My wife LOVES cheese, so a few years ago I thought it would be fun to take her to a place that makes it as a little birthday treat. Since we were already familiar with, and enjoying Kenny’s cheese at (then) Wild Oats, we knew what we were in for in terms of the end product, but neither of us had ever seen how cheese is made. I was envisioning a giant facility that was pumping out cheese by the truckloads every day. I was quite surprised to see that it is little more than a farm with an extra long ranch style house converted into a cheese making facility. NOT a big operation by any means. In fact, the cheese is really “made” in one room once the milk is pumped into that room to mix with the other ingredients. Quite a small operation, but a productive one at that.
We were given a “factory tour” consisting of two rooms, one of which was the storage room where the yummies are kept and aged for any number of weeks or months, depending on the cheese. There was a retail shop about the size of a one car garage. Right before the tour started, a GIANT tour bus from some Baptist church in KY unloaded a serious mob of senior adult women, and a nice cozy private tour became something quite different than that. They were sweet though, but the funny thing was, as soon as the talk was over, a few bought cheese and it was back on the bus, almost as if this little outing had a timer on it. They were gone in no time.
Kristi and I wanted to hang around a bit, so we got to spend some time with Kenny Mattingly himself, who cut us some cheese to try and even gave us a piece of some incredibly pungent something, that was tasty, but man was it strong—and we like that kind of stuff. We hung around for over an hour talking to him and his wife and just having a nice visit with them and enjoying one of our favorite things. The birthday girl was really enjoying this. Kinda like culinary Disneyland.
After our visit with the nice Mattingly’s, we bought a sack full of cheese, and then toured the grounds a bit so we could see some cows, and that is when we came upon this little gem above who was wanting to give Kristi a smooch. The two of them immediately hit it off and #388 was quite playful and responsive to Kristi. When I tried to have some fun with the baby calf, it was quite the opposite reaction—there was resistance and even backing away and showing no interest in me whatsoever. Well that didn’t last long before Kristi stepped back in and redeemed my disastrous attempt at some hang time with #388. We saw one other calf smaller than this one, and there were several other “kids” as well as plenty of adult cows mooing their heads off which was quite amusing.
It was a great time at the farm, and I am confident one of these days we will return there, and hopefully we will run into #388 again as an adult. Maybe this time I’ll get a kiss.
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