Being a farmer isn’t something you do – it’s something you are
Being a farmer isn’t a job — it’s a way of life. Every farmer will tell you that.
Living in and with nature, day by day, season by season, caring for your animals — it doesn’t end when you close the barn door and step into the kitchen. As a farmer, you live on your farm — often with multiple generations under one roof. There’s hardly a clearer example of a true family business.
Farming runs deep in the blood of all our members, passed down through generations. And in many cases, the next generation is already active in the family business. It’s a way of life that may be hard to explain to those who haven’t grown up with it — but when you’re raised on a farm, you don’t think twice. You hop on the tractor, help with the cows, or lend a hand in the cheesemaking room — it just comes naturally.
But living this life also means having a deep sense of flexibility. Suddenly the weather’s perfect for silage, and that fun event you were planning to attend has to wait. Or a cow is calving and needs help — even in the middle of the night, you’re there. And when an animal is unwell, you worry, and you do everything in your power to make her better.
“In a single wheel of cheese, your whole farm — and all the generations behind it — come together.”
For our farmers, it doesn’t stop with the animals or the milk. They’ve chosen to go a step further — by turning their own milk into cheese, right there on their farms. As one of our members put it:
“Everyone around us was making cheese. I felt we weren’t truly farmers until we made cheese ourselves.”
And cheesemaking is not something you do on the side. Milk must be processed within 48 hours of milking, and the work doesn’t stop once the curd-filled moulds are under the press. After pressing, flipping, and pressing again, the cheeses go into a brine bath. Then, for the first 15 days, they receive their regular care right on the farm — only after that are they brought to the cooperative’s warehouse for further maintenance and maturation.
Larger farms may have staff to help, while smaller farms often do much of the work themselves. In both cases, you’ll often find multiple generations working side by side — or, for example, brothers dividing tasks, with one caring for the cows and the other running the cheese dairy. That’s where past, present, and future come together.
