March 2024

Cato Corner Farm

Essays by Chris Loughran

About Cato Corner

Our relationship with Cato Corner Farm goes all the way back to Anaïs’ first job in cheese at Greene Grape Provisions in Brooklyn, NY, where she would walk over to the neighborhood farmers market to purchase their cheeses to stock the cheese case at Greene Grape. With their lineup of raw cow’s milk farmstead cheeses, (especially the funky washed-rind Hooligan that reminded Anaïs of cheeses she grew up eating in France,) Cato Corner was among the first cheesemakers to impress upon us the high quality of US Artisan cheese. 

As it turns out, Anaïs was not alone in developing this type of connection, the Cato Corner reputation is strong in the New York City farmers market scene. In The Life of Cheese: Crafting Food and Value in America, Heather Paxson describes a similar experience the first time eating Hooligan, which her husband had picked up at the Union Square Greenmarket and being “intrigued” by the funky flavor profile that reminded her of the French cheese Epoisses. Here in Pittsburgh, we’ve got a handful of dedicated Cato Corner fans, often transplants from New York who miss picking up their cheese regularly at a farmers market.  Recently, a Cato Corner cheese was mentioned by name in the Sex and the City reboot And Just Like That… in which a character mentions snagging the last block at a farmers market. Crazy stuff! 

Anaïs and I finally had a chance to visit them this past summer, and it was an absolute blast to see the farm, visit the cave, and watch for a while as they made a batch of Black Ledge Blue. It was a joy talking with the passionate cheesemakers and farmers who each have such a vital role in the quality and integrity that has built such an excellent reputation.

Cato Corner Farm is a family business, which Liz MacAllister started and now co-owns with her son Mark Gillman. Liz started the farm in 1979, when the family purchased the property from a retiring dairy farmer. In the beginning, cheese was not the focus and neither were cows. She raised a large flock of sheep (100 ewes) along with about 40 goats, selling lamb and goat meat along with wool. Ultimately, this was not enough to sustain the farm. The shift to raising cows and making cheese was driven by the financial promise of a value-added product and inspired by both a Connecticut Department of Agriculture seminar and a love of cheese. 

In 1997, starting with a herd of 13 cows, Liz quit her day job and started making cheese. Mark would join two years later, leaving his life as a schoolteacher in Baltimore where he taught 7th grade English in order to become a cheesemaker. “My mom is the farmer,” Mark says in regards to the division of labor at Cato Corner, and simply judging by the quality of their cheese that this has worked out well for them. 

It is obvious that the land and animals are her passion, as she has taken action to protect the land long term. Two farm protection easements, (one through the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Grassland Reserve Program and one through the Connecticut Farmland Trust,) ensure that the land will be used for pasture and not development or cultivation.

Today, Cato Corner has a herd of 45 cows, almost entirely Jersey cows (with a few Normande-Jersey crosses), which they’ve chosen because they are “small, gentle cows with a lovely personality.” Jersey cows produce less milk than more common dairy cows, compared to Holsteins for example, but we often see them in farmstead cheesemaking as their milk is highest in fat, producing richer, creamier cheeses. They are also valued these days for the A2A2 milk protein, which is easier to digest.

Cato corner practices rotational grazing on pasture during the warmer season, typically May 1st through Nov 10th. This grass diet turns to local hay feed during the winter months. They also work with a nutritionist to complement their diet with a small grain ration to ensure the cows are getting what they need.

All of Cato Corner’s raw milk cheeses are made using the milk from their own herd, and they adjust to seasonal changes in the milk by making certain cheeses only during certain times of the year, although some are year round. They make cheese 4 days a week, starting at 7 or 8 in the morning (the milking staff starts at 4am). Cato Corner also produces pasteurized cheeses, which allows them to make cheeses younger cheeses aged fewer than 60 days (the US legal requirement for raw milk cheeses, which we’ll discuss more later in this blog post.) For these, they source milk from another local farm that also pastures Jersey cows and shares Cato Corner’s values, Sweet Grass Creamery. Overall, they produce about 55,000-60,000 pounds of cheese per year, a small number compared to most commercial operations but impressive for a staff of only 11 full time employees (6 taking care of the farm and 5 making cheese.)

Hear from the Cheesemaker: an Interview with Mark

Q: What’s your favorite part of cheesemaking?

A: I love the tangible quality of handling the curd. It’s exciting to watch milk transform into curd in just a short day’s work. Because we make so many different cheeses, each curd is a little different – I love the contrast between the soft curd of Celeste or Hooligan and the firm curd of Dairyere. I’d say the second best part of my job is selling the cheese. I love to taste cheese with customers and get their immediate feedback. We get this all the time from customers at the farmers’ market or in our shop, but we also love to hear from cheesemongers about what you liked or didn’t like!

Q: What’s your favorite thing about the cheese industry?

A: There is so much delicious cheese being made right now! [Editor’s note: We couldn’t agree more, which is why we are so excited to be featuring one every month in this box! Eat Artisan Cheese!]

Q: What are the biggest challenges of artisan cheesemaking, in your experience?

A: Cash flow is always our biggest challenge, like many small businesses. We need to feed the cows every day, and that can be expensive. Our labor costs are also very high – we have staff that have been with us for nearly 20 years, which is fabulous, and we try to support them the best way we can. But if we have several bad weeks in a row at the farmers’ markets or if all our wholesale customers are slow in the winter, that can really hurt us.

Q: Who is your biggest influence?

A: I learned first from my mom. I’ve also taken classes with and learned a lot from Peter Dixon at Parish Hill [Editor’s note: next month’s box!] and Margaret Morris at Glengarry Cheesemaking.

Q: What’s your favorite type of cheese? 

A: Who’s your favorite kid? How can I answer that one? Really the answer is more of a batch-to-batch choice. Sometimes a batch is just perfect. Those are the ones we try to emulate every time!

Q: What’s your perfect bite?

A: I love creative cheese pairings – sweet or spicy jams, honey, fresh or dried fruit, flax seed crackers or shortbread cookies, perfectly matched wines or beers… but mostly I like cheese on its own with nothing! That sounds boring, but I like to fully enjoy the flavor of the cheese with nothing else. If there is a pairing, I’ll taste it after I’ve first smelled and then tasted the cheese. A pairing should go beyond both the cheese and the item that’s being paired and add a layer of flavor that wasn’t there before – a perfect pairing is more than the sum of its parts.

On Raw Milk Cheesemaking

Sunshine and rain. Lush, verdant pastures. Herds munching on fresh grass, flowers, and herbs. A true love of cheese includes an appreciation for all of these natural components that develop into rich, delicious milk. It is without a doubt that careful attention to the land and animals, utilizing farming practices such as rotational grazing, yields better quality milk – both in terms of nutritional value and flavor. And all of this energy is best captured in its raw milk form. When made from raw milk, cheese retains the complex flavors and uniqueness of the environment from which the milk is produced, what we call terroir, a sense of place; that grassiness or toasted hay, all those specific tasting notes we scribble in our cheese journals. For all of the food safety benefits of pasteurization, sterilizing milk also destroys much of the desirable microbes and enzymes responsible for flavor and healthy nutrition. 

Yet, pasteurized cheese is the overwhelming norm in the United States where cheeses aged fewer than 60 days are legally required to be made from pasteurized milk. This stands in stark contrast to European cheese production, where titans such as Comté, Gruyère, Parmigiano Reggiano, Roquefort, Camembert de Normandie, and Brie de Meaux, among many others, are required to be made from raw milk.

The reasons for this disparity are complex. Best practices for cheesemaking have evolved over centuries and across continents, from the time when cheese production was something like cauldron magic up to our present day, where modern machinery and microbiology play crucial roles in cheese production and food safety. And yet, even with our growing understanding of the science involved, as magic becomes more and more microscopic, so much of what makes cheese great or what makes great cheese, is as much a matter of perspective as ever.

In the United States, our reliance on pasteurization as the method for best ensuring the safety of cheese has much to do with the industrialization of our agricultural economy where the goals revolve around cost effectiveness, shelf-life, and scale. This world of cheesemaking depends on the pooled milk of factory farms. When tanks of milk collected from different farms are mixed together and transported long distances to the cheese factory, the possibility for contamination grows exponentially. In this style of cheesemaking, pasteurization is vital to ensuring a safe food product.

Of course, this is not the only way to make cheese. In the artisan cheese world, the milk does not travel very far. In some farmstead operations, it’s even pumped straight into the cheese vat. Pasteurization is not the only way to maintain food safety, and cheese, historically, especially aged cheese, has been a relatively safe food product.

In today’s world, from the farm-level to the cheesemaking room, modern science and precise hazard plans can help ensure a safe product. Precisely what that means varies from cheese to cheese, but generally speaking artisan cheesemakers are able to produce safe products by controlling temperature, pH, and moisture. All of this requires a ton of work, following their own intense guidelines while simultaneously meeting standards written for large cheese factories.

Often, in our romantic visions, we picture the difference between artisan and industrial cheese as that of tradition vs modernization, man vs machine. We still see that cauldron over a fire on a dirt floor, a strong hand stirring a rugged wooden spoon by the dim light of a candle. In some places, this may still be true (except they probably make cheese during the daytime), but for the most part, even artisan creameries operate more like a science lab than a home kitchen. The witchcraft is precision; timing, measuring, monitoring, recording. The artisan vs industrial debate is more philosophical than material.

For us, what makes a good cheese starts with what happens on the farm. Good cheese only comes from good milk, whether that cheese is raw or pasteurized. Industrial cheese utilizes pasteurization as a way of standardizing that input in their production line, of ensuring consistency, whatever the farming practices. In the cynical view of modern capitalism, this can be seen as directly incentivizing farming practices that are bad for the animals and for our planet. When artisan cheesemakers use pasteurization, it is typically to produce cheeses that are aged fewer than 60 days so as to meet legal standards, or to avoid some other conflict with regulatory bodies.

We love raw milk cheeses because of the flavor development. We love them because, compared to pasteurized cheese, consumption of raw milk cheese has been proven to have numerous health benefits; including, immune-boosting properties, promoting healthy gut bacteria, and reducing allergies and asthma. We love them for the intense, hands-on work and care required to produce them, from farm to cheesemaking room; that for the artisan cheesemaker the most important input is their own passion. Considering all these reasons, that happy cows make happy cheese… It is poetic science, if not magic, that raw milk cheeses excite our palettes.

… and now onward to the cheeses!

Celeste

Milk: Pasteurized cow
Rennet: Vegetarian
Age: 2-3 weeks
Ingredients: Pasteurized cows’ milk, salt, vegetarian rennet, cultures
Texture/profile: Soft, pillowy, slightly tangy
Pairing idea: Quince & Apple Pear Honey Ginger Preserves

In this blog, we’ve talked a lot about raw milk cheese, and although we’d welcome a sweeping change to our pasteurization laws in this country where cheese is concerned, the fact remains that a cheesemaker interested in producing and/or selling any cheese aged less than 60 days in the United States has no choice but to use pasteurized milk. That leaves out so many cheeses! And oh, how we adore those delicate bloomy rind cheeses, such as brie, camembert, robiola. In addition to being just absolutely delicious, fresh and young cheese can also greatly improve a creamery’s cash flow, giving a cheesemaker something to bring to market that didn’t require months of aging. At 2-3 weeks of aging, Celeste only takes 25-35% of the amount of time to age as even the youngest of Cato Corner’s raw milk cheeses.

Cato Corner started making pasteurized cheeses in 2022, building a second cheesemaking room and sourcing milk from Sweet Grass Creamery in Preston, CT about 25 miles from Cato Corner. Like Cato Corner, Sweet Grass Creamery raises a herd of Jersey cows, using sustainable and human practices. We only first tried Celeste this past winter, and we were simply blown away. A lactic-set cow’s milk cheese reminiscent of the famous Loire Valley goat’s milk cheeses. In this style of cheese, coagulation happens slowly over 15-18 hours as the pH drops enough to help curdle the milk. The curds are then hand-ladled and drained for two days. The yeasts and molds grow quickly, blooming a beautiful white rind. 
Celeste is adorable and delicious. Slightly tangy and rich, with a mouthfeel of a cloud. Enjoy it by the spoonful or with a dash of the Quince & Apple Pear Honey Ginger Preserves.

Hooligan

Milk: Raw cow
Rennet: Traditional calf rennet
Age: 2-3 months
Ingredients: Raw cows’ milk, salt, traditional calf rennet, and cultures.
Texture/profile: Semi-soft, sourdough, meaty
Pairing idea: Les Trois Petits Cochons Mini Toasts

Rowdy troublemaker. Youthful ruffian. Stinky Hooligan. This cheese has some funk! Often compared to the French cheese, Muenster, as a smear cheese Hooligan falls in the washed-rind cheese category. For Hooligan, the cheesemakers hoop the curds into small draining baskets after just a short time stirring and heating. This makes Hooligan the highest moisture cheese of all of Cato Corner’s raw milk cheeses, and it requires a lot of attention during the affinage, which is 60-75 days.

During this time, Hooligan wheels are brushed (smeared) with a brine solution on average once per week. This process helps to eliminate surface molds while fostering the growth of surface ripening bacteria and yeasts. Smearing the cheese makes the rind amenable to Brevibacterium linens, the bacteria responsible for the funk and the pinkish/orange rind. This surface ripening helps the paste break down from the outside in, which is why you’ll see more of a creamline near the rind and a chalkier center. If you leave this in your fridge a little longer, you’ll start to see that breakdown even further as Hooligan gets gooier.

And we love it gooier. Heck, we like it chalky too. The yeasty, sourdough flavor will definitely intensify the longer you wait to eat it, and if this is already a bit much for you, we recommend melting it, which will mellow it out a bit. With so much going on, we like this one on its own or spread on some bread or a simple cracker such as the Mini Toasts in your box. It would also be nice with the Tomato Pesto.

Cornerstone

Milk: Raw cow
Rennet: Traditional calf rennet
Age: 8-12 months
Ingredients: Raw cows’ milk, salt, traditional calf rennet, and native cultures
Texture/profile: Firm, toothsome, bright and floral
Pairing idea: A Small Good Ramp Salami

Next month, we will dive deep into the Cornerstone Project, as we talk about Parish Hill Creamery and share their cheeses with you. But this is such a cool project, and Cato Corner’s Cornerstone is absolutely fantastic. Briefly, Cornerstone is an exploration of American terroir, a cheese made following a specific recipe and using starter culture developed from the milk of the same herd. Currently, there are three producers of this cheese spread across three states: Cato Corner (CT), Parish Hill (VT), and Birchrun Hills Farm (PA). Cornerstone, with a set of rules similar to those of the European Union Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), (which are built to assure consumer confidence and can be found on products from wine to cheese to cured meats,) is an admirable and remarkably fascinating project that has no parallel in US cheesemaking.

As established in the rules, Cato Corner’s Cornerstone is made using their own starter culture, made by letting raw milk sour until it produces a yogurt-like consistency. For each batch of Cornerstone, they regrow this yogurt mother starter in an incubator. This results in a cheese that is the fullest expression of their terroir, and as such, Cato Corner only produces Cornerstone in the summer to best capture the grassy flavor and the full range of microorganisms that are present in the raw milk during grazing.

Cornerstone displays distinct character from batch to batch, and with this batch we find a bright acidity and floral notes. Enjoy this with the Ramp Salami from A Small Good, a family run charcuterie business located in mid-coast Maine, specializing in curing with wild fermentation and koji.

Dairyere

Milk: Raw cow
Rennet: Vegetarian Marzyme rennet
Age: 6–7 months
Ingredients: Raw cows’ milk, salt, vegetarian Marzyme rennet, and cultures.
Texture/profile: Firm; milky, nutty and grassy. Balanced.
Pairing idea: L’Epicurien French Tomato Pesto

A name that puts a playful spin on Gruyère, Dairyere, a 25 pound, Alpine-style wheel that we adore!
Sharp and nutty with some of that tyrosine crystal development which gives such a pleasant little crunch. Dairyere is a thermophilic cheese, meaning it’s cooked to a higher temperature that favors the growth of cultures found in Swiss and Italian cheeses. After cooking the curds, Dairyere is pressed to expel more whey, creating a dryer texture that is ideal for aged cheese and is part of what makes it such an amazing melting cheese. Dairyere is soaked in a brine bath prior to aging for 6-7 months.

Don’t let the funky name fool you, Dairyere is such a beautifully balanced cheese. Grassy and nutty with a medium sharpness, and an overall smooth paste punctuated by the aforementioned crystals. Such a wonderful snacking cheese all on its own, but if you have a loaf of sourdough nearby grab it! We’ve paired this with the L’Epicurien French Tomato Pesto, which honestly sounds like a delicious grilled cheese to me!

Black Ledge Blue

Milk: Raw cow
Rennet: Traditional calf rennet
Age: 2-4 months
Ingredients: Raw cows’ milk, salt, traditional calf rennet, and cultures.
Texture/profile: Semi-firm, nutty, earthy
Pairing idea: Dick Taylor 72% Madagascar Chocolate Bar

Named after the Blackledge River, a nearby landmark in Colchester, CT, Black Ledge Blue is a crowd favorite blue cheese. To make Black Ledge Blue, penicillium roqueforti is added to the vat early in the process, which will develop the beautiful blue veining in the finished cheese. Once formed, the curds are cut into large pieces. The whey is drained off and the curds are left to acidify, expelling more whey before milling the curds and packing them into molds. This style helps create the dense, fudgy texture.

At around one month of aging, wheels of Black Ledge are poked with a steel needle. Puncturing the cheese introduces oxygen which encourages the blue mold growth which will break down the fat and protein to produce veining and flavor.

Not the strongest blue cheese, not the most delicate either. Black Ledge Blue is rich, creamy yet crumbly, nutty with a nice acidity. Grassy, earthy finish. A perfect blue for snacking or melting on a burger.

For our pairing, we’ve included a bar of chocolate. We cannot say enough about Dick Taylor Chocolate, a bean to bar craft chocolate maker based in Eureka, California. Their chocolate starts with sourcing premium cacao beans directly from farms, creating a more equitable, ethical, and sustainable trade relationship. Much like artisan cheese, craft chocolate starts with the land, where quality and sustainability simply go hand in hand. Good cheese can only come from good milk. Good chocolate can only come from good trees. This 72% Madagascar chocolate bar with notes of molasses, dried fruit, and toast is the perfect complement to Black Ledge Blue.