WAYNE COUNTY, Pa. — Highland Farm outside Honesdale is a sixth-generation dairy farm that makes its living from the cows it tends to. Calkins Creamery is the cheese-making portion of the family business.
"We started building in 2006 and had some of our first sales in 2007, so it's about 13 years old of producing cheese," said Emily Montgomery, Calkins Creamery.
What started with just a few styles of cheese then now includes more than 25. A few have won awards at competitions, including the Pennsylvania Farm Show and the American Cheese Society. So Montgomery decided to take a shot at the World Championship Cheese Contest.
"Both Noble Road has always done well at competitions, so I thought, well, if I'm going to spend money, let's enter the best of the best that we have here."
The competition took place last week in Wisconsin. Calkins Creamery entered two cheeses, Noble Road and Noblette, both brie-style cheese. Noble Road placed ninth in the brie category. Noblette won best in class.
"It's the world's largest cheese, butter, and yogurt competition. It's like the World Cup of the cheese. It's just very strange for us to say that it's the world coming from our small little 1,200-square-foot building here, but we couldn't be more proud that we put a very small farmstead cheese on the map for our county," Montgomery said.
This award-winning cheese wouldn't be possible without the happy cows to produce the milk at Highland Farm.
"The farmers, they're the ones that actually have done the hard work of milking the cows, caring for the animals, caring for the land, everything involved. It's not just us here in the creamery making it happen. my whole entire family is involved."
But there's more than just one award-winning cheese on their list. You can stop by the farm not far from Honesdale to visit the cows and get a taste and a tour of this award-winning farm.