Food & Recipes

When I visited Sweetwater Valley Farm for the first time, I’d never met the owner, John Harrison. But I did spot an unassuming man in farm boots, walking purposefully through the cheese shop, and asked if he was an employee there. Yep, he said. I told him I was looking for the office manager, and he took my name and disappeared.

Soon he was back with office manager Rita Ritchey.

“I see you’ve met the big cheese,” Ritchey said, nodding her head in Harrison’s direction.

I blinked. Harrison just laughed. He doesn’t act much like a big cheese, but he sure does know his cheddar.

Sweetwater Valley Farm, Harrison’s dairy and cheese-making operation, is located at a postcard-worthy junction of rolling hills near Philadelphia, Tenn., about 30 miles southwest of Knoxville. Harrison, his wife, Celia, and their five children live in the farmhouse next door. They’re within 20 miles of all of Harrison’s siblings, including a brother who is a fourth-generation farmer on family land about six miles away.

Their cheese making is seasonal, following the natural milk cycle of the 700 cows in regular milk production on the farm. Most of these are Holsteins, which, Harrison explains, produce milk that is lower in butterfat than that of other cows. But they’re a little picky about the weather. Once the Tennessee summer turns hot and stuffy, Holsteins don’t want to be bothered with making milk. Like most of us, they want to lie in the shade and ruminate.

Just as the weather cools off and the cows show more than a passing interest in milk again, school is back in session, so much of the milk produced by the cows is earmarked for cafeteria lunches. Around December, the herd is really in peak milking form, and production finally outstrips the thirst of elementary-school children. This creates a surplus of about 2 million pounds of milk, which is put to good use in the cheese-making process. At maximum capacity, Harrison’s aging room can hold more than 300,000 pounds of cheese.

When the family purchased the farm in 1987, it was strictly a dairy operation.

But Harrison says he soon found himself wanting to branch out.

“The more we looked into cheese, the better it looked,” Harrison says. Cheese making began in earnest in September 1998, and though the dairy is still the bigger part of the farm, the cheese business continues to grow every year.

One of Harrison’s first business decisions was to choose the types of cheese to offer.

He decided ultimately that shelf-stable cheeses that appealed to a variety of palates would best suit his rural operation. Built on a foundation of simple cheddar and jack cheeses, today’s list of flavors has expanded to include hickory smoked, caraway, salsa, black pepper, garlic, tomato herb, onion and chives, Italian pesto, veggie, jalapeño and buttermilk, to name just a few.

“I get a kick out of encouraging people to try a broad array of cheeses,” Harrison says.

True cheese aficionados will be happy to hear that when a Sweetwater Valley cheese is labeled “smoked,” it means it has done time in an actual old-fashioned smoker.

No liquid smoke allowed.

“Our naturally smoked cheddar is very popular,” Harrison says.

Of course, if you love the simple taste of a plain sharp cheddar or a mild white jack, you’ll find that, too. Sweetwater Valley’s on-site shop also carries other cheese-friendly treats like summer sausages, relishes and jellies.

Some customers like to pick up their cheese directly from the farm, but, thanks to phone and online ordering, boxes and baskets of Tennessee cheddar and jack reach all corners of the country.

Visitors to the farm are in for a treat – and an education. The cheese plant and cold room are located just behind the cheese shop, and you can watch the proceedings through a glass window. As Harrison told a tour group of BellSouth retirees on the day of my visit, “When I tried to find out about making cheese, nobody would tell me anything. It was top secret. So I decided to put my plant right in my cheese shop so you could see everything.”

Actually, he says, the operation is fairly straightforward and follows the same traditional techniques used by generations of cheese makers before him.

Today, Harrison’s techniques are the exception, not the norm. Most cheese nowadays, he explains, is made through an entirely automated process: You pour milk in one end of the machine and cheese pops out the other. (Well, maybe not quite like that, but you get the idea.)

But Harrison’s cheese is cultured, processed, cut and wrapped by hand. Pasteurized milk fresh from the dairy is poured into a long vat, where bacterial cultures and rennet are added to get the fermenting process started. The temperature is monitored carefully; if the milk gets too hot, the cultures will die, and if it gets too cold, fermentation slows down or stops altogether.

The milk gradually curdles, and then the whey, or watery excess, is drained away. The next part of the process is called “cheddaring.” The curds are either stirred or left to form firm slabs, depending on the kind of cheese being made. After about two hours, salt is added, and the cheese is put into forms, or molds, to be pressed tightly overnight so that any excess whey is removed.

After pressing, the cheese is sent to cure in the cold room, a refrigerated area that stays cooled to approximately 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Mild cheeses may be ready in as soon as three months, but sharp varieties may remain in the cold room for a year or longer; the longer cheese is aged, the sharper the taste.

Harrison keeps some cheeses in reserve to deepen their flavor even more. 08winterly, for example, he has some cheddar in stock that has aged over three years. The American Cheese Society apparently approves: In 2003, Sweetwater Valley’s mature Tennessee Cheddar received one of the society’s top prizes in a national juried competition.

All the cheeses are shrink-wrapped in plastic, which works quite well for the varieties Sweetwater Valley produces. Wax coating may be prettier, Harrison says, but it cracks and melts easily, exposing the cheese inside to mold and dehydration. He recommends you store your cheese at home – provided you don’t eat it all at the first sitting – wrapped in plastic in the refrigerator.

What lies ahead for Sweetwater Valley? Think goats.

“We’re gonna play around with goat cheese,” Harrison says, although he’s not sure yet exactly what product would work best. Fresh goat cheese, or chevre, is fragile and perishable, not ideal traits for a shop like Harrison’s, which may take a few weeks to sell out of a full supply of cheese. He theorizes, however, that a goat-blend cheddar might be tasty.

Based on his past track record, I’d be willing to bet he’s right.

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Magazine:
Tennessee Home & Farm, Summer 2010 Edition Edition

Headline:
Big Orange Country

Summary:
But this time, we’re not talking sports … We’re talking Tennessee cheddar.

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