Uplands Cheese Company - Our Farm - Pleasant Ridge Reserve, an artisanal cheese, Dodgeville, Wisconsin

The area in southwest Wisconsin that the glaciers left untouched is known as the Uplands. This area is characterized by rolling hills (or ridges) and valleys. Being within the northern portion of the tallgrass prairie, the soils are ideally adapted to producing grasses and forbs.

Our farm is located within the Uplands in the old Pleasant Ridge area north of Dodgeville Wisconsin. cows grazing

It consists of 300 acres of ridgetop land that we have converted to managed pasture. The pasture is subdivided into separate paddocks that the cows are moved through in a rotational manner. They get fresh pasture at the optimum stage of growth each day. The pasture, along with a small amount of grain, makes up their summer diet.

Cows don't produce milk until they have a calf (a fact that may be obvious to you but you'd be surprised how many people don't know that). All of our cows have their calves in the spring and produce milk through the summer and fall. They are dry for most of the winter and then the cycle starts again the next spring. This spring calving, pasture feeding regimen is the way cows evolved and is no doubt more consistent with the rest of their life processes than the typical practice of confinement and machine harvested feed that most cows experience. We are sure our cows are more happy and content than their confined peers.

There may also be nutritional benefits in the milk of grassfed cows. Compared to commodity milk, grassfed milk is much higher in Vitamin E, Omega-3 fatty acids, and Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA), all of which are thought to have health enhancing properties. Who knows for sure? You can find out more about the benefits of grassfed dairy products by visiting http://eatwild.com/.