New Wave of Maine Cheese on the Radio

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Last night Maine Things Considered broadcast a story about the new wave of Maine cheese makers by reporter Jennifer Mitchell featuring soundbutes from Caitlin and myself. (I gave Mitchell several other names of people that she should talk with, but I’m not sure what happened with that).

In the broadcast piece I told a story about the cheese making history of Monroe, where I live, which she included in the broadcast piece, and after I got home from the interview I dug out a copy of the oral history that had been passed along to me when I started my cheese business in Monroe. I went ahead and typed it up and posted it to the Guild web site so anyone else can learn about “Skipper Cheese.”

Monroe Cheese: A Delectable Memory

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Cheese Skipper, or BlowflyThe following is from a story written for the Monroe, Maine town archives describing the Monroe Cheese Factory, which operated for at least 50 years in the center of Monroe, near the falls, until 1936. It includes a description of a very particular product — Skipper Cheese — that they specialized in “before the days of food laws.”

You may remember the “Good Old Days” when you could walk into any grocery store around [Maine] and order a slab of Monroe cheese.

Though the age of automation has brought to humanity untold comfort and pleasure, the days of horses and hard hand work had their compensations. Monroe cheese was one of them.

Like the nine mills that once flanked Monroe Stream, the cheese factory was of an era that saw Monroe become a prosperous center of activity. It was the age when people worked from dawn to dusk, wood was sawed by hand, and a farmer milked by hand and drove the milk by horse team to market.
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Meeting: June 17 at Barred Owl Creamery

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Our June meeting took place in Whitefield at Barred Owl Creamery on Monday, June 17th from 10am to 2pm. We had a long discussion about marketing focus for the Cheese Guild moving forward. We invited a representative to the Maine Dairy Promotion Board to explain how they focus on promoting Maine dairy products, and to offer comments on the Guild’s experiences from the past and ideas for the future. A couple of key questions came up:

–Who are are present customers? How do we reach them?
–How do we reach other customers?

We discussed work that is needed on the Guild web site, on our printed materials, as well as in participating in events around that state that would benefit from adding cheese makers, as well as creating our own Guild events similar to the Open Creamery Day in October, and possibly resurrecting our Maine Cheese Festival event.

Please post your ideas on this issue here to continue this conversation.