Soil key to better cheddar

0 Comments | La Crosse Tribune, Jun 29, 1998

ETTRICK, Wis.--Based in the century-old former Hegg General Store building, Wildwood Farms, LLC, is about to make its first shipments of chemical-residue-free white cheddar cheese to Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores in Mexico City, Mexico.

And Dan Marks, owner of the year-old company, has plans to expand his line of dairy products to include a French-style butter, a dairy drink and milk in old-fashioned amber-colored bottles, for sale in area stores.

Marks, 45, began producing his white cheddar cheese last October. He contracts with two Clark County cheese plants to make it for him. Most is shipped from the old general store in Hegg, an unincorporated area northeast of Ettrick, to mail-order customers across the nation.

"We get people from all over the U.S. calling in and saying they can't eat normal cheese," Marks said as he displayed two cheese wheels on the old general store's counter. "They're sensitive to chemicals in their food, but they can eat my cheese."

About a dozen dairy farmers within 60 miles supply Marks with milk from cows that are raised without growth hormones and with natural soil maintenance methods. Marks said he's been able to help them get $16 to more than $18 per hundredweight for their milk, rather than the usual $12 to $13.

These farmers use kelp, minerals and additives such as vitamins, friendly bacteria and enzymes to produce a healthy environment in the soil, and stimulate earthworms and healthy microbial life, Marks said. And they avoid using anhydrous ammonia, chemical insecticides, salty fertilizer and spent acids used in phosphates, said Marks, who also assists producers with natural soil maintenance. The cows also eat feed that includes kelp and full-spectrum minerals.

All of this makes for healthier cows and purer milk, Marks said.

"The best recipe for the best cheese begins with the soil," he said. "You can't have dead soil (lacking life such as worms and microbes) and sick animals and expect to have great food."

Marks also uses ocean salt from France to make his cheese. And by September, he hopes to be using raw milk instead of pasteurized milk "The health-conscious market is very sold on the idea for better digestibility," Marks said.

Wildwood Farms recently received a $3,000 state Rural Economic Development Program grant to complete a business plan and set up a trust to manage raw product payments to milk producers. Marks hopes to get additional state loan and grant money for such things as cheese cutting and repackaging equipment for the old general store (the cheese now is sold as wheels that weigh 5 3/4 pounds or 23 pounds), and establishing a retail store in part of the building.

Marks also is looking for investors.

He has contacted Japanese retailers about carrying his cheese. And Marks is participating in a United States Dairy Export Council promotion of American-made cheeses in Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores in Mexico City, which he said will sell his cheese.

"But the largest market for me will be direct sales," Marks said. "That's through the networks and channels of people who are interested in organic-type foods without chemical residues, and with a high-nutritive quality." He promotes his cheese in newsletters and magazines that cater to organic food fans.

Marks, whose father was a lawyer, was raised in Westport, Conn. "That's where I got my exposure to the environmental movement, back when it was starting in the '60s and '70s," he said of his years in that state. He earned a bachelor's degree in animal science from the University of Connecticut.

Then Marks moved to Jackson County, Wis., where he operated a 400-acre dairy farm for three years. Open spaces and lower land prices brought him to the state, he said.

He later was on the staff of the Federal Land Bank in Chippewa Falls, Wis. Before he started Wildwood Farms last summer, Marks had provided consulting services to dairy farmers for about 10 years, while working for a cooperative and while self-employed.

Marks has lived in the Coulee Region since 1979, when he moved to Galesville. Two years ago, he bought the Hegg building from his brother, John, who had operated a general and natural foods store and bakery there in the 1970s.