This rich, oozing, Lehigh Valley cheese has peak farmstead flavor

Steve Dougherty says he’s more into “corny dad jokes” than social commentary when it comes to naming his cheeses. But meme aficionados should be able to more or less date the creation of “OK Bloomer.” The bloomy rind square of soft-ripened cheese that Dougherty makes at Haven Farmstead in New Tripoli, Pa., was christened in 2020, just months following the “OK boomer” response from a 25-year-old New Zealand politician to a heckling 51-year-old counterpart, an exchange that went viral and signaled growing exasperation between the generations.

Dougherty, 41, straddles the Gen X-Millennial divide but had recently made a major lifestyle shift of his own, moving back to Kutztown from Orange County, Calif., and leaving his desk job as a nonprofit project manager to embrace a career in cheese. He partnered with farmer Reuben DeMaster, of Willow Haven Farm, and the two invested in a “misfit herd” of 20 Guernsey, Hereford, and Jersey cows to graze 20 acres of grass near the Lehigh Valley’s wine country.

Dougherty took a crash course in cheesemaking in Vermont through a Sterling College partnership with Jasper Hill Farm, and the first couple years, he concedes, were a period of recipe testing and exploration. I’ve been impressed with where he’s landed in year three, including several of the hard cheeses he’s been selling at local farm markets, especially the nutty Alpine style and tangy rich Gouda.

But the softer, bloomy rind OK Bloomer is the one I keep coming back for. American versions of the Brie and Camembert styles, with some notable exceptions, have typically been either plasticky and bland, or overly runny and too quickly funky. Haven hits an ideal middle place with OK Bloomer. The perfectly aged square I recently purchased at the Rittenhouse Farmers Market was glossy, ripe, and densely creamy all the way through, with a well-tempered savory length due to its early bath in brine. The rind, meanwhile, had a vivid button mushroom aroma that is a classic trait of the style.

As with the best farmstead cheeses, the quality of milk is key. And the OK Bloomers that Haven is producing now with three to four weeks of age have a rich and buttery yellow paste thanks to the late summer grass that sprouted after their pastures recovered from early drought. So they’re at their peak now: “And I’m stacking them up for the holidays,” Dougherty says.

OK, cheesemaker. I’m buying.

OK Bloomer, $12-$14 for a half-pound square, Haven Farmstead, havenfarmstead.com, which sells twice monthly at farmers markets in Rittenhouse Square, Chestnut Hill, Bala Cynwyd, Media, and Doylestown.