Mark Gillman ’91 began making cheese just five years ago at the farm on which he grew up just 30 minutes southeast of Hartford, Connecticut. Already their Cato Corner Farm — which Gillman runs with his mother, Elizabeth Lewis MacAlister (Bryn Mawr ’65) — has earned kudos in The New York Times as one of the “best New England cheesemakers” and Steven Jenkins, author of the Cheese Primer and a partner at Fairway Markets in New York, has singled the cheesemaker out as “a budding superstar.” Greg Sava ’69 of West Virginia has also received accolades for his Brier Run Farm goat cheese from the Times as well as cheese experts such as Jenkins, but he’s been at it since Gillman was in kindergarten and the now-booming American farmstead cheese category was in its infancy.

Sava and his wife,Verena, moved to West Virginia in 1975 “because it had cheap land,” and the rolling hills were reminiscent of Verena’s native Switzerland but with a more temperate climate. They hoped to open a school, but after spending all but $500 of their life savings on 80 acres of land, they were obliged to buy a goat to help feed themselves. Extra milk led to cheese and by 1990 they were the first certified organic goat cheese in the country and had earned American Cheese Society awards and broad press coverage. They grew to six employees and 140 goats and were shipping cheese all over the country before they decided in 2002 that they needed a break. “We had built this up from nothing and we were proud of making a good product that is healthier for the animals and for those who eat it. But eventually there are other things in life,” says Sava. They recently found a young couple with whom they are working to transfer their expertise and continue to fill orders for their fresh creamy logs or aged blue mold ripened discs to a select group of accounts such as Zabar’s in New York City and the historic Greenbrier resort in West Virginia.

Gillman also takes great pride in the cheeses that he crafts from the milk of Cato Corner’s 25 Jersey cows into about 10 different cheeses ranging from a “stinky, unctuous Hooligan” to an “earthy ripe blue,” as he describes them. They are sold largely through the New York City Greenmarkets to both consumers and leading restaurants and cheese shops such as Union Square Café and Artisanal. Like rancher Peter Goldmark ’67 (see p. 32), Gillman returned to the family farm after Haverford, although he took a detour to work for Teach for America on the way. He came home, motivated to create a business he could run with his mother and also inspired by growing up on a farm where eating well with the highest quality, freshest ingredients was always a priority. “The opportunity to make cheese was one that appealed powerfully to my own taste buds as well as to my desire that other people should have access to delicious and unusual handmade foods,” he says. “I feel an added urgency to create unique cheese in part because so much of our food system is standardized and bland." Cato Corner, he add,s is often cited as a n example of how farming can survive even in Connecticut in this day and age, and "I'm proud of that too."