Farm-Made Cheese in a Big City Market
IMLS Agriculture & Environment Grant Work Continues
The Henry Ford received funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to increase physical and digital access to agricultural and environmental artifacts. Staff from collections management, conservation, the photo studio, registrars and curatorial departments have worked with 1,200 items to date. Over the two-year grant period (September 2022 through August 2024), 1,750 objects will be conserved, cataloged, digitized and rehoused.
The IMLS grant has helped reunite several items donated by one farm family to The Henry Ford in 1973. These items were all used on a general farm owned and operated by William Saxony Rider (1857-1937) and his wife, Elizabeth Stephenson (1866-1948), in Almont, Michigan. Their daughter, Marion E. (1900-1974), remembered that her mother and father “made and marketed enough of this fine-tasting [cheddar] cheese to build a 300-acre farm.” That work likely occurred during the early 20th century, a time period described as the Golden Age of Agriculture, when market prices exceeded the cost of agricultural production and farm families prospered.
Marion married Herbert F. Hoffman (1901-1982) in 1925, and they established their farm next to William's and Elizabeth's farm. The Hoffmans reactivated the cheese-making equipment during the 1930s. They used milk from their 35-cow herd to make cheese, selling it at Eastern Market in Detroit.
Items in the 1973 donation include a cheese press, cheesebox-making machine, cheese-making vat, curd knives, a stirring paddle, a cheese trier and a large round cheesebox with lid, made by the box-making machine. Much of the equipment retains its original finish – painted yellow with red stencil decoration.
The cheese press is a vertical screw-type that processed four cheeses at a time. Marion explained the procedure in correspondence to Peter Cousins, curator of agriculture, in 1973. The family placed an iron hoop on a pressboard under each press, filled the hoop with cheese curd, then put a "follower" on top of the curd. They then turned the screw down and left the pressure on the curd overnight. After pressing and a period of curing, the result was a round ”truckle” of cheddar cheese that is familiar to us today.
Cheese containers with wooden “followers” to form wheels of cheese. / Photograph by Debra A. Reid
Cheese press with hoops that produce different sizes of cheeses. / Photograph by Debra A. Reid
The production of cheese included the making of boxes to hold the cheese as well. The Rider and Hoffman families made their round boxes with this cheesebox maker.
Box-making machine used by the Rider and Hoffman families, 1900-1940. / Photograph by Debra A. Reid
It consists of a hand-cranked roller 13 inches in diameter and a foot-pedal mechanism. The person making boxes attached white-ash veneer, soaked in water to make it limber, to the roller. Then they turned the roller to form the side of a cheesebox. They nailed the side ends together, then nailed the side to a half-inch-thick wooden bottom.
Cheesebox, 1930-1940. The Hoffmans made this box on the box-making machine during the 1930s. / THF195735
Stay tuned for more nuanced farm-to-food history brought to you with the help of IMLS funding.
Debra A. Reid, curator of agriculture and the environment, and Kayla Wendt, IMLS associate curator, The Henry Ford
Further Reading
The Rider and Hoffman families made cheddar (based on Marion’s recollections). Other types of cheese were common in Michigan, namely, soft Michigan cheese, the focus of Laurie Perkins' book, Cheese Fever: A History of ‘Soft Michigan’ Cheese, 1825-1925 (2018).
Steven K. Hamp, former president of The Henry Ford, wrote his master's thesis at the University of Michigan on the subject of cheese. This thesis, “From Farm to Factory: The Development of Equipment and Process in the American System of Cheese Manufacture” (University of Michigan, 1978), helps put cheese-making equipment into context.
