Saxon Creamery
Website: www.saxoncreamery.com/saxon/
Our Story
We started in 1848 with a 160-acre homestead farm in the wilderness, building that up to our current 1000-acre spread. For decades, we used a conventional setup of confinement dairy farming, but in 1989, we converted to a rotational grazing system, which quickly became the cornerstone of our farm.
As the crow flies, our creamery is a little less than two miles from the Saxon Homestead Farm itself. This short travel time preserves the flavor and integrity of the most important ingredient our cheeses have “The Milk”.
The milk arrives at the creamery fresh from the farm. The milk enters the cheese vats at 95 °F and the cheese making process begins. Our Master Cheesemaker and licensed cheese makers follow carefully established recipes adding the specific cultures, stirring speeds and times, cooking temperatures, curd washing to create each style of cheese in the Saxon Family of Cheeses.
Each cheese wheel is handcrafted in the vat, gently pressed, and placed in brine tanks. Then they’re embossed with the Saxon logo – an Art Noveau-inspired motif of blowing leaves, symbolic of our embrace of tradition and nature.
The cheeses are open aged by rotating through three aging rooms maintained at specific temperatures and humidity for defined periods of time to develop the unique flavor profiles our customers love.
Flavor, by nature. It’s what we’re known for, what we strive for, every day, with every wheel we make.
Our Products
ASIAGO FRESCA – WHOLE MILK FRESH ASIAGO STYLE
BIG ED’S GOUDA STYLE – A GOUDA STYLE WITH FRENCH ALPINE CHEESE FLAVORS
PASTURES – AGED OLD ENGLISH FARMHOUSE CHEDDAR STYLE
GLACIAL LAKES – OUR GOUDA STYLE WITH RAW MILK EARTHY FLAVORS
GREENFIELDS – A SEMI-SOFT AROMATIC MONASTERY STYLE CHEESE
SAXONY-ALPINE CHEESE – A FULL BODY AGED CHEESE WITH SWEET NUTTY FLAVORS
SNOWFIELDS – AGED BUTTERKASE STYLE MADE WITH OUR WINTER MILK
Raising Practices
?YES/NO Free Range Animals
?If YES…how many hours a day are they on grass, how much space is available to them.
?YES/NO Certified Organic Feed
?YES/NO GMO Feed
?YES/NO Synthetic Hormones
?If so, how often?
?YES/NO Antibiotics
?If so, how often?
?What are they fed:
?Breed of Animals:
Rotational grazing gives the Saxon Family of Cheeses its signature, flavorful taste.
Each and every cheese in our lineup is affected by the herd’s freedom to graze in two- to six-acre paddocks, where the cows harvest their own feed and spread their own manure. Incidentally, this process of manure spreading allows billions of soil microorganisms to regenerate themselves at a natural pace, building a better pasture, cleaner water and healthier soil. This has reduced our reliance on fossil fuels, energy and chemicals, ultimately lowering our carbon footprint.
For those of you interested in the fine print, the Saxon Homestead Farm adheres to several Natural Resource Conservation Service state and county agricultural management plans: We have a Nutrient Management Plan, a Comprehensive Nutrient Management Plan, and a Pasture Management plan, all unique to livestock operations. These plans address natural resource concerns like soil health and erosion, livestock manure, and runoff. The Saxon Homestead Farm has been an operating University of Wisconsin Discovery Farm since 2004.
Who Do You Support When Buying from Us
Currently, the fifth generation of Klessigs operates the pasture-based dairy farm, which consists of 850 acres of permanent pasture land and an additional 200 acres of forage and corn silage cropland. Today’s herd of almost 450 Holstein-Jersey crossbred cows and their young stock graze on the feast of seasonal grasses, much like the early herds did.