Wisconsin Cheese Originals is proud to use a significant portion of its membership dues to offer a $2,500 scholarship to help one new Wisconsin artisan cheesemaker earn his or her cheesemaking license every year.
Wisconsin is the only state in the nation to require cheesemakers to be licensed, a lengthy process that can take as long as 18 months, requires the attendance at five cheesemaking courses, and 240 hours of apprenticeship with an existing licensed Wisconsin cheesemaker.
Applications for the 2014 Wisconsin Cheese Originals Beginning Cheesemaker Scholarship will be posted in January.
Past Wisconsin Cheese Originals Beginning Scholarship Recipients include:
2013: Jennifer Digman owns and runs Krayola Sky Dairy, a goat dairy in Cuba City, Wis. After using the scholarship money to earn her license, Digman has dreams of building an on-farm creamery to craft fresh, hand-dipped chevre, aged mixed milk artisan cheeses, and hand-washed Alpine-style cheese. She hopes to pass the operation down to her two young daughters.
2012: Anna Landmark owns and runs a small-scale sustainable farm with her husband and children in Albany, Wis. After using the scholarship money to earn her cheesemaker's license, Landmark plans to craft both fresh and aged sheep's milk cheeses, including thistle-rennet cheeses, which will require her to develop her own rennet from thistle flowers. This type of cheese is currently only available via import from Portugal and Spain.
2011: Rose Boero, a dairy goat breeder in Custer, Wis, successfully obtained her cheesemaker's license after receiving the scholarship in 2011. Today, she makes a variety of goat's milk cheeses at Willow Creek Cheese and teaches beginning cheesemaking classes in her home for amateur cheesemakers. She is developing plans to build her own cheese plant at her dairy goat farm, where she and her husband have raised Toggenburg dairy goats for 25 years.
2010: Katie Hedrich, a goat's milk cheesemaker, obtained her license in 2010 after receiving the very first Wisconsin Cheese Originals Scholarship. At the 2011 U.S. Champion Cheese Contest, she took Best in Show for her goat's milk cheese, Evalon, and was named the 2011 U.S. Champion Cheesemaker, the youngest licensed cheesemaker to ever earn the title. She and her family are currently building a farmstead cheese plant on their farm near Pipe, Wis.
Learn more about the state requirements to obtain a cheesemaker's license by clicking here.
