Jan Rodriguez’s
cheese success took root in the Texas hill country in 2000 where he left his
job at a leading technology consulting company to pursue his dream of making
the best cheese in Texas. In January 2001, The Cheese Cottage won the Central
Texas Excellence in Business Award for Cheese-making.
To
us at The Cheese Cottage, building a productive farm with responsibility for
the future means intelligent management of both the land and its waste.
The
Cheese cottage is therefore a study in total integration, balancing a thousand
elements to maintain cost effectiveness and high productivity while protecting
the environment.
Ours
is both a dairy and crops farm. We grow much of our own feed. Manure and waste
water are 100% returned to our land via a sophisticated waste control program
and irrigation system that ensures no groundwater seepage or reliance on evaporation
to ‘‘make a problem go away."
Even
cheese by-products are not wasted: the nutritious whey (the liquid part of milk)
is used as part of our integrated herd feeding program.