FORT ATKINSON – For the first time in its nearly 120-year history, cheese made from milk produced at Hoard’s Dairyman Farm now bears the Hoard’s name, the (Madison) Wisconsin State Journal reported last week.
W.D. Hoard & Sons Co., which also publishes the Daily Jefferson County Union newspaper and Hoard’s Dairyman magazine, has had its own farm since 1899. For decades, the milk from their 450 Guernsey cows has been bottled, turned into butter and processed into cheese at dairy plants.
With their recent launch of Hoard’s Dairyman Farm Creamery, the company now produces a Port Salut-style cheese called Belaire that looks like Muenster but tastes bolder and creamier. Up next on their list is a Camembert-style cheese similar to Brie.
“We’re tip-toeing in,” said Brian Knox, Hoard’s president and publisher of both publications. “What we’re trying to do is to have people taste our milk.”
Hoard’s Dairyman, the only agricultural publisher in the U.S. with its own operating dairy farm, began in 1885 as the dairy section of the Jefferson County Union, which was launched in 1870. William Dempster Hoard, considered by many to be the father of Wisconsin’s dairy industry, launched the newspaper and used its columns to educate area farmers about converting their wheat and fruit farms to dairy operations.
