Today’s post is 1450 words, 16 photos, a 6 1/2 minute read. Enjoy
Hi everyone,
This past week our Friendship Force Club hosted seven Ambassadors from the Lower Columbia region of Southwest Washington State. Their visit reminded me of another Friendship Force Journey in 2023 that visited Hinchley Dairy Farm at Cambridge and Cedar Grove Cheese in Plain. What a grand time we had, in addition to learning a lot about cows and cheese plus the friendships formed by hosting people from around the world. Here’s another look at that post.
In this week’s blog I’ll take you to a dairy farm and a cheese factory. This will round out the three-part series on sites and activities when visiting the Madison, Wisconsin area. There’s much more to discover than I’ve described in these posts. So I invite you to come and see for yourself. If you missed the last two posts, click here and here.
As I mentioned in the last two blogs, Friendship Force of Wisconsin-Madison hosted 15 Friendship Force Ambassadors from Oita, Japan, and 5 from the Tweed Valley in New South Wales, Australia. Our club organized activities to showcase a few of the many things for visitors to see and do. A visit to Wisconsin, America’s Dairyland, wouldn’t be complete without seeing a few cows and tasting fresh cheese curds.
Hinchley’s Dairy Farm
Tina Hinchley is the most enthusiastic spokesperson for agriculture and dairying that I’ve ever met. Part of her mission is to help everyone who listens understand where their food comes from, especially milk, cream, butter, cheese, yogurt, and all the products dairy cows produce. Tina, Duane, her husband, and Anna, her daughter, took us on a tour of their farm located near Cambridge, Wisconsin. In the photo below, Tina talks about the importance of corn as cattle feed. She also explained how the early-season drought in the Midwest affected crop yields.
I’ve been to Hinchley’s before. Once with another Friendship Force group and another time when they hosted the Dane County Breakfast on the Farm in 2009. They also hosted in 2021, but we didn’t attend. Their operation has changed a lot over the years. In 2009, they milked about 125 cows in a stanchion barn; today, they milk about 250-300 cows using a robotic milking system. It’s quite a sight to see.
Hinchley’s offers tours of their farm and milking facilities for groups and individuals. Reservations are required. If you want to see a modern dairy operation, I highly recommend Hinchley’s.
In addition to the cornfield next to the farmstead, Tina and Duane showed our international guests the grain-handling system. The bins are huge, holding many thousands of bushels of corn.
The open-air barn was clean, and the cows were curious about who was visiting their territory. The cows were also content and seemed happy. Happy cows equal more milk.
You’ll note that some of the chopped feed the cows are eating is out of their reach. Never fear, there is a robot for that! The robot slowly passes up and down each side of the aisle, sweeping the forage back into reach for the cows. Back on the farm I grew up on, one of us kids did this job. Plus, a robot cleaned the slats the cows stood on. No shovel, fork, or wheelbarrow in sight. I never thought I’d see the day.
I was enthralled by the robotic milking system. When a cow enters the milking stall, the sensor she is wearing is scanned. The screen on the milker pops up with the cow’s name and number, dispenses feed according to the cow’s production, and begins recording over a hundred pieces of data. While milking, it records the amount of milk produced by each quarter; some quarters produce a bit more than others. After a few trips through the milking unit, the robot memorizes the position the milker needs for each cow. It measures the milk against the typical amount this cow has produced in previous milkings. It’s fascinating to me, an old country boy who milked cows in a much different way.
On average, the cows are milked about 2.7 times per day, and some as many as five times. If a cow enters the milking stall too early, the robot rejects her. The gate opens, and she walks out. Come back later when it’s your turn!
The robot first washes and sanitizes the cow’s udder and teats. Then the robot maneuvers the milking machine to attach the suction cups. When milk flow ends in a quarter, the cups are released. After milking, the robot treats the teats with an udder product to keep them moisturized and clean.
Check out this YouTube video to see how the robotic milker works. Since no humans are involved in milking the cows, you might wonder what happens if something goes wrong. If it malfunctions, the robot alerts a human, day or night, by phone call or text message. Usually, the human can fix the problem, like rebooting a computer. If they can’t fix the issue, a technician is on call. Sometimes the tech has to actually show up to diagnose and fix the problem.
Before leaving the barn, we each had a chance to milk a cow the old-fashioned way, by hand. In this photo, the milker, Iain from Australia, took a shot at the photographer!
Duane took us on a tour of the milk house where he showed how they conserve electricity by cooling the milk before it enters the bulk tank. Energy and water conservation are a big part of their overall operation.
We walked through the calf barn, where the babies are separated from the older calves. The barn was clean, comfortable, and airy, a nice place to grow up.
Before heading off to our next adventure, we had some fun with the tractor and took a group photo.
I can’t tell you how much fun this tour was for me, I think our international friends had fun too.
If you wonder what happens to most of the milk produced in Wisconsin, keep reading about our visit to a cheese factory.
Cedar Grove Cheese
About 90% of Wisconsin’s milk is made into one of 600 varieties of cheese. Cheese plants around the state produce nearly 50% of the cheese consumed in the U.S. The rest of the milk becomes butter, ice cream, bottled milk, and other products.
One sunny morning, during a visit from our new friends, we journeyed from Madison to the village of Plain, with a population of about 750. I wondered how it got its name, Plain. One theory is that it was named as a homage to the Shrine of the Virgin Mary at Maria Plain in Austria. No written or recorded documents support this notion. Another explanation is that Plain was named that because the people who lived there were plain. Either way, the name stuck even after a later attempt to change the name because it was too plain!
We were in Plain to tour the Cedar Grove Cheese plant on the edge of town. It’s in the Driftless Area that the most recent ice age missed, leaving steep hills, low valleys, rivers, streams, and mixed forests. A scenic area once home to hundreds of small dairy farms.
Cedar Grove is a medium-sized family-owned cheese plant with six licensed cheesemakers and two Master cheesemakers. The factory owner, Bob Wills, met with us to explain how he operates. Most of the milk comes from nearby family farms with small to medium-sized herds. Some of those farms produce certified organic milk that Bob uses to make organic cheeses. The organic milk is handled separately from the regular milk.
Every morning, the milk trucks pick up milk from the farms and bring it to the plant. By the next morning, the plant has converted all the previous day’s milk into cheese. Some of the cheese is sold in bulk to repackagers, while the rest is packaged for sale in retail stores nationwide. Some of the milk is made into fresh cheese curds that are distributed to local stores, as they have a short shelf life. The factory also has a retail store. They did well at the end of our tour.
One by-product of the cheesemaking process is whey. Bob sells this to a large plant where it’s dried and made into a variety of products. What is left from the making of cheese is the wastewater. Cedar Grove has installed a “Living Machine,” a series of tanks, to treat the wastewater and return it to the watershed in a pure state.
Inside the plant, the workers were in the final phases of making a fresh batch of cheese curds. Bob told us that many of his workers are recent immigrants; he’s found them hard-working, dependable, and pleasant. 
Thanks for all the kind comments about the Madison area sites. I hope they were inspiring enough for you to consider visiting this part of the world. There’s plenty to see and do.
Until next week, happy travels!
Tom