Page 18 Stories of the Heartland • Sunday, September 21, 2025 hometownsource. com / heartland /
Cows, cheese, and a distillery all on one farm
BY CYNTHIA PARSONS STORIES OF THE HEARTLAND
For a fun experience, step into a working dairy farm where artisan cheese is made on site. Alise Sjostrom, president and CEO of Redhead Creamery— and a redhead herself— said,“ We make cheese two to three days a week. Take a tour on Fridays or Saturdays and visit our 200 registered dairy cows and see how cheese is made.”
Lucas Sjostrom, Alise’ s husband, said 10 % of the farm’ s milk is used to make cheese on site. The
Sjostrom
rest is sold to Bongards’ Creameries to make its cheeses.
Alise honed her cheesemaking skills at the
Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese, studied the dairy industry in Wisconsin and traveled to Switzerland to learn about Swiss-style cheeses.“ Many wonderful cheesemakers and owners took me under their wing through those years and helped build my knowledge and understanding of the cheesemaking tradition,” she said.“ We are a fully run dairy farm that has a cheese plant on it.”
Redhead Creamery sits on Jer-Lindy Farms in Brooten, Minnesota. Alise’ s parents, Jerry and Linda Jennissen, purchased the farm in 1983. They started with 32 cows. Today, Jer-Lindy is a 240-acre farm with 200 registered Holsteins and four Brown Swiss dairy cows.
“ I grew up on a dairy farm and fell in love with the Holstein cow at a young age,” Linda said.“ I met the love of my life showing cows.”
The Jennissens are environmentally conscious and look for sustainable ways to farm.“ Our goal is to be sustainable while profitable, with water and soil quality as two of our critical focus points,” Jerry said.“ We’ ve been able to make sustainability profitable, and by being as forwardthinking as possible, we hope to pave the way to a strong future for our farm and creamery.”
Instead of commercial fertilizer, the farm uses manure from its cows to fertilize crops. It employs a weekly monitoring service to scan for weeds and harmful pests, reducing the need for herbicides and pesticides. Whey from the cheese plant is piped back to the feed center, mixed into feed for the dairy cows to cut costs and reduce waste.
Growing up, Alise wanted to stay on the farm but did not want to milk cows her whole life, so she decided to make cheese. That vision became
Redhead / See page 21