Access to milk, love of cooking lead to cheese-making dairy

Logan County busi­ness finds suc­cess through social media, farm markets

BY STEPHANI DUFF

Jim had expe­ri­ence with Hol­stein dairy farm­ing and Angel had knowl­edge acquired in the kitchen, and the cou­ple real­ized they had ready access to quan­ti­ties of milk. Before long they focused on their com­mer­cial busi­ness and began to source milk from Jim’s cousin and local goat farmers.

“We liked the idea of keep­ing our prod­ucts local while simul­ta­ne­ously sup­port­ing local busi­ness,” explained Angel.

The Kings have a store just out­side Belle­fontaine where they sell their cheese prod­ucts, offer cheese sam­ples and sell whey-fed pork which they raise.

Some of the cheese prod­ucts they offer are fresh cheese curds in var­i­ous fla­vors, such as plain, dill, ranch, and smoked chipo­tle. They also offer farm­house feta, moz­zarella and quark. One of their sig­na­ture cheeses is known as a Gretna Grilling cheese that is browned in a “siz­zling hot skil­let” where it forms a nice crust and tastes like a grilled cheese sand­wich with­out the bread.

Whey is a by-product of the cheese mak­ing process and is also an excel­lent source of pro­teins, vit­a­mins, and lactose.

They feed it to their Berk­shire hogs, in addi­tion to alfalfa hay and ears of corn. In the fall and win­ter they are butchered and sold on site.

Angel explains, “The major­ity of our hogs are

raised for mar­ket; we even have some cus­tomers that buy the whole hog and have it processed to their liking.”

Along with per­sonal cus­tomers, Jim and Angel also sell hogs to restau­rants in Day­ton and Colum­bus for spe­cific dishes on menus.

Blue Jacket Dairy pro­motes its busi­ness in large part by hav­ing a strong pres­ence in farm­ers mar­kets in both Colum­bus and Day­ton, where they take their cheese prod­ucts and offer sam­ples to customers.

“We also are lucky to be pro­moted by social media such as Face­book and email com­mu­ni­ca­tion, by word of mouth, and by being named in the menus of the restau­rants that serve our prod­ucts,” Angel explained.

Blue Jacket Dairy is fam­ily owned and operated;

Jim and Angel’s daugh­ter works in the sum­mer when she is home from school and their younger chil­dren help when and where they can. They also have sea­sonal employ­ees, with as many as 15 at the peak of their busy sea­son. Jim and Angel are proud to be a part of the Ohio revival of small (com­pared to Kraft) cheese makers.

“We are excited to be able to take the com­mod­ity of milk and add value to it with the unique cre­ation of arti­san cheeses,” said Angel. “It is also a fun process to see how the milk fla­vors change through­out the sea­sons and how that influ­ences the vari­ety of fla­vors in the cheeses we offer.”

The Kings bring pas­sion and joy to the process of cheese mak­ing that extends to their cus­tomers through the products.

For more about the dairy, visit Blue Jacket Dairy’s web­site at www.bluejacketdairy.com.

Stephani Duff writes for the

Troy Daily News.