If you’re a Park City area chef, you’ve probably met Gold Creek Farms’ Fernando Chavez-Sandoval, the mind behind their small-batch, artisan cheeses.Over the past 15 years making cheese outside of Woodland, just across the county line into Wasatch, Chavez-Sandoval has created thousands of cheeses, experimenting with new flavor combinations and textures.Cheesemaking has become his passion, but no, this is not at all where he thought life would take him.Chef to cheesemaker“I was born in Mexico right in the city where everything is happening, so to me, to come here to farmland — it was actually kind of funny. You always think United States, the big skyscrapers and all these things, but it’s not,” he said.He got a job as a dishwasher and decided to stay in the culinary world, learned English and worked his way up.“As soon as I started learning how to read English, I bought culinary books from San Francisco, New York, and started reading and understanding what the food is about. From Mexico, it’s different. Our food is love. It’s cheaper food. It all involves family,” he said.Eventually he began working as a caterer, which gave him better hours for spending time with his wife.Alan and Debbie Gold, owners of the property — a dairy farm originating in pioneer days — were clients of Chavez-Sandoval. They’d been trying to get a business started from the farm, so they pitched the idea of him running their cheesemaking facility. At first, he politely declined, but then when he needed a job in the wake of the economy’s decline in ’08 and ’09, he reached back out, and they handed him the reins.“As a caterer, you prep a lot of food, and you’re in one spot all the time. You’re just pumping food, pumping food, so to come here and move around, use my hands, bend down, walking, cleaning, all these movements — it just felt like there was something I had been missing,” he said.The only problem: He had no idea how to make cheese. But the Golds had faith in him and were willing to provide him with training and resources to figure it out, so he attended the Utah State University cheesemaking classes and began doing his own research, just like he did when he was studying to be a chef.“It was a tough decision for me to leave cooking, which was all I knew, to do something that I had no clue. I was afraid, but I think the whole life and experience in my family, my 1-year-old boy, everything (that) was happening at the time, I think it was driving me to succeed. There was no room for failure,” he said.Not long after, his cheeses began winning awards: Best in Class awards from the American Cheese Society competition, the United States Champion Cheese Competition and the World Champion Cheese Competition.“It was so unreal for me because I don’t know nothing about cheese. Here I am sweating, stressing, trying to do something better for my family. … So to me, that meant a lot, and it also meant we’re doing the right thing, like we’re actually making something cool.”He looked around the tasting room lined with plaques, framed certificates and magazine clippings.“It’s crazy to see things with my name on them. I never thought it would be possible. I never even dreamed of it,” he said.Award-winning cheeseAt Gold Creek Farms, making the best cheeses starts in the fields, with the soil where they grow their own alfalfa to feed the cows.“Why does our cheese taste better? It’s not just the milk. We control the feed. We control every aspect,” Chavez-Sandoval said.Credit: Clayton Steward/Park RecordA herd of young dairy cows approach the fence at Gold Creek Farms. Credit: Clayton Steward/Park RecordA cow is milked on Wednesday by an automatic milker at Gold Creek Farms near Woodland in Wasatch County. Credit: Clayton Steward/Park RecordCredit: Clayton Steward/Park RecordAny byproduct of the process goes back to the cows in some form or another — manure, eggshells and ashes are mixed into a nutrient-rich compost and fertilizer for the fields. The whey byproduct of cheesemaking, which has protein, minerals and sugars, is fed back to the cows, too.“For dairy cows, we don’t want unhealthy cows. We want the best milk, so we want to make sure that they’re healthy. … The better food we feed the cows, the better milk we get,” he said.Based on his research into cheesemaking, Chavez-Sandoval wanted Brown Swiss cows, which European cheesemakers commonly use.“It’s a special cow that produces sweet milk and slightly yellow milk. It’s in their genes,” he said. “For cheesemaking it’s the best. … The nutrients, the proteins, the butter fat, that sweet flavor that is in their genes, it’s a really key ingredient on making cheese.”They breed their own cows, starting with eight ladies when they opened, now with 18, each named after family and friends.Cows produce milk every four hours, and like humans, they must be milked to prevent pain or infection. At first, they milked the cows by hand twice a day. But five years ago, they switched to a robotic milking system. “It’s not that you save on labor, you still need the labor to supervise, but a lot of dairies go out of business for milk going bad through the system,” Chavez-Sandoval said. “Blood, mastitis, any issues with the milk, the robot will stop it and can separate it, and it also sends us alarms to our phones. … If the robot senses something bad, it will just dispose of the milk.”While some dairy farms inject their cows with oxytocin to help with the release of milk, the robotic milking at Gold Creek Farms allows them to stimulate the animals’ natural release of oxytocin by feeding them molasses treats, which they love, and massaging their teats to relax.“The idea is, if they’re comfortable, they’re relaxed and they loose the milk,” Chavez-Sandoval said. “If they’re stressed, they keep it tight and they won’t give it away.”The milk then travels to their agitator, an old-school pasteurizer, which brings the milk up to 145 degrees and holds it there for 30 minutes to kill harmful bacteria. When it’s time to make cheese, it is transferred into a stainless-steel vat, a long bathtub-looking piece of equipment with thick walls that can be heated to different temperatures.“Like MTV Cribs, this is where the magic happens,” said Chavez-Sandoval with a laugh. In the vat, it goes through a stirring process, cooking process, then a second stirring process. Each step takes a specific amount of time with specific tools and specific techniques, he explained.“This is a science thing, so you have to stay precise of what we need to do so we can age the cheese correctly and it can last as long as we want,” he said.Blocks of cheese curds are stacked to drain off the whey on Wednesday. All the cheese is hand crafted. Credit: Clayton Steward/Park RecordMost tasks at Gold Creek Farms are still done by hand, especially the cheesemaking process. It’s a philosophy that first attracted Chavez-Sandoval to the role from the very beginning.“We are hand-crafted cheese, so we want to make sure that as much is homemade and handcrafted as possible. I don’t know if it’s the right thing, maybe a machine will be nicer, but for us, it’s part of the reason why we love it because you’re more active with what you make,” he said.After 15 years, they now have high-quality cheeses aged up to 13 years, with plans to release them as Gold Creek Reserve cheeses sometime soon.The company is primarily built on wholesale, but some cheeses are packaged in smaller quantities for the average consumer, sold retail on the farm and in places like The Market in Park City and Liberty Heights Fresh market in Salt Lake City.Staying small-scale means they can make custom cheeses, too, Chavez-Sandoval said. He talks through the process of creating a unique cheese for different customers — High West Distillery’s cheese made with candied grains and smoked with their whiskey barrel ash, a beer cheese for Epic Brewing made with their Big Bad Baptist stout, a signature cheese for Salt Lake’s Beltex Meats using dried scraps from their butcher shop. It’s here that his chef background thrives.“Being a chef, I wanted to create different cheeses than what they taught us in Utah State,” he said. “We don’t have to follow the standard procedures of every book or every celebrity chef. We are our own, and we get to create our own. So for me, being a cheese maker and chef, there’s no boundaries. I push the limits as much as I can.”Cheese keeps in coolers on the property to age before being packaged for purchase or sent to restaurants. Credit: Clayton Steward/Park RecordHis whyThere are plenty of awards decorating the walls at Gold Creek’s main building, but none more recent than 2016.“I don’t (enter contests) anymore. It was getting to my head a little, and I forgot the reason why I started,” Chavez-Sandoval said. “We already built the brand. We have a business. I want to just go focus on what I really love, creating cheeses and coming up with some funky stuff.”While he wasn’t born a farmer, he’s fallen in love with the lifestyle that Kamas offers — a sky full of stars, pure air, a connection with the land. “Knowing where your food comes from, all the education that comes with being a farmer, it’s awesome because it’s free. You’re learning as you’re going. As you need to do something, you’ve got to research something. So it’s free education, and it’s just good for our health,” he said.Fernando Chavez-Sandoval shows off a block of cheese from his first batch. He said that he used to draw smiley faces on the packaged cheese, like Tom Hanks in “Castaway.” “At least, when I walk into the coolers I see cheeses smiling at me,” he said with a laugh, “because I don’t see anybody else but me in here.” Credit: Clayton Steward/Park RecordAnd he loves his job, which also allows him more time with family.“At a restaurant, my kids can never come and see me,” he said. “Here they can come and hang out with me. I bring them here with me. … I cannot replace that with money. I can make a lot of money, but if I don’t have my family, it doesn’t fulfill my needs anymore.”His wife, Ashley, also helps out at Gold Creek Farms behind the scenes by working on packaging and labeling products; she’s supported him all 15 years.  “If you do what you love, I think it shows. If it shows, then it keeps feeding your soul, and it keeps pushing you to keep doing better,” he said. “So, now the plan is just keep learning, keep understanding agriculture and keep coming up with funky cheeses.”Learn more about Gold Creek Farms on their website, goldcreekfarms.com, where Chavez-Sandoval’s cheeses can be ordered and shipped online. Stay tuned for information on an event venue they’re opening on property, and the release of their reserve cheeses, in the near future. “Support your local farms because when they’re gone, they’re gone,” said Chavez-Sandoval.The post The man behind the cheese at Gold Creek Farms appeared first on Park Record.