The Crusade of Southern Cheese

Cheeses rest in the aging room at Sequatchie.

Cows head to the barn for milking.

Cheese makers Carroll Anderson and Nathan Arnold of Sequatchie Cove Farm.

Fresh milk from the farm’s pasture-raised dairy cows.

Warming the milk.

Nathan checks the texture of the curd.

The cheese is flipped during the draining process.

Alpine-inspired, award-winning Dancing Fern cheese.

A sampler of the South’s bloomy bounty.

Kelsey and Ashley Keener, of Sequatchie Cove Farm, with their son, Fletcher.

A sampling of cheeses produced at Sequatchie—the Gruyere-like Gruetli, soft Dancing Fern, and rustic Cumberland.

One of the farm’s Jersey-Holstein cows.

Nathan Arnold with a wheel of Gruetli.

The diversified farm also raises heritage-bred pigs as well as grass-fed beef cattle and Katahdin sheep.

Farm owner Bill Keener at work.