Jane Burns
Wisconsin has no shortage of licensed cheese makers who create their product from cows’ milk. But Diana Murphy of Dreamfarm near Cross Plains is the rare cheese maker selling a product made from cow’s milk.
That’s cow, singular. One cow. And her name is Nelle.
At a time when dairy and farm operations are getting bigger all the time, Murphy’s cow’s milk cheese operation is small even by small-scale standards. That’s because Murphy’s farm is actually a dairy goat farmstead cheese operation specializing in flavored, spreadable fresh goat cheese. She sells at the Westside Community Market at University Row and University Avenue on Saturday mornings and at select area retail outlets. But cheese made from Nelle’s milk is sold only at the Westside Community Market.
Nelle came along because Murphy’s husband, Jim, wanted a cow. So they got a Jersey, a breed valued for a butterfat content that helps produce richer dairy products. When Nelle gave birth to a calf named Juniper in 2015, the milk began to flow.
“Jim wanted a farm cow, to make some ice cream and butter,” Murphy says. “And I started making yogurt for the family, and it was still more milk than we could use.”
Nelle’s milk — which provided Murphy with up to 4 gallons twice a day at the cow’s peak — produces “Arthur,” a Gouda-style cheese rubbed with a blend of olive oil, paprika and oregano, and Dream Sauce, a creamy caramel sauce. She also uses the cow’s milk for mozzarella and queso fresco. The goat’s milk cheeses have a little sharper flavor, Murphy says, and different protein and fat contents.
As a licensed cheese maker, Murphy didn’t need additional training to sell cheese from a different animal. She did, however, need a separate license and new equipment. Her goat’s milk requires a 100-gallon pasteurizer, but she only needed a 15-gallon pasteurizer for Nelle’s milk. Most producers take out loans to get bigger; Murphy did the opposite.
“When you go through the process of a loan like that, there’s so much paperwork,” she says. “They probably thought, ‘This woman is nuts.’”
The Murphys and their cow echo back to dairy farming’s early days, when the wife milked the cow or cows and turned the milk into products that would keep, such as cheese and butter. It was only when cheesemaking became industrialized that it stopped being referred to as “women’s work.”
Murphy began making cheese in 2003, having been charmed by goats after her children began raising and showing them. She learned from Anne Topham, who The New York Times dubbed “the grande dame of goat cheese,” and made cheeses at Topham’s Iowa County facility until Dreamfarm was up and running.
While having a cow was Jim Murphy’s idea, Diana Murphy embraces it because it connects her with her family heritage. She grew up on a dairy farm near Mount Horeb that her brother now runs. Her cow cheese is named for her father, Arthur Kalscheur, whom she helped on the farm.
“This was back in the days of the belly buckets, so I would have to put the belts on the cows to get them ready for my dad and my brothers to milk,” she says. “Then I would carry the milk to the milk house and pour it into the cooler, just like I do now for the goats.”
Soon, Nelle will be put to pasture — and an organic one, at that — and replaced in milking duties by Juniper, who will calve in January. The Murphys’ goat herd is their livelihood and a joy, but, Diana Murphy says, there’s just something about cows.
“The two cows can make as much mess as 22 goats, I forgot about that part,” she says. “All that poop, oh my gosh. But they’re such sweet animals. When you hear of farmers who love their cows, they really do.”
