TRAVER, Calif. — When dairy producers Bill and Pat Boersma began their long journey toward making farmstead cheese 16 years ago, they did it because they saw it as perhaps the only way to stay in an increasingly margin-squeezed dairy business.

It took four years of research, training and some squabbles with regulators, but in 1995, the husband and wife team had their plant license and a small plant on their Visalia, Calif., dairy farm in which to start making specialty white Cheddars. The new cheese company was named Bravo Farms.

They chose white Cheddar because they had never been fans of convenience foods and believed a farmstead, handmade variety of a commodity favorite could do well in California.

Cheddar isn’t the easiest cheese to make, Bill Boersma says, “but if you understand it, all of the other cheeses fall into place.”

Bravo Farms’ raw milk cheese is hand-cheddared, and the cheddaring process of rolling the curd and stacking it allows it to develop a real Cheddar flavor, Boersma says. He says it’s become a bit of a mission of his to resurrect old-time dairy products because they can’t be made with a machine or in the tonnage people usually need to make a return.

Through the past decade, the Boersmas have had their ups and downs as they lived and breathed their business. Boersma says he and Pat spent most of their time either milking the cows, making cheese or going to farmer’s markets.

“People wanted volume and we didn’t have that, so we were forced to go to farmer’s markets,” he says.

On top of that, Visalia-area locals haven’t been particularly interested in a handcrafted cheese made in their backyard. So the Boersmas regularly trekked three to four hours to markets in the Bay Area.

Over time, the business grew as word got out about Bravo Farms cheese. While farmer’s markets are still an important part of the business, Bravo Farms’ cheese now is carried by stores and restaurants in the Bay Area — where people are seeking a “local” cheese — and in other pockets throughout the country. Unable to provide large volumes of cheese — up until a few months ago, the company was producing just 500 pounds a day — the company slowly but surely has built up its customer base with smaller clients.

In order to concentrate more fully on the business, the Boersmas, who at one time milked 800 cows, sold 350 head in 1998 and further reduced their herd over the years so that by January of this year, they were milking 80 cows.

Still, they found themselves at a turning point. They wanted to sell their cows and concentrate on making cheese but they didn’t have the capacity to make more cheese at their farm. They considered several options, including moving the business to Wisconsin, which has been working to recruit dairy businesses. However, none of the plans they considered were particularly palatable for personal reasons. They had few options until Boersma began visiting with an up-and-coming cheesemaker and his family.

• New partnership, new plant

Meet Jonathan Van Ryn, a newcomer to cheese production if not the dairy business. Van Ryn, 23, is a recent graduate of Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, where he at first started studying dairy husbandry but then discovered dairy product production.

Born and raised on a dairy farm, Van Ryn decided in college that instead of dairy farming after graduation, he wanted to build a cheese plant. His plant was in the process of being built down the road from Visalia in Traver, Calif., when the Boersmas approached the Van Ryn family about the possibility of renting part of the new cheese plant. Out of those initial conversations, a partnership was born.

“He had a lot of what I needed, which was experience,” Van Ryn says of Boersma. “And I had the large facility where he could grow his company. It’s hard to grow unless you have a large capital base.”

The families entered into a 50/50 partnership, and the Boersmas sold their remaining cows to Van Ryn’s father, who dairies in Arizona. Milk for the new plant, which began operating in February, is purchased from another member of the Van Ryn family — Jonathan’s uncle. While the company can no longer boast that it makes farmstead cheese, it uses milk from the uncle’s farm and proudly declares on its newly-designed label that its cheese is made from “pure milk from our family’s farm.”

• Looking ahead to the future

The new Bravo Farms, complete with three vats, now is producing a ton of cheese a day, four days a week. That’s quadruple what was being produced just a few short months ago. While it’s nice to be able to meet demand, Van Ryn says now one of the biggest challenges is pumping up sales with new markets.

“It’s relatively easy to make cheese; getting the sales is what matters,” Van Ryn says.

The company has customers scattered around the country — including famed customers like Murray’s Cheese Shop in New York — as well as a full-time representative who handles seven farmer’s markets in the San Francisco area. However, Van Ryn notes it’s difficult to make a profit with just small quantities going to various locations. That’s why he and Boersma regularly travel to promote the company’s cheeses, including big trade shows like last month’s International Dairy-Deli-Bakery convention in Florida as well as local wine and cheese functions.

At the same time the company is trying to build up demand, it also is trying to build inventory — always a costly proposition. Two of the company’s much-in-demand cheeses are Tulare Cannonball, an aged Edam-style cheese, made in traditional Edam molds, which weighs close to 4 pounds, and Silver Mountain, a rind-cured, bandage-wrapped Cheddar. The cheeses should be aged at least six and nine months, respectively.

“People go nuts for them, but we run out,” Van Ryn says.

While the new plant has 1,800 square feet of basement aging space, a lot of the recently-made cheese is tied up in inventory, not turning a profit. But once the company gets through this more difficult stage during the next few months of not having enough to sell while it’s aging the cheese, there should be a continuous supply, Van Ryn says.

In the meantime, the company’s traditional white Cheddars, made from raw milk in both plain and flavored varieties, age for about four months and are ready and available for sale. Boersma says the company’s Chipotle Cheddar is the biggest seller — making up about 50 percent of the company’s total sales. About a third of the cheese is the plain variety. Western Sage and more recently introduced flavors like Bacon Bits and Cabernet Cheddar also are among the company’s product offerings. In addition, the company has introduced slices because of consumers’ demand for convenience, Boersma says.

While there’s a lot of hard work ahead of them, Van Ryn is confident that the company has what it takes to continue to grow. Five years from now, he hopes the company will be able to have two shifts a day, making — and selling — twice as much cheese as it is now.

CMN