Vermont calls to mind some vivid associations: maple syrup, progressive politics, cheese. Laini Fondiller has brought two of the three together with Lazy Lady Farm. Taking inspiration from the talk radio she listens to while making cheese from goat and cow milk in her off-the-grid facility, Fondiller has sent out offerings with names like Tomme Delay (a riff on French tomme-style cheese), Barick Obama (a square cheese from 2004, named after the young state senator gave his speech at the Democratic National Convention) and Fil-a-Buster (a hefty wheel banded with spruce). The Ben & Jerry’s flavor Imagine Whirled Peace might make for a cute take on a bumper sticker for the state’s rusty Saabs, but until Hubby Hubby becomes permanent, Lazy Lady has the leftie-foodie market cornered.

People who want to pick up a Crumb Cake goat cheese this month will be out of luck. Wait, you mean cheeses have a season? Yes: Even Barack couldn’t get a Barick from June to October. As the organic milk from her goats naturally tapers off in the winter — “The goats just began to collect unemployment as of last Friday,” Fondiller e-mailed me on Dec. 15 — she mixes it with organic milk from her neighbors’ Holsteins and Jerseys to create cheeses like Bipartisan (cow with goat in the middle), moving into all-cow before phasing back into goat in the spring. For a few weeks in the fall of 2008, she used the dregs of a vat of cow milk to make Palin Comparison: “I said, ‘This is where they drug her up from!’ ”

Image Credit... Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Fondiller and her goats don’t make it easy on cheesemongers. “You don’t pick the season; we do!” she said. As a result, Lazy Lady cheeses come and go faster than a Beltway news cycle. The New York cheesemonger Anne Saxelby says, “We tell restaurants that if they want something they can print on the menu, Lazy Lady is not a thing to choose.”