Cheese Lovers Newsletter (12.12.2020): The End of Cheese 2020

Hello Cheese Lovers,

This is either the Beginning of the End, or the Middle of the Beginning of the End - or potentially even the End of the Middle of the Beginning of the End - of Cheese Season 2020. Regardless, it has been fun and tear-invoking and challenging and filled with laughter and quarantine-y and great, so far. Thank you for your continued support.

We don't really have time to write a great newsletter today, but we do have time to write a newsletter today. We'll be brief:

The Cheese Van cometh
To those who've ordered. THANK YOU. We need to split our usual single day order into at least two and maybe three routes this week. We'll head to the Twin Cities on Monday with non-cheese-curd orders, make cheese curds on Tuesday, head back to the Twin Cities with orders on Wednesday, head to Sioux Falls and southwestern MN either Wednesday night or Thursday, aren't quite sure when or how we're going to get to Mankato-Hutchinson (thank you to those from that area, you've created a good problem), have the pop-ups on Thursday and Friday, possibly deliver in the Twin Cities again on Saturday, and on Sunday we shall rest. But, we promise to get it all done, safely, with close to an appropriate amount of sleep.
If you still intend to order, please note delivery dates will be subject to change at this point... and same if you've already ordered, although we will contact you as that happens.

UPS still rocking
So far, we've still only seen a tiny percentage of our shipments be delayed via UPS. No doubt, the cheese man in the cheese van isn't perfect either. But the good news is with extreme exception cheese is getting to you on time and in good shape.

Question of the Week: We went on the farm tour [before the recent pause], how do you find so much information about your land's history? Is it all written in one book?

Good question. Mostly Jerry has worked hard to piece together a lot of the history of our land and the people on it at least since white people arrived from Europe. But a recent article in this week's Bonanza Valley Voice (Brooten, Minn.) paper confirmed a lot of what we know:

Gust Levorson (the son of Levor Olson) was a prominent person in North Fork, starting the Brooten Co-Op Creamery, President of the fire insurance company, and connected with several other area area organizations. He was a do-er, so we are fortunate to know that history of his time here. We've also been lucky to be visited by Gust's extended kin with more documents and books. We also know from neighbors some of the history of the land, and since we've been on it ourselves for 40 years we are now part of the history, too.
You can look up online databases at Fold3.com, Ancestry.com, and the Bureau of Land Managment's General Land Office Records or by requesting records from the National Archives.

We need to stop there to get things put together for the cheesiest week of the year so far...

Have a great week!

Alise, Linda, Jerry and Lucas