It's like a startup inside a century-old company, assistant general manager Amye Gulezian says of High Lawn Farm's artisan creamery. When a dairy operation is set up to move fresh milk to customers as quickly as possible, everything from inventory tracking to accounting has to be reconfigured to fit the slow, deliberate schedule of making and aging farmstead cheese. The dairy farm started making cheese in 2019, and since then, productions like the brandy-washed Siegfried's Pride and crumbly-tart Wilde Field have become increasingly important to keeping this Jersey milk lab of the Berkshires in business.
Established as a family dairy farm in the 1920s, High Lawn is a globally recognized name in the science of Jersey cow breeding and the sweet fat- and protein-rich milk that Jersey cows produce. More than a hundred years after founder Marjorie Wilde started tinkering with Jersey cow genetics, descendants of High Lawn cows now graze as far off as India. Jersey milk is special, explains creative director of specialty foods and head cheesemaker Matthew Schweizer. "It's like making wine from a single grape variety. The milk has a certain character to it. We listen to the milk to see how it'll turn out in the final product."
Running a dairy farm is harder than it used to be. Americans drink less milk these days, and what milk we do consume is increasingly consolidated by giant agribusinesses that compete on scale and industrial efficiency. Value-added products like excellent butter and artisan cheese are smart ways for farmers to carve out unique economic niches, especially when the milk is as good as High Lawn's. You can taste it in their cheese. Jersey milk has high concentrations of minerals and proteins that give Siegfried's Pride, Wilde Field, and High Lawn Blue a sweet and complex flavor.
Matthew Schweizer was making fresh mozzarella at a local restaurant when Roberto Laurens Jr., the son of High Lawn's general manager and a dairy supplier to that restaurant, mentioned he was planning to develop a cheese program at the farm. "When he came back next week I had read multiple cheese books and positioned myself to be prepared so I could join him," Schweizer says.
Lots of experimentation followed. "We failed a lot," Schweizer continues. "That turned out to be a good thing. We learned from each mistake in an iterative process." Initial rounds of mozzarella, cheddar, washed rinds, and other cheese styles helped the High Lawn team dial in what their resoundingly rich milk was best at. "You're not taking failure as a failure. It's an opportunity to get better."
At one point High Lawn balanced as many as 20 different cheese products, but the work had spread the creamery's proverbial butter over too much bread. "We had to kill some of our darlings," Schweizer admits. It was painful to scrap recipes he had personally developed, but a smaller product list helped High Lawn's team focus on consistency and quality. The team makes decisions "week by week and even day by day," according to Gulezian, based on factors like changing milk components through the seasons, outdoor temperatures, and how long different steps take. They made 50,000 pounds of cheese in 2025 and expect to refine and improve their seven artisan cheeses through this year, including Wilde Goat, a beautiful version of Wilde Field made with local goat's milk.
One advantage of making cheese with your farm's own milk is developing an intimate understanding of how that milk's character shifts from spring through fall and winter, and adjusting your cheese choices and aging accordingly. In the Middle Ages, there was a practice of divining the future from the bumps and ridges of cheese curds as they coagulated. It was called tyromancy, and a few people still practice the fortune-telling method today. We consider Schweizer, Gulezian, and the rest of High Lawn's five-person cheese team to be modern-day tyromancers: experts who look months into the future to see how their cheeses will age, and in turn how they'll keep this important dairy farm thriving for another century. Based on our new shipments of High Lawn cheese, the future is tasting good.
Try High Lawn Farm's amazing farmstead cheese and butter made with Jersey milk!
Farm photos courtesy of High Lawn Farm.
