Farm family brings gourmet cheese to nationwide market

CENTER CITY, Minn. (AP)--In the world of cheese, Eichten's Hidden Acres has some interesting claims to fame.

First is Eichten's line of gourmet Gouda cheeses, handmade on the family's Center City farm using Old World ways and local fresh milk. Its cheeses have long enjoyed a regional following, but now they're starting to get national distribution.

Then there's Eichten's 11-foot mouse statue, a cheesy and cheery attraction on U.S. 8 that has enlivened many a road trip to Taylors Falls.

"People say, 'Oh, you're that place with the big mouse,'" said Ed Eichten, one of the current generation of entrepreneurial Eichtens.

With a second generation now in charge, the Eichtens' operation has divided into several separate but interrelated businesses. There's the cheese-making operation, now run by daughter Eileen Eichten Carlson. There's the farming operation, which raises bison, forage and grain, run by son Ed Eichten. And there's the bistro and retail shop--and its big mouse--which sells Eichten's cheeses, bison and other goodies, run by daughter Mariette and her husband, Bill Hoefler.

For this story, the focus is on the cheese-making business, which began in 1976 after Center City dairy farmers Joseph and Mary Eichten grew distressed over the slump in milk prices.

"This started in the late '70s, when the feed bill was bigger than the milk check," Eichten Carlson says. Her father, searching for solvency, was drawn to a vision promoted by the University of Minnesota of a farm-based cheese-making operation. Although still rare here today, such "cheese farms" were virtually unknown then.

"The dream was to have an American farm produce and market a product, just like they did in Europe," she said. Looking back, nobody realized how difficult it would be, or how many new skills the family had to master for survival.

"It was a lot of years of no profit," said Eichten Carlson, who attributes its survival partly to "German stubbornness." (Her mother, Mary Eichten, also credits having the couple's 10 children "helping us, working in the plant.")

But today the cheese-making business is thriving, and Eichten's Gouda, Tilsit and cheese spreads are found in Twin Cities farmers' markets and food co-ops, in grocery stores like Byerly's, Rainbow and Cub; on Amtrak trains to the West Coast; and in SuperTarget stores nationwide.

It took the Eichtens three decades to get to this point, and they've been fortunate to be on the right side of trends. Cheese is more popular than it was 30 years ago--today, most U.S. cow's milk ends up as cheese, not in milk cartons. The growth and popularity of farmers' markets has been a huge help, and so has the boom in natural food products.

But one unlikely turning point came on Sept. 11, 2001. The Eichtens had been supplying cheese to Northwest Airlines for its first-class passengers to Amsterdam. On one terrible day, it stopped.

"When Northwest left, it left us with 10,000 pounds" of Gouda cheese, Eichten Carlson said. The cheese could be aged and sold later, but the business needed to expand its customer base and required help getting there.

Then she heard about a food-marketing specialist, just hired by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, whose job was to advise small food companies. She laughingly admits that she "literally chased him down the hall after he was done speaking."

"That she did," concurred Paul Sand, a veteran buyer in the food wholesale business. "She actually ran down the hall after me and said, 'I've been waiting for you for years!'"

It was worth the wait. The Eichtens proved to be eager and enthusiastic partners, and Sand helped coach them about the big leagues of supermarkets, food brokers and wholesalers. He also has coached several dozen small Minnesota companies.

"We sit down with them one-to-one, and say, 'The following things you need to do if you're going to sell to a Lunds or Cub or Rainbow,'" Sand said. "Most companies, because they've never done that, they have no idea."

One of Sand's ideas especially clicked: creating a Minnesota Cheesemakers Association that teamed Eichten's and three other small cheese makers. With marketing power multiplied, cheese selection expanded and pitch professionalized, Minnesota's artisan cheeses began selling to big players like Amtrak.

Then Minneapolis-based SuperTarget stores signed on to feature two types of Eichten's flavored Gouda, another outgrowth of the cheese-making association.

"We were prepared because we took it one step at a time," Eichten Carlson said. "I've got to give the Minnesota Department of Agriculture credit. They've seen a need to help the small producer."

Yet even now, Eichten's operation is run almost entirely by hand.

"They're the artisan-type cheese makers, and although they've expanded and grown, they're still a fairly small operation," said Ray Miller, the university's cheese maker. "What the Eichtens can do, because they are smaller, is spend a little more time to produce a good-flavored cheese, and produce more of the specialty-type cheeses."

That devotion to the craft brings loyal customers. About 25 years ago, Mary Caylor and her family were driving near Taylors Falls when they saw a sign for a cheese factory. They took a tour, and the Eagan family has been ordering cheese ever since. They not only love the Gouda but also having a connection to the land, their food and the family who makes it.

The Eichtens suffered a blow in April, when patriarch Joseph Eichten died of cancer, three decades after he began making cheese. He lived to see his vision bloom into a profitable family business with a nationwide reach.

"Dad always said he wanted to leave a legacy, and he definitely did," Eichten Carlson said.

Date: 8/31/06

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