Save the date! Counter Culture Live is coming to Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company on March 21 for a jam-packed (or should we say cheese-packed) day of networking and education. Counter Culture Live connects cheesemakers, importers, mongers, and buyers in an interactive, educational environment. Each trade-only event is an intensive, full-day session with ample opportunity to talk one-on-one and network with your industry peers.

• Want to get paid to eat cheese? Sleep Junkie is paying people one thousand dollars to join its study to find out if eating cheese before bed really causes nightmares. When we eat cheese before bed it lulls us to sleep like a baby, but apparently, it’s known to cause nightmares. We’re glad someone is out here trying to clear cheese’s good name!
• The Michelin Guide published Road Trip along the Vermont Cheese Trail, a travelogue that details the “equal parts excitement and deliciousness,” along the route. Get insider tips for the best cheese, views, and places to stay in the Green Mountain state.
• Age can be a friend to cheese, but only under the right conditions. If anyone would know how to create them it would be the legendary master cheesemaker Tony Hook of Wisconsin’s Hook’s Cheese. For the second time (the first was in 2015), Hook will release a 20-year-old cheddar, in May. It’s $209/pound, and you have to reserve it in advance. We’re betting it’s delicious.
• Why did the cheesemaker bury his pecorino? Because of COVID!
  Okay, so maybe that’s not the best joke, but it is a real story. When the pandemic hit, smaller makers saw sales slow down and were worried they would need to start throwing out cheese. Instead, they took a page out of their ancestors’ playbook and buried the cheese underground. 
  Read more from BBC here.
• American cheese (and no we’re not talking about Rogue River Blue or Harbison) is often looked down on in the cheese world as an inferior product. And while it may never be served on one of our cheese boards, there is a place for it in the kitchen. Bon Appétite recently published a defense of the “irresistibly melty, processed cheese found on every fast food burger worth its salt.”
• Susan Sellew is not as well known as Laura Chenel. but she was an equal pioneer when she launched Rawson Brook Farm in Western Massachusetts in 1983. Her Monterey Chèvre was in high demand by chefs in Boston, and she produced 300-400 pounds of it a week—largely by herself. But at 73, Sellew has had enough. “I can’t do it anymore,” she told the Berkshire Eagle. Read more here.
  Read more here.
• Registration is open for two courses at the Washington State University Creamery. Register for the 35th Advanced Cheese Making Short Course, held March 7-9, here. Register for the Pasteurization Workshop, April 25-27, here.
• The Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association has launched a series of free, employee onboarding videos for the dairy processing industry. 

Josie Krogh

Josie Krogh is culture's Digital Strategy Lead. She earned her master's degree in Agricultural and Applied Economics from The University of Georgia. Josie developed a love of food while working at farmstands in the D.C. area as a young adult, and discovered her love of cheese while living and working on a dairy farm on Martha's Vineyard. She is passionate about the food supply chain, fresh stone fruit, and dogs. Josie currently lives in Catskill, NY.