Not far from Lake Michigan is Saxon Homestead Farm, a Wisconsin dairy farm that’s been in the Klessig Family for five generations. A few hundred cows roam the fields, and nibble from a veritable buffet of more than 30 grasses, clovers and other plants. They’re milked twice daily in an open-air milking parlor modeled after the ones in New Zealand, a country known for both quality dairy and sustainable farming practices.

Saxon Farm is not your typical Wisconsin cheese production plant – there are no orange bricks of cheddar being made here. Over the past decade, more and more small dairy farms in Wisconsin have opted to focus their businesses on artisan cheeses – “farmstead cheese” in industry parlance – and to do so embracing sustainable production practices.

The farmstead movement has created a sort of renaissance for the Cheesehead State

The farmstead movement has created a sort of renaissance for the Cheesehead State. In Wisconsin, farmstead production is growing faster than any other category of cheese, according to the US Department of Agriculture, accounting for more than 20% of the state’s total cheese production. Wisconsin cheese is now increasingly featured on fine dining cheeseboards on both coasts and at high-end retailers such as Whole Foods, and its artisanal cheeses are winning more awards than ever before.

Saxon Farm is typical of the new direction that more small Wisconsin dairies are taking. Milk from their cows travels a few miles to the creamery in the lakeside village of Cleveland, about an hour north of Milwaukee. There it’s turned into one of ten kinds of cheese, each produced in a European-style mold decorated with scrolled leaves, evoking an era in agriculture when aesthetics mattered as much as efficiency. The type of cheese depends on a number of factors, including the season: Saxon’s buttery Snowfields cheese is made only in winter, when the cows produce a milk with naturally higher fat content.

Saxon Creamery’s Juan Prada uses a turntable to apply a protective coating to a wheel of cheese. Photograph: Gemma Tarlach

“Whatever nature gives us, we make cheese with it,” says Saxon Creamery spokeswoman Lisa Hall, who was with the company when the first wheel of cheese rolled off the shelf in 2008.

Saxon Creamery now sells its products in 40 states as well as Canada and Chile. But the bottom line is only part of the motivation for the Klessigs’ sustainable approach to cheese-making. It also connects them to a long heritage of hands-on, high-standard dairy farming.

“It’s beneficial not only to cattle but also to the environment and the quality of the cheese. None of us wants to just press a button,” says Karl Klessig, one of the brothers now running the farm.

Racks of Big Ed’s Gouda flavored with serrano peppers await packaging at Saxon Creamery in Cleveland, Wisconsin. Photograph: Gemma Tarlach

The sheepish side of the cheese business

On the other side of the state, roads follow narrow valleys that snake between clusters of lushly forested hills. You’re as likely to pass an Amish horse and buggy as you are a car. This is the Driftless, a corner of south-western Wisconsin untouched by glaciers that, during the last Ice Age, scoured the rest of the state flat and left behind pockets of debris, or drift.

The Driftless is a popular spot for hikers and hunters – and for artisan farmstead cheese-makers, particularly those committing what seems like heresy here in the dairy cow state: using the milk of sheep and goats.

For Brenda Jensen of Hidden Springs Creamery, perched on a quiet hilltop in Westby, opting for sheep over cows was, at first, a practical decision.

“Sheep were smaller and I could handle them – cows seemed a big time enterprise,” says the petite and energetic Jensen. She adds: “At the time I didn’t know about the flavor of sheep milk and what you could do with it, making cheese.”

Jensen and her husband Dean began about 12 years ago with just 50 sheep. Cheese wasn’t even on the agenda – they’d bought a 75-acre farm so “city boy” Dean could scratch an itch to try farming. They shipped the milk to a yogurt-maker in New York.

With years in management in the packaging industry, Jensen felt the urge to turn what she called “an expensive hobby” into something that might make a profit.

The couple attended a cheese-making course and an unlikely passion was sparked. Says Jensen: “I fell in love with the smell, the feel of the whey.”

Hidden Springs Creamery’s cheese-maker Brenda Jensen and Delilah, the first lamb born this year to the 500-strong flock. Photograph: Gemma Tarlach

Hidden Springs Creamery was born soon after, its first product a soft, rich but versatile fresh cheese. A business developer mentoring Jensen asked her what it would be called. Jensen laughs, remembering her reply: “I said, ‘I don’t know.’ I didn’t have a name. I didn’t have a label. I just had a cheese.”

Eventually, thinking about the regionalism of European cheeses, she named her cheese Driftless, a nod to the distinctive place where it was crafted. Jensen began working the farmers markets and approaching fine dining chefs in the upper midwest, hand-delivering her product and building relationships.

Soon word of mouth spread from the kitchens of Chicago to New York, California and beyond. High-end supermarkets on both coasts started taking notice, as did groups such as the American Cheese Society, which in July added another nine awards to the creamery’s already impressive trophy cabinet – the highest number of wins of any independent cheese-maker in this year’s competition.

Hidden Springs expanded operations quickly, building an on-site plant in 2006 and increasing the herd to 500 ewes. The Jensens have remained committed to sustainable, humane practices. On a late summer day as rain sheeted down outside, Brenda Jensen showed off the animals’ comfortable, clean shelter and introduced some of her “ladies”, calling each ewe by name.

Hidden Springs now produces 50,000 pounds of cheese annually in several styles, including a new manchego aged up to six months, though Driftless remains the flagship product; it’s now sold in a variety of flavors such as honey-lavender and basil-olive oil. Says Jensen: “I developed the flavors out of things I liked that were in my neighborhood.”

The creamery is still essentially a one-woman operation – Jensen does all the production, labeling and Wisconsin distribution, though national distributors handle the rest. She talks of bringing on more, equally driven people to help with the business, but admits it’s her own passion that’s keeping her small.

“I love the relationship that I have with the milk, with the cheese and the people,” says Jensen. “I could get much bigger. I have the demand – I run out of cheese. But it doesn’t seem the thing to do. I’ve got to have my hands wrapped around it.”