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WATERLOO — The 90-foot-wide carousel slowly turns.
This is where, in a $2.2 million addition, 1,200 of the 2,000 Holsteins at Crave Brothers Farm are milked 60 at a time, three times a day, seven days a week.
Electronic chips in each cow are automatically scanned, a robot helps sanitize udders, a single farmhand connects each cow to a machine, and a digital readout below each animal climbs as the amount of milk in pounds is displayed during the 10-minute milking process. When the machine senses the cow is done, it automatically decouples.
Mark Crave, one of the managing partners of Crave Brothers Farm, watches some of his 2,000 cows during the milking process last week near Waterloo. The $2.2 million rotary milking parlor installed in 2021 means less labor and happier cows, which combine to produce about 45 million pounds of milk a year.
“It’s very gentle on the cows,” said Mark Crave, one of the managing partners of the operation that includes 3,000 acres of cropland. “You can see it’s a very slow, steady, methodical process. The cows love it.”
Unlike the historic carousel with a band organ that has been offering up rides for nearly 100 years in Waterloo’s Fireman’s Park, there is no commotion on this farm in southwestern Dodge County, a few miles northeast of the city known for its Trek bicycles and pickles in plastic pouches from Van Holten’s.
Workers at Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese near Waterloo tend a vat of fresh cheddar cheese curds last week. Milk used to make the curds comes directly from the neighboring Crave Brothers Farm and has led to award-winning cheeses for the company, which has been making cheese for 20 years and is a regular entrant in the World Championship Cheese Contest.
Milk trucks are nonexistent at this farm. Instead, every ounce of milk from this herd silently flows from the massive rotary milking parlor installed last year through a cooling system and into a 300-foot-long pipeline that runs under Torphy Road and directly into the holding tanks at Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese.
The end result is mozzarella, some of it pressed into balls and marinated in olive oil, canola oil and a blend of herbs and spices. There are 1-pound logs of mozzarella, ropes of farmers string cheese, Oaxaca — a Mexican-style mozzarella tied in a knot — and 8-ounce plastic tubs of a soft, Italian cheese called mascarpone. It’s like a creamier, super-smooth version of cream cheese, although the chocolate variety is like a shake, sans the ice cream.
Brian Crave, a licensed cheesemaker at Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese near Waterloo, adds fresh mozzarella cheese curd to a machine that stretches and forms the cheese into balls that are packaged into plastic tubs for retail sale. Mozzarella has been an award-winning staple at the cheese plant for 20 years.
But on this day, we woke early to get a glimpse of the production of a Wisconsin classic that could see its profile rise globally.
When the World Championship Cheese Contest begins Tuesday at Monona Terrace, cheese curds, for the first time, will have their own distinct categories, plain and flavored.
Cheese curds were part of the “natural snack cheese” category in 2020 and swept the top three spots. Crave Brothers took first with a jalapeno-flavored cheese curd entry, Ellsworth Cooperative Creamery took second with a jalapeno and bacon cheese curd, while Ponderosa Dairy Products in Kewaunee took third.
Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese began making cheese in 2002 as a way to add value to milk produced across the road at Crave Brothers Farm. The vast majority of the milk from the farm's 2,000 Holsteins is used at the cheese plant.
For this year’s contest there are entries in cheese curds from 15 Wisconsin cheese companies, two from Pennsylvania and one each from Iowa, Oregon, New York, Colorado and Utah. There were no entries from outside of the U.S., even though this is the largest technical cheese, butter, yogurt and dry dairy ingredient contest in the world.
“It’s a regional item we kind of take for granted here,” said George Crave, who helped found his cheese company in 2001 and began selling packaged cheese curds in 2014. “It’s a good little side business for us and it’s a big business for some companies that really concentrate on it. But everybody takes great pride in it.”
With assistance from UW-Madison's Center for Dairy Research, George Crave learned to make cheese in 2002.
One of the biggest is Ellsworth Cooperative Creamery southeast of Hudson, which packages up cheese curds that are sold at retailers around the country. After flat growth in 2020, reflecting the cooperative’s heavy emphasis on chilled curd headed to breading operations and restaurants, Ellsworth curd sales were up 37% in 2021, reported John Umhoefer, executive director of the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association, which is putting on this week’s contest in Madison.
“Packaged natural curds are growing in retail grocery outlets and even stronger into food service channels, where breaded and fried curds are finding their way onto menus across the country and even overseas,” Umhoefer wrote in a column in November. “In the last 12 months, cheese sticks and fried cheese curd appeared on 50% more menus as a sandwich side and 36 percent more menus in a poutine appetizer at nationwide restaurant chains monitored by Technomic.”
Fresh cheddar cheese curds produced by Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese near Waterloo are immediately packaged so they can be quickly placed on store counters at area retailers. The company also sells bulk cheese curds to private label companies.
Which is why the cheese curd is getting two of the 141 classes in this year’s contest, which features 2,978 entries from 29 countries and 33 states. However, due to the pandemic, the event will not be open to the public and there will be no Thursday night gala.
Cheese curds are typically made from cheddar in either orange or white, although some, like Decatur Dairy in Brodhead, sell a Muenster cheese curd. Flavoring cheese curds with garlic, ranch, Cajun and taco seasoning has become popular, while many cheese companies are cashing in on providing plain curds for deep frying.
LaGrander’s Hillside Dairy in Stanley, for example, provides cheese curds to Culver’s, which now has 850 restaurants around the country that are baptizing many into the Wisconsin cheese curd tradition. LaGrander’s makes about 25 million pounds of cheese curds annually.
Workers with Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese process fresh balls of mozzarella cheese last week. The cheese has been a consistent winner at cheese contests around the state and country and will compete for more awards this week at the World Championship Cheese Contest in Madison.
The sale of cheese curds at the retail level rose in 2020 to 4.5 million pounds, up from 3.9 million pounds in 2016, according to Umhoefer.
“Curds are a hot market,” Ryan LaGrander told Umhoefer late last year. “We’re growing with existing customers and seeing 8% to 10% growth annually.”
There have been many efforts over the years to identify the best deep-fried cheese curds in Wisconsin. Culver’s gets a lot of votes, but so do places like Great Dane Pub & Brewing Co., Old Fashioned and Curd Girl food cart, all in Madison. It’s hard to beat the Monroe Optimist Club’s deep-fried cheese curds served up every other year at Cheese Days or the curds covered with pancake batter at the Black Sheep Tap Wine Bar in Milwaukee.
Workers with Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese package up fresh balls of mozzarella last week.
In reality, there are simply too many to list or even rank.
But for the World Championship Cheese Contest, which began on a loading dock in Green Bay in 1957, there won’t be a deep fryer within the walls of the Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired convention center that graces Lake Monona.
Instead it will be just the curds and a couple of judges who will smell, taste and spit before inputting their grades into an electronic tablet. We’ll know by Wednesday which cheese company took home top honors in each category. By Thursday, we’ll know if a cheese curd had broken through to the top 20 and later that day if a cheese curd pulls off a stunning surprise and knocks off the cheeses from Europe that year in and year out are in contention for best of show.
“It’s very competitive,” George Crave said. “But for us, it starts with really good fresh milk.”
A single farmhand can milk 60 cows in 10 minutes at Crave Brothers Farm, thanks to a largely automated, rotary milking parlor that uses robots and machines that decouple from the cow when it senses a cow is done milking.
The farm, founded in the town of Portland in 1981 with 80 cows, grew to 1,000 cows by 2011 and to its current level of 2,000 milking cows by 2015. The operation now produces 45 million pounds of milk a year to make more than 4.5 million pounds of cheese, which over the past 20 years has added more value to the business. Milk is just a few hours removed from a cow before it begins churning in the cheese plant about 2 a.m. in one of three tanks that can each hold 27,000 pounds of milk.
When it comes to cheese curds, the cutting and milling of slabs of warm cheese into bite-size, oblong nuggets, salting and packaging is completed by 7:30 a.m.
Most go into 21-pound bags that are shipped to private-label companies, while others are packaged in 12-ounce bags with the Crave name and sold at area retailers like Kraemer Wisconsin Cheese in Watertown, Sassy Cow Creamery near Columbus, Lake Mills Market and the Waterloo Piggly Wiggly.
“It’s definitely helped build our family brand along with all of the private labels we do,” said Roseanne Crave, 24, Crave’s marketing director. “It’s done wonders for us.”
Barry Adams covers regional news for the Wisconsin State Journal. Send him ideas for On Wisconsin at 608-252-6148 or by email at badams@madison.com.
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Workers at Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese near Waterloo tend a vat of fresh cheddar cheese curds last week. Milk used to make the curds comes directly from the neighboring Crave Brothers Farm and has led to award-winning cheeses for the company, which has been making cheese for 20 years and is a regular entrant in the World Championship Cheese Contest.
A single farmhand can milk 60 cows in 10 minutes at Crave Brothers Farm, thanks to a largely automated, rotary milking parlor that uses robots and machines that decouple from the cow when it senses a cow is done milking.
Mark Crave, one of the managing partners of Crave Brothers Farm, watches some of his 2,000 cows during the milking process last week near Waterloo. The $2.2 million rotary milking parlor installed in 2021 means less labor and happier cows, which combine to produce about 45 million pounds of milk a year.
Fresh cheddar cheese curds produced by Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese near Waterloo are immediately packaged so they can be quickly placed on store counters at area retailers. The company also sells bulk cheese curds to private label companies.
Brian Crave, a licensed cheesemaker at Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese near Waterloo, adds fresh mozzarella cheese curd to a machine that stretches and forms the cheese into balls that are packaged into plastic tubs for retail sale. Mozzarella has been an award-winning staple at the cheese plant for 20 years.
Workers with Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese process fresh balls of mozzarella cheese last week. The cheese has been a consistent winner at cheese contests around the state and country and will compete for more awards this week at the World Championship Cheese Contest in Madison.
Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese began making cheese in 2002 as a way to add value to milk produced across the road at Crave Brothers Farm. The vast majority of the milk from the farm's 2,000 Holsteins is used at the cheese plant.
Workers with Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese package up fresh balls of mozzarella last week.
With assistance from UW-Madison's Center for Dairy Research, George Crave learned to make cheese in 2002.
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