A local creamery has been making flavored cheese curds for the past decade as a way to supplement their family dairy farms. 

Vern Stoltzfus was 5 years old when his parents moved to Vernon Center from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with their dairy business. 

The milk truck pulls into the driveway at Stoltzfus Family Dairy. (Emily Kenny/Spectrum News 1)

“Over the years, the challenge of maintaining a small family farm became difficult with milk prices going up and down,” Stoltzfus said. 

The family drew up plans for the creamery in the early 2000s and built it in 2010 in an old hay storage facility.

Stoltzfus attended cheesemaking classes, where he learned to make their signature flavored cheese curds that begin with raw milk from three dairy farms owned by Stoltzfus’ cousins.

Cheese curds are a fresh, young cheddar cheese that is packaged and sold rather than molded into other cubed cheeses, aged cheeses or cheese wheels. 

“We put it into the cheese vat and do a minimum pasteurization which is 145 degrees,” Stoltzfus said. 

The cheese then cools, and they add their culture and rhythmic calcium, which helps the cheese curds continue to curdle. 

“We cut that in the vat into little squares and cook it,” Stoltzfus said. “After it reaches a certain temperature and the acidity is right, we pump all the whey and the cheese onto the draining table where the whey drains away, and the cheese becomes one big block.” 

Employees at Stoltzfus Family Dairy work in the processing facility. (Emily Kenny/Spectrum News 1)

Then the cheese curds go through what is called the cheddaring process, Stoltzfus said. 

“At that point, we cut it up in strips and feed it into the cheese miller.” 

As it comes out, they salt the cheese that has become fresh cheese curds and mix in one of 10 flavors — including sour cream and onion, dill and garlic and Buffalo hot wing. 

Over the past decade, cheese consumption has jumped 13% in the United States while fluid milk consumption has decreased, according to the International Dairy Foods Association, a decline Stolzfus is seeing as well.

“Fluid milk is definitely one of our lowest entities, but our price point is higher than a lot of other milk because we do small batch processing,” he said. 

The Stoltzfus family distributes their product throughout New York state, and they work with a distributor to get it to other areas of the country.