in the pages of Hoard’s Dairyman magazine, we are dedicated to furthering that vision with our milk, our words, and our promise of agricultural integrity.

Read More
Sam Rasmussen Sam Rasmussen

History of the Guernsey cow: Quiz time!

Guernsey cow milk is “golden” because it contains high concentrations of _________. (Scroll past the image for the answer)

A. Beta-carotene (Vitamin A)

B. Butterfat

C. Protein

D. All of the above

A Guernsey cow

If you said “D. All of the above”, congratulations! You’re right!

Read More
Sam Rasmussen Sam Rasmussen

Down on the Farm: Calf care

A Guernsey cow calf on the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm.

On the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm, calf care is front and center to providing top-quality milk to our consumers. It’s a carefully attuned process, and it’s one our farmers take seriously. 
A mother cow (or dam) has a “dry” period of about 60 days before she gives birth. During this time, she is not milked and is fed a special ration to ensure her needs and the needs of the fetus are being met. On the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm, the cows due to calve are housed in a designated barn with straw-laden maternity pens.
A University of Kentucky Extension report noted that since the growth of the fetus takes biological priority over maintaining the mother’s own nutrient stores, an underfed dam will have trouble calving, and both the calf and mother may struggle with low performance. Thus, closely monitoring cows close to calving in a designated barn like the one we have is critical to ensuring cow and calf health through the end of the pregnancy.
Once a dam has given birth, her calf is moved to a calf hutch. These individual hutches help prevent the spread of diseases from calf-to-calf and support the calves’ immune systems by protecting them from the wind (in the cooler months) and providing shade (in the warmer months). Shortly after birth, they are fed colostrum — the milk secreted by the mammary glands directly before and after birth — which helps to further develop the calves’ immune system. After that first meal, calves are either fed pasteurized milk or, like they are on the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm, milk replacer, which can be compared to baby formula.
After their initial stay in the hutches, calves at the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm move in a cohort of 16 to a group pen in a barn ventilated by fans and tubes and bedded with straw. There, they are fed milk replacer through autofeeders until it’s time to be weaned.
The autofeeders operate much like the milking robots. A calf’s identification tag indicates to the autofeeder whether or not the calf is eligible for feeding. (They can drink up to 7 liters per day spread over multiple meals.) If they are, the autofeeder will send milk from its stainless-steel basin to the teat, allowing the calf to nurse. 
After 7 weeks, calves are weaned and moved into larger groups. Springing heifers are moved into that maternity barn a month before calving. (For those unfamiliar with dairying terms, a heifer refers to a cow who has not yet given birth or produced milk, and a springing heifer refers to a heifer in her final weeks of pregnancy.) 
Then, the process starts over again: birth-ready attention, calving, calf hutches, calf barn, heifer stalls. 
During my visit to the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm this spring, the calves were peeking out of their hutches as I approached to snap photos. I thought about the milk in my tea and the yogurt in my smoothie and how these little faces, with their dark, curious eyes, and the farmers who care for them make it all possible.
Read More
Sam Rasmussen Sam Rasmussen

Next Up: Hoard’s Dairyman Farm Creamery cheese at the Fort Atkinson Farmer’s Market 

People are increasingly interested in where their food comes from. At Hoard’s Dairyman, we practice full transparency from pasture to product.
It starts with whole-farm, whole-operation attunement to the land, to the cow, and to the people. We know cheesemakers want milk that will provide a perfect foundation for a top-notch curd. We know consumers want dairy products that fulfill their nutritional needs. We know W.D. Hoard’s vision of a booming agricultural state to be on its way toward realization — Wisconsin being made resourcefully rich by crop rotation, cow rearing, soil nutrition, and conservational productivity. And, finally, we know the importance of embodying these values at every level of our farming, distribution, and publication. 
You will never have to wonder where your Hoard’s Dairyman Farm Creamery cheese comes from, and you needn’t worry where the rest of your shopping list originates, either. This summer, the Fort Atkinson Farmer’s Market readily joins Hoard’s Dairyman in providing locally derived goods to the community.  
Beginning May 4 and running through October 26, the market will feature an array of food, musicians, special events, and local artists every Saturday from 8 a.m. to noon. Vendors include SJWHomemade, Beauty and the Bean, Wood Street Bakery, Broadway Bakers, Doug Jenks Honey, and more. 
Hoard’s Dairyman Farm Creamery will be present each Saturday with every cheese we have available at that time. If you don’t want to wait until the market to taste Guernsey milk cheese at its finest, visit www.hoardscreamery.com to peruse our online shop. 
Visit the market to shop, socialize, or (respectfully) Midwest-nice people watch. For the ultimate market experience, bring a sun hat and a bouquet-ready tote – and your most trusted cheese aficionado. 
Join in the crusade for knowing where our food comes from. Shop locally, and support community makers. For more information about the markets, visit https://www.fortfarmersmarket.com/calendar-of-events. We’ll see you there!
Read More
Sam Rasmussen Sam Rasmussen

Down on the Farm: Milking and milk storage

On the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm, we use the finest facilities and the newest technology to bring Guernsey milk from cow to consumer.

Cow in milking robot station. 

It’s undeniable: robots are taking over the world as we know it. This is hyperbole, of course. Humans still have control over the future of production (for now). But what does a technological revolution mean for agriculture and for dairying in particular? 
One way the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm continues to practice the utmost cow care while still providing jobs to workers and milk to distributors is by combining the latest tech with tried-and-true methods. 
In May of 2019, the first Hoard’s Dairyman Farm cows were milked using four DeLaval voluntary milking systems. This system is considered “voluntary” because it is ready and available for milking whenever a cow chooses to be milked (which, on average, is 2.8 times a day on our farm). Each cow has a tag around her neck that contains information such as her name, number, steps, and milk production. If a cow is eligible to be milked when she approaches the stall, the gate will open, allowing her to enter. A robotic arm then cleans and stimulates the teats, attaches the teat cups, milks the cow, and stores this data in the system and on the cow’s identification tag. 
This voluntary milking system resides in the newest freestall barn on the farm. Nearby is a traditional milking parlor adjacent to the original freestall barn, where another group of cows is milked. These cows are walked to the parlor twice a day to be milked, and a farm employee uses the same wash, stimulate, and attach method as the robotic, voluntary system. Most of the milking herd are housed in the former barn and are milked using the robots. The remaining cows are milked in the parlor at 4:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. daily.

Milking parlour

The milk never touches air. The second it’s retrieved, the milk enters a pipeline system that sends it to a stainless-steel tank for storage, where milk must be kept at 38°F. A milk truck arrives daily to collect the milk for delivery to a creamery or distributor. The pipelines and milk tanks are cleaned daily. 
Sitting at 4.76% fat and 3.52% protein, our milk is not only gathered with care and precision, but it is highly nutritious, too. Next time you bite into Hoard’s Dairyman Creamery Gouda, you’ll know exactly how that milk (and cheese) came to be. 
If robots pose a threat, it may only be that of proving more useful than we’d care to admit. Voluntary milking aside, what’s not to applaud about making farmers’ jobs easier and dairies more efficient? Maybe the future isn’t so scary — not for the cow, anyway.
Read More
Sam Rasmussen Sam Rasmussen

The “Father of American Dairying”: A brief history of W.D. Hoard and his trailblazing approach to dairy farming.

William Dempster Hoard with a dairy cow

Today, consumers are increasingly concerned with where their food comes from and how it is made. Namely, that it is prepared with thought to sustainable agriculture. W.D. Hoard and, consequently, W.D. Hoard and Sons Co., has embodied this approach from the beginning.  
In 1885, W.D. Hoard launched Hoard’s Dairyman magazine in wake of his dairy farming column by the same name. Hoard was interested in what made dairying successful and sustainable as a practice. He’d seen the effects of harsh agriculture on the soil that was used to grow crops in his home state of New York, and he believed there to be a better way to steward the land and serve the animals Americans so lovingly depended on. 
According to W.D. Hoard: A Man for His Time (1985), a Madison newspaper referred to Hoard as “the most distinctly American character since Abraham Lincoln.” A singing school teacher, a water pump salesman, a Civil War Veteran, and a politician, Hoard dabbled in several careers before finding editing and agriculture. Still, his fascination with writing and farming began early, serving as the foundation for the Hoard we celebrate today. 
Hoard was a mischievous and self-actualizing boy. His mother, herself a lover of language, encouraged him to channel his energy and curiosity into reading extensively and keeping observational journals. As an adolescent, he held an apprenticeship on a farm near his home where he studied “butter and cheesemaking and dairy farming.” It was both during this apprenticeship and through conversations with Chief Thomas Cornelius on the Oneida reservation where his father preached that Hoard learned about conservation and sustainable agriculture. 
Later, after moving to the Midwest and dabbling in music and sales while caring for his sick wife and their children, Hoard started a small newspaper called the Jefferson County Union, driven by that early love for print. He included in the Union a dairy column that spoke to his “crusade for pure food, especially dairy products.” He advocated for the regular testing of herds and the growing of alfalfa for feed, among other things. It was his opportunity to “preach the gospel according to the cow” in a state where the dairy industry was growing rapidly. 
Then, in 1885, the first solo Hoard’s Dairyman supplemental publication was printed and included in the Union subscription.
“The opening statement of purpose [of Hoard’s Dairyman] went on to project the choiciest and most practical information on management of cows, breeding, butter, and cheesemaking, handling of milk and complete dairy market reports,” wrote Loren Osman in W.D. Hoard: A Man For His Time.

Hoard’s Dairyman Farm Guernsey Cows

Despite some initial backlash from longtime farmers who didn’t appreciate Hoard’s suggestion that they needed to make changes to their farming practices, the column found success by staying true to the heart and soul of dairying: the celebration of the cow and her milk. 
As if being a trailblazing writer and editor wasn’t enough to shape a lasting legacy, Hoard served as governor of Wisconsin from 1888 to 1891. He ran as “the cow candidate,” and had great support from rural communities where people, seeing that he came from similar beginnings as they, knew he would have their interests at heart while in office. 
Then, in 1899, in an effort to put what he wrote into practice, W.D. Hoard purchased a farm just outside Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, minutes from the publication office. It is the same farm ¾ and the same office ¾ we own and operate today. 
There is scarce a person who has worn as many hats as Hoard did, nor who has had a hand in impacting as many fields of study as he. Wisconsin’s landmark dairying and rich, nutritious soil have Hoard to thank for their excellence. His self-made expertise and far-reaching voice made a true and lasting impact on the agricultural narrative of this state and beyond. A man truly for his time, and for our time, too, Hoard and his dairy pioneering live on in the words we put forth in our publications and in the cheese we make from pure Guernsey milk. 
W.D. Hoard: A Man For His Time quotes Hoard near the end of his time as editor: “None of us dreamed in those first years of seeing Wisconsin as such a great and important dairy state. We only felt that we were dealing with a great and growing principle which, when unfolded to its full working, could bring a new order of agriculture into being . . . I bid you be of good cheer. Keep your eyes to the front. Be forward looking.”
The first agricultural publication to have nationwide readership, Hoard’s Dairyman is front and forward to its core. To read or learn more, visit www.hoards.com, and find your own copy of the biography W.D. Hoard: A Man For His Time at https://hoards.com/article-100-wd-hoard-a-man-for-his-time-(wdho).html.
Read More
Sam Rasmussen Sam Rasmussen

New Recipe: Dinner Rolls with Camembert-Style Cheese

Dinner Rolls made with St. Saviour. This recipe is brought to you by Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin (DFW).

Ingredients: 
  • 18 frozen dough dinner rolls
  • 1 1/2 wheels (9 ounces) Hoard’s Dairyman Farm Creamery St. Saviour cheese
  • 6 tablespoons butter, cubed and melted
  • 3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
  • 2 tablespoons snipped fresh chives
  • 2 teaspoons minced fresh thyme
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
Instructions
  1. Place frozen dinner rolls on a greased 17 x 12-inch baking pan; cover with plastic wrap. Thaw rolls for 1 1/2 hours at room temperature. Cut each roll into six equal pieces. Cover and let rise for 1 1/2 hours.
  2. Heat oven to 350°F.
  3. Cut St. Saviour into 1/2-inch pieces. Freeze for 15 minutes.
  4. Whisk the butter, parsley, chives, thyme and garlic powder in a large bowl. Toss dough in butter mixture.
  5. Arrange nine dough pieces and St. Saviour in twelve lightly greased muffin cups.
  6. Cover pan with aluminum foil. Bake for 12 minutes. Uncover; bake for 15-18 minutes longer or until golden brown. Let cool for 5 minutes in the pan. Gently run a knife around edges to loosen rolls. Remove from the pan. Garnish with parsley.
Cheesemonger Tip
St. Saviour is a soft-ripened, camembert-style cheese with rich, buttery flavor and has a soft, creamy core inside a delectable rind. It’s best served on a charcuterie cheese board at room temperature.
Read More