Wisconsin Foodie

This week on Wisconsin Foodie. You can't build one of the state's most dynamic and sustainable and progressive dairy farms in a day. The Crave brothers, George, Tom, Charlie, and Mark, are the sons of dairy farmers. So, to me, George, this is both a typical and atypical Wisconsin dairy barn. We're a large farm but not a different farm. For a mozzarella or the mascarpones, I can see how this would turn into fantastic, fantastic cheese. - So we load it up into the cooker. This is 170-degree water. Oh, yeah, that's warm right there. Sure. Okay, so then the cheese comes out, and we want it nice and warm. This is about 120 degrees, as it comes out of that water. That is so cool. - Just take a taste. It will be really squeaky, real milky. It's even more amplified, that milk flavor. The heat must crank it back up. Oh, yeah. Yes. It's really good. Really good. Thank you. Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank

the following underwriters for their support

Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board and the dairy farm families of Wisconsin. Packaging your vision for agricultural products. American Kitchen Cookware is helping food lovers everywhere embrace their own culinary adventure; Outpost Natural Foods, a proud supporter of local organic and Wisconsin Foodie. Society Insurance. Small details. Big difference. Potawatomi Hotel and Casino. Also with support of the Friends of Wisconsin Public Television. Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, representing the dairy farm families of Wisconsin, who fostered a proud history with generations of family-owned dairy farms working to sustain the state's economy through job growth and providing acclaimed cheeses and other dairy products. Every product tells a story, and every story starts with a seed. Your story, your product, your company all started with an idea. Illing Company ensures you have the right packaging to help you proudly take your harvest to market. Illing Company is dedicated to packaging your vision. American Kitchen Cookware is proud to support Wisconsin Foodie in helping food lovers everywhere embrace their own culinary adventure. With cookware manufactured right here in Wisconsin, we're working every day to make people's lives better in and out of the kitchen. (upbeat music) (car whooshing by) (chickens clucking) (beverage bubbling) (crunching) (sizzling) (patrons conversing) (gentle music) (fiddle music) You can't build one of the state's most dynamic and sustainable and progressive dairy farms in a day. The Crave brothers, George, Tom, Charlie, and Mark, are the sons of dairy farmers who are from a bygone era. With 40 cows, they could do right by both their herd and their family. We're here to meet one of those brothers, George, to get a tour of their exquisite farm, their cheesemaking operation, and understand a little bit more of their story. Debbie Crave. - Good to see you. Good to be seen. Glad to have you at our cheese factory today. We're going to make some cheese. We're going to be busy. I have George Crave here for you. Hey, how are you, buddy? Good morning, Kyle. - Good to see you. I'm glad to have you. A little light breakfast here before we make some cheese? Well, we brought a few little samples out for you to try. I would have to give my Wisconsin Foodie mantle back to anybody if I didn't try the cheese curds first. Right. - I mean, that's where we-- - Yes. Right? That's where we begin. These are fresh out of the vat. Am I going to be solo here? You're not setting me up, are you? No, no. - Okay, good. That's delicious. So you are, you're an ex-Alice in Dairyland. I am. You are a couple. - We are. You're one of the brothers. Three more. Three more. Charlie. Tom. Mark. And myself. - Okay. We have Beth, our niece, that is with us in the cheese factory. And we have two nephews, our two nephews, Charlie's two other sons, Jordan and Andy, and our son, Patrick, are also partners in the business now. I'm pretty sure that passes the moniker of family farm. If it doesn't, I don't know what would. Well, everything we do, it starts in the soil. We don't raise wine or cabbage. We raise corn, but it doesn't matter. It all starts in the soil, and we have corn that, right now, it's approaching six feet tall. Mm-hmm. Was just planted about mid-May. - Wow. Right. Right. So, so in about a month, month-and-a-half, it'll grow to be about knee-high to waist-high. - Mm-hmm. Walk out into this corn. Take a look. You just get lost in here. - Absolutely. It's over six feet tall already. I'm in a sea of corn. Yes, and it'll grow another four feet. Oh, yeah. So you've got this. You've got winter wheat. You've got soy. Soybeans. - And what else? And alfalfa. - And alfalfa. And all of this, how many acres, on average, do your raise to feed your cows? We farm 2500 acres. So if you've got 2500 acres of feed spread out across all of that space, you probably need a big place to keep it. Oh, we do. We have big bunker silos, we call it, or trench silos. It's about a two-acre area where we store our feed. Well, give me a tour, George. We feed about 300,000 pounds of feed a day. - Holy. A day? - A day. Well, look at that. So this barn, we built in '89. It's one of the first curtain-sided barns, open air barns built in the Midwest. And the theory here is that we have the openings where the wind can blow through. You have constant fresh air blowing through the barn. And yet, in the wintertime, of course, this is Wisconsin, not every day is like today. Right? So you can drop those curtains down and retain the heat? Yeah, we don't want to warm up the barn because that can create humidity, which isn't healthy for the cows. - Okay. All we're trying to do is keep the wind from blowing in there. So we aren't trying to heat up the barn, we're just trying to protect the cows from the wind and the wind chills. So, to me, George, this is both a typical and atypical Wisconsin dairy barn. - Right. I know that this is how so much of it is done, but I also know, like, your cow bedding and your feed and some other things really distinguish you from, well, a lot of the rest of the dairy going on in the state. Right. We're a large farm, but not a different farm. There's a lot of milk produced in Wisconsin that comes out of these types of farms and these types of families that are producing milk in this method. And this is about 80% of the milk in the country is produced by these types of farms where we say, well, we're big, we're much larger than average, yes, but 20% of the farms, right now are producing about 80% of the milk. We have the four Ms. When we feed a cow. First of all we feed a cow for maintenance. You and I eat for maintenance. - Right. So we can get up tomorrow and do it again. We need our vitamins. - Right. We need our nutrition to maintain our body. Secondly is meat and milk. And the first thing that comes out from feeding a cow is manure. -

laughter

the following underwriters for their support

Remember that. The four Ms next time. Maintenance, meat, milk, manure. - Yes. There's things we can do because of our size, and the way we have our barns built and designed is we can contain the manure. We almost harvest the manure and make it into another product. So that's also an added income and resource on our farm. What's fascinating to me is that you grow your own food for the cows. All the forage is something that you grow in your soil, so you control that. And the way that the food is regulated, I mean, to be candid, these cows eat better than the average American school kid. Oh, yes. Because of how the nutritionists come that are not yours. - Right. But they work for the feds and the state and check on their nutrition, and then really kind of regulate you and tell you this is what your cows need and this is what's best. These are heifers that are ready to have a baby. They're pregnant, very close up heifers. So we feed a lot of straw. People say, "Really, you feed straw?" Yeah, this is kind of the carrot stick. This is kind of the celery stick because they need the fiber. But then, also, there'll be soybean meal in here. There's a piece of corn, corn silage. Alfalfa... That's an alfalfa plant. There's minerals and vitamins in here. There's a piece of dry alfalfa. So we'll build this ration. It's almost like a hash. We'll take all these different ingredients, corn, straw, alfalfa, soybeans, silage, and we'll mix it all together. We call that a total mix ration or a TMR. A total mix ration and we'll mix it all together. She can't pick just to eat hay. She can't pick just to eat chocolate ice cream because there's chocolate ice cream in here, but she also has to have her carrot sticks when she eats her chocolate. So when we say to our kids, "You got to eat everything on your plate, and then you can have dessert." Your cows, yeah, you're managing that too. They can't pick and choose or sort. We call that sorting. It's all mixed with the right moisture. There's even whey in here. We'll take our whey from the cheese operation, pump it back over here, and there's whey in here that acts in a moisture, and you feel that and it's nice and moist. Feels very palatable. Can you smell it? Oh, yeah, there's no question. You smell it, it almost has kind of a chocolatey... I was going to say, it's got this rick, chocolatey, almost like a sweet cigar, kind of scent. Yep, cigar smell. We talk about that in some of the feed. If it has that tobacco shop smell, it's fermented. And what it is is it's all really pickled feed. It's fermented, pickled, preserved. Pickling is preserving and that's what we're doing so we can feed the same feed year round so we have consistent milk. For a mozzarella or the mascarpones, I could see how this would turn into fantastic, fantastic cheese. Right. This is what the cows bed down on. This is the cow bedding. That was a piece of straw a couple of weeks ago. So this is the spent manure. Yes. All of the organisms have done their job. This is all mostly the plant fiber. There's a little piece of hay that went through the cow. There's a piece of straw that went through the cow. Yeah, I'm holding that. Yes, it doesn't smell like manure. It smells much more Earth smell. Yeah, it's very rich. - Yeah. It smells not unlike a rich, dark coffee, in a way. Yeah. Yeah. It is soft and spongy. I can see how this would be comfy to lay down on. So you can see where you tell people you use it back. They're like, "Really?" It's like, "Yeah, it's okay." Wow. Nothing wasted. Nothing lost. Recycling. - Yeah. All right. Well, we take the waste from the farm and the cheese factory and pump it into one of these two 750,000-gallon tanks. And by waste you mean manure. Yes. Oh!... George. Whew. Well, when you have one-and-a-half-million gallons of bio waste that we are intentionally fermenting. We're growing microbes in these fermentation tanks to ferment out the methane to power a large 800-horse V10 engine that turns an electromagnetic generator that's producing enough electricity to power the farm, the cheese factory, and an additional 300 homes in our township. And all this comes from cow poop. All comes from cow poop. Yeah. - Remember what we talked about? Maintenance. - Maintenance. Meat. - Meat. - Milk. Manure. - Manure. So is there anything more behind the scenes we can see of this? Oh, sure, sure, we'll show you that big generator. Oh, cool. (generator engine humming) This is pretty cool. Okay. (generator engine roaring) Whoa. Whoa.

Kyle shouting

the following underwriters for their support

: The blast of heat coming off of that thing. So, the methane drives the engine, the engine drives the generator. - Yes. The generator sends electricity to your whole Crave Brothers enterprise. -Yes. And then out to 300 homes to the grid. - Yes, yes. That's so cool. It's green energy. Right. Right. We're not having to burn coal or go to the Middle East to get our fuel source. Well, that's what's missing. I don't see any battleships out in your fields protecting the Suez Canal. We just get this fuel. Every day, we feed the cows and they give us the fuel. So you've got this full circle with cheese, with energy, with animal husbandry, with the feed. How many other people are doing this, dairy, cheese, like this in America? I can only think of a very small handful. I know of a few in California and a few out East. They're producing milk, cheese and energy. You're on the forefront. - Right. Right. Well, it's just what we do. It's not-- We aren't doing it to be someone. We're doing it because it makes sense with our-- It's our environment. This is where we live. Right. Right. You're an environmentalist whether you like it or not. Yeah. An environmentalist and animal activist. People say, "Oh, that's great, what do you do?" I says, "I farm. - Yeah. We grow the crops, we recycle the nutrients, and I take care of 3,000 head every day, and then I'm a foodie also, I guess. Yeah. Make a little cheese. Smells like milk. That never gets old. I love that smell. It's that warm, humid feeling. So we have the curds and the whey, and we drain some of the whey out, and we want to maintain the curds and the whey to keep it soft and warm and moist and delicate. Provolone and mozzarella are made this way. And then we... scoop it out of the whey. Okay, we just ladle it. I just call this ladling. And every pound of cheese we make is hand-ladled into the cooker. So, aside from some automation of putting on the milking apparatus and a few other things, like this machine, it's really a hand-done process. Yes. - That's gravity-fed. You've got someone up there who's basically a scientist testing everything along the way. -Making sure it's in that perfect state. And then it's hand-ladled into this machine to press it in, and then it's hand-packed and monitored. It's raked through the whey. It's hand-loved. Yeah, we don't have very many conveyors or anything because we don't want to scuff the cheese. The fresh mozzarella, we want a nice, clean pearl finish, and so we just hand-pack it all the way through. - Right That's all we're selling is quality cheese. - Right. So we load it up into the cooker. This is 170-degree water. Oh, yeah, that's warm right there. Yeah yeah, sure. And it melts it. This is a cooker. Mozzarella cooker. And this is a pasta filata where it's melted, again. You take the curd and instead of pressing it into a block, like a cheddar or a Swiss would be pressed into a block or a wheel, it's slowly melting. Okay, so then the cheese comes out, and we want it nice and warm. This is about 120 degrees. It comes out of that water. That is so cool. It comes out and if we have the butterfat correct, if we have the protein right. It won't break. - Right. If we have the pH correct and the cooking temperature and the flow and just stretch it. - That's incredible. It's like this thin membrane of dairy goodness. - Right. Right. And that's what it is, a membrane because you see that? Yeah. And this is what really blows people away. Now look at the moisture that's in there. Wow. Isn't that something? - But that's fresh mozzarella. Right, that's mozz. Yeah, anything short of that wouldn't be right. So you have the moisture in there, but you don't see the moisture. It's trapped in the membrane. There you go. Give it a try. And fold it. Fold it underneath. Fold it underneath. - Just keep folding. Don't, don't-- Yep. There you go. Keep tucking it in. It's so warm. Now you're getting that pearly finish. It's almost too hot to hold. Now squeeze it up kind of between your thumb. There you go. And kind of give it-- There you go. Keep pinching it. Keep pinching it. Then just twist it. That is some tough stuff, by the way. Those proteins really hold together. Right. Look at that. Look at that. Italian and Sicilian grandmothers everywhere are saying, "Nice-a job, Kyle, nice-a job." And still, the amount of milk is still in there. It comes out. - It runs out of there. Don't waste it all, George! - These are cow-milker hands. I'm just used to squeezing things and getting milk out of it. So then we have the cheese. It goes into the molder. And when we have the temperature just right and it stretches and molds, then we end up with these nice ciliegines. These are cherry-sized, and this mold is made just for this cherry size. We have a variety of molders for this. Pearls, cherry, perlini, ciliegine, bocconcini, golf ball size, ovalini. Did you ever think, as a nice kid in Beloit milking with your parents, that you'd know so much Italian? No. -

laughter

the following underwriters for their support

My wife is half Italian. That's the first Italian I got to know real well. What I love about it is that you milked it on Wednesday morning, it was turned into these just a couple of hours later. Right. And it's that fresh. - Right, it's that fresh. It's going into the cup, it'll be in the cooler and tomorrow morning it'll be loaded up into packages and maybe a truck will come tomorrow afternoon or the next day to pick it up. Yeah, just take a taste. It'll be really squeaky, real milky. It's even more amplified, that milk flavor. The heat must crank it back up. - Oh, yes. Yes. What's cool about Crave Brothers is that a lot of the other cheesemakers, well almost all of the other cheesemakers we've ever met with, do something where they have great milk and then it's timed. And they manage the cheese with different influences, different strains of bacteria... over time. Yours is almost expressed but it's got to be perfect. It can actually manage with such subtlety and attention otherwise this whole thing is lost. Right, we have to start with really fresh, because when we milk the cows it is instantly refrigerated, so we're catching that very fresh sweetness of the milk. And it's cold and crisp, and we're catching that all the way and capturing that and... and all the way through our system. That's in the flavor of these, especially a warm one. There's a tightness on your tongue, and that's sweet, like not towards honey or sugar, but that-- I don't know. It's a warm, sweet-- - It's that sweeter lactose. You're getting the lactose. Lactose is milk sugar. And it's still present. - Right. Yeah. It's really good. It's really good. - Thank you. So here's one way we package it into three-pound tubs. Food service or deli tubs. This will go to a larger grocery store where they might pack it and repack it into olive oil for their olive bar. Or they might break it down into smaller cups. Or a restaurant that specializes in this. Yeah, a restaurant, pizzeria, that will buy it. So we make probably about a third of our products will go out in these deli tubs, and the rest will go through the repacking or retail package. So it's back in the same way that's been part of the process the whole time. This is a brine. This is a brine now. All right. So this is a saltwater pH-balanced brine. So we're adding a little bit of salt to this product. So it stays happy. - Yes. Stays at that right density. - Correct. - Yeah. We have to balance the pH of the brine to maintain the integrity of the cheese. The irony is that you could be going to your favorite Italian restaurant, pizzeria, what have you, getting this in your sandwich, pizza, pasta dish, not knowing at all that it's Crave Brothers mozzarella from Wisconsin. We ask sometimes where do you get your mozzarella from? And it's really humbling and makes you just step back for a second when you understand that it is your product that might be San Francisco, might be in Seattle, Miami, New York City, that we have products in all those markets. Well, and it proudly says "Made in Wisconsin." Right. - Yeah. Wisconsin-made fresh mozzarella. - Yep. Yep. I brought a few little samples out for you to try. We have some of our marinated ciliegine. The fresh mozz ciliegines, cherry-sized. Pearls. - Okay. Fresh mozz pearls-- A lot of different sizes of fresh mozzarella. Pearls, bocconcini, ciliegines, so we have all that. So we marinade them in peppers. Oregano. It's a beautiful spice blend. Our own special recipe. I'm no Italian cheese expert, but you blindfold me and these will knock your socks off and maybe think they came from Italy. Right, right. I'm going to have this mascarpone. I mean, if you don't mind. No, no. Go ahead. Because you're famous for this. Right, yep, it's a sweet cream mascarpone. We use our very, very fresh cream. So this is like a luxury cream cheese. It is. It's a non-cultured cream cheese. So you don't have that cultured flavor. So you just get that sweet, fresh milk flavor. Mascarpone's known for tiramisu, but we have so many more fun applications that we're showing you, even a couple here that we don't even make tiramisu. We have simple chocolate mascarpone pie and our lemon mascarpone tarts. We have a wonderful soup. So when you come back in the fall we'll have soup. Mascarpone mushroom soup - That sounds wonderful. It's not a soup day so you'll have to visit again. We will. Smell that feed. It's really rich. That feed is really rich. That's just the pure feed without-- Let's hope he doesn't fall in right now. Well, there's been, they call that bunker silo avalanches. There's been people killed. You got any liability, for TV hosts liability? He's not very valuable.

Both

the following underwriters for their support

: (laughter) You want me to take my watch off? Ah, yes. So here we're stirring it, keeping it mixed in, and they'll continue to salt it. We kind of call that like feeding the chickens. -

laughter

the following underwriters for their support

That's what it looks like. Yeah, just out there in the yard. Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board and the dairy farm families of Wisconsin. Packaging your vision for agricultural products. American Kitchen Cookwares, helping food lovers everywhere embrace their own culinary adventure. Outpost Natural Foods, a proud supporter of local organic and Wisconsin Foodie. Society Insurance. Small details. Big difference. Potawatomi Hotel and Casino. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Lamers Bus Lines, providing Wisconsin with deluxe motor coach service, school busing, and more. Also with support of the Friends of Wisconsin Public Television. Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, representing the dairy farm families of Wisconsin, who fostered a proud history with generations of family owned dairy farms working to sustain the state's economy through job growth and providing acclaimed cheeses and other dairy products. Every product tells a story, and every story starts with a seed. Your story, your product, your company all started with an idea. Illing Company ensures you have the right packaging to help you proudly take your harvest to market. Illing Company is dedicated to packaging your vision. American Kitchen Cookware is proud to support Wisconsin Foodie in helping food lovers everywhere embrace their own culinary adventure. With cookware manufactured right here in Wisconsin, we're working every day to make people's lives better in and out of the kitchen.