our roots

We are a family of maniacal cheese lovers with a commitment to making locally-sourced, handcrafted cheeses of the finest quality. This project was born of countless dreams spun around the Sunday dinner table and turned into a reality in 2013 right here in Stephentown, NY. Our recipes are the product of more than 30 years of combined experience in the specialty cheese industry. Through careful crafting, we make cheeses that showcase the bounty of the Hudson Valley and please palates far and wide.

Willy Bridgham is our master cheesemaker, with over 25 years of artisanal cheesemaking experience, who slings curd like nobody’s business. His wife, Shaleena Bridgham, our sales director with over 25 years of experience, spends her days managing our sales and getting our cheese into the mouths of grateful cheese lovers all over the country. Willy’s sister, Josie Madison, is our operations and finance director, handling the less sexy stuff from daily operations to strategic planning.

what’s in a name?

We are committed to making a locally-sourced product that we can be proud of. It seems only fitting that our name should be locally-sourced as well. Stephentown, NY has a rich history going back to the colonial era. In the seventeenth century, the Dutch colonized the Hudson Valley and established a system of landholding called patroonship. The patroon acted as the landlord to tenants who rented land to live on and farm. Stephentown was named after Stephen Van Rensselaer, the last patroon of the patroonship that now comprises Rensselaer County. His tenants called him the “Good Patroon” because he was lenient in collecting rent, which included a day’s labor, ten to twenty bushels of wheat per hundred acres, and “four fat fowl.” This history gave us the perfect name for our group.